Lately my heart has been thumping so hard with anticipation, that I can heard it echoing in my eardrums.
ka-thump it says, you've made it further than you ever thought you would, it says.
ka-thump, it says, you've found love, it says, and you're even beginning to believe in it.
ka-thump, it says, you're getting married, not because all the other girls want to, but because it feels so impossibly right.
ka-thump ka-thump in the morning I crawl back into bed after my requisite minute son the eliptical machine, one pyjama leg wet from haphazard spillage while watering the plants.
ka-thump, patterpatterpatter I press up against Dave and he grumbles and moans in that frightening way as I disturb his posture but when I kiss him good morning square on the chin he smiles before even opening his eyes.
Every morning I lean my cheek against the unlikely smoothness of his shoulder and he traps me under his heavy arms and every day of my life as I'm living it is comprised of at least a solid fifteen minutes of faerie-tale warmth.
Every evening, whether tired or upset or chipper or accomplished, whether we've fought or made love or fucked like hungry bodies, I fall asleep trapped beneath those same arms.
Some evenings we whisper about our concerns at work and grocery plans and laundry delays, and some evenings he brings his face straight and close with mine and tells me that he wants to marry me, that he wrote my name as "Mrs. Him" when filling out the papers for his new dentist.
Some evenings we berate each other for our bad habits, and some evenings we discuss (that which I swore I wouldn't) plans for renovating and refinishing.
Some evenings we argue whether we should pick baby names ahead of time, or just decide spontaneously upon first glimpse of what we'll make.
Last night while I networked and impressed, and today while I connected and politicked, these suddenly dependable factors in my life made every meaningless gesture more meaningful.
I am approaching another stage of change and choices in my career, and yet despite the usual turmoil involved -- my belly isn't eating away at itself.
Instead, it is filled with some warm, (primordial) soup and I am nourished in a way I never knew was possible.
And to every pop psychologist in the universe who said that traumas in childhood could never heal, and the unloved could never learn the meaning of family --
you're wrong.