Sunday, January 8, 2012

An Unrepentant Gushy Love Post

Anyone who’s had the fortitude to weather this column will recognize a certain recurring... tone. Let's say it can get a bit blustery around here. I could offer up a raft of excuses (chiggers?), but really, who's going to listen? I am what I am, and that is a whiny old coot.

But this time it’s going to be different, because tomorrow is my first mate’s birthday. Without posting numbers, this is one of those auspicious ones, the kind that comes around every, oh, half a century or so. I tell you what, though: Deb continues to remain younger than me, and look at her. The girl is one hot tamale.

 The Tamale, near Bermuda. She'd been sick for days. 
 I'd have had myself airlifted off the boat by now.

I’ve had some fun at Deb’s expense here in the past. That’s what guys who spend too much time in worthless pursuits do while their women are busy with real work. She may never learn to tie a half-thing around a whatyacallit, but I’d be sitting in a fleabag apartment in New York City right now if she hadn’t rescued me from myself.

See, Deb makes wonderful things happen with a brightness of spirit and a, um, contagiousness of buoyancy. Plus she gets me tongue-tied. 

If nothing takes the place of persistence, Deb is the cause's poster girl. I may approach a shared challenge complaining of the possible consequences, but inevitably I’m wearing a smile on my face for the experience I would have denied myself. She makes me enjoy life.

   The birthday girl, making me enjoy the Bahamas

As I look out across our bay, I’m again reminded of an early morning there sixteen years earlier when Deb’s enthusiasm spilled over onto me, prompting me to throw unreasonable caution to the wind. She answered “absolutely” to the easiest of questions, and it’s been smooth sailing ever since.

We’ve been places and done things that arguably Deb needed some help with, but mostly it’s the other way around. No amount of study gets one to the summit. No man is an island except for Tom Hanks, and he had a magic volleyball. Boy did that movie reek. I mean seriously, dude, wait for the surf to settle before you launch that wreck it took you forever to build, you douche. All of a sudden you’ve got to leave right now?? Oops, I said I wasn’t going to do this.

To say I’d be nothing without Deb is, well that’s pushing it.  I know how to use a microwave. But to paraphrase another irascible character from the movies, she makes me want to be a better man.

So I will refrain from any wisecracks here. I have nothing but love and admiration for this woman. She is the cat’s meow and then some. And just so I get it right this time, I'll appropriate a line from a fellow boater:

Wherever she is, there is Eden.


Happy birthday, Deb.
I love you.