My wife looks like a rockstar

My wife and I have a standing date to do holiday things together. One of my favorite holidays is Halloween which we spend watching moderately dark movies or shows and jumping up to hand out candy to a parade of neighborhood children.

I would rather do this with her than go to any party or watch a parade of black cats in costumes, or whatever weird shit the young people are into these days.

Trick or treating had already started when I got home from work. Neighbors were out grilling and helping little goblins and butterflies cross the street. Sugar buzzed laughter and the click clatter of running children was background to everything in our usually quiet neighborhood.

When I got home, my wife met me at the door looking like a rockstar, and by that, I mean looking like she always does... a total bad ass. She is has such a confident walk and demeanor that there is always a little oh my god element when I first see her. She was wearing orange pants and a black tee shirt which only enhanced the whole rockstar thing. She always seems a little flirty and mysterious. Apart from being too nice and too polite to actually be a rock star, there is virtually no difference between Satu and anyone you might see on tour. I imagine young girls everywhere following her around like groupies. I am not sure why they don't. but probably because she has never made eye contact with them. When Satu looks you in the eyes, your heart forgets what its job is. It just stands there all loose and warm in your chest for a second before picking up the beat and marching on.

I have never gotten used to this. In fact, I have recently realized that Satu and I don't make a lot of eye contact for this reason. Yes, we look at each other, but she is careful to keep her eyes moving about slowly as we talk. If they linger or if I catch her gaze full on when I am not ready, I still have the sensation of falling for a moment.

I hope that I always feel that way when she looks at me. I think that only part of it is the way that I feel. I think that the other half of what is so electric is how I know that she feels when she looks at me.

My rockstar may be unknown to the world at large, but she could take the stage by storm any moment that she chooses.

Take a chance girlfrang, TAKE IT!

Satu,

In this life, the best thing anyone gets out of it is happiness and purpose. Even people who build giant businesses and look successful to their parents aren't always happy with the work that they do and where it takes them. You deserve better than that. You deserve the joy that comes with feeling productive and appreciated.

You are a person with vision, you see things differently and because of the unique way that you learn and investigate, you mind is full of vision. You know things about things, but more than that, when you are inspired, you are brilliant. You are undeniably happy. When you are making a blue monster wreath or a string of pictures for us, don't you feel better to be expressing some unique inner vision? I know that you resist being too proud, but that book that you made me is really the most beautiful gift I have ever gotten and if there was one thing in my life that I would save in a fire (besides you, shitty wok and pantaloons) that would be it.

I don't know how it feels to be you when you allow yourself the freedom to imagine those things and then plan them and do it. I know that sometimes the precision work is not as fun as the idea, but I imagine that you feel like I do when I get into my brain about some new invention or plan. I feel inspired and purposeful.

Fuck what your mom thinks. You deserve to be happy. Fuck what the world thinks. You deserve to feel like the beautiful person you are. Fuck what the unwashed masses think. THEY ARE NOT YOUR PEOPLE!!! I am your people and you are your people. You can choose to weed out the things that do not matter to you, including the assholes who keep putting you down because you have the audacity to walk tall and to keep your chin up even though you are a woman. Seriously. FUCK THEM! You know that is what is going on. You are not in the right place because you can no longer find a way to take pride in the work that you do there. It is not the place, it is not the mission there or the lack of mission, it is that dealing with those people that you do not choose erodes the joy that you naturally have in your heart.

You should know that all of those people are probably good at times too. They love to see surprise bunnies and teach their kids to ride bikes, but spending life without meaningful work or hope shackles the soul. Their dark clouds rain on you every day. Leave that place for the sun.

I don't care if it is hard on our finances. Poor people who have hope and vision are happier than rich ones who don't really feel a part of anything. We have both lived on less before and been perfectly happy. If you don't know what's next, that's fine too. Just keep walking toward the sun and away from what makes you doubt yourself and crushes your tender soul. Any step in that direction is the right step. If we fail, we will fail together, but we probably won't fail. In fact any life that you can feel happy about, any days that you can spend pursuing something meaningful, talking about things that you think are important is not a failure. That is a successful life. Let's live one of those.

People let you down

People disappoint you. That is part of being the best person that you know how to be. Satu was raised by people who were always nice to strangers and who believed in diamonds in the rough. Her people were only ever mean to her or eachother, never ones to judge strangers and always quick to point out a stereotype.

My people sometimes let stereotypes go or silently agreed with some really fucked up stuff, but at their core there was always some common thread between us and the rest of the world. That gave us the security to call a black person an ass hole without feeling like it was a race thing. Maybe it is just an ass hole thing. We called white ass holes what they were without feeling like we were in some kind of group with them just because we shared a skin tone.

Maybe that is the difference between growing up lower or middle class. You know that a fancy shirt doesn't make you smart or nice and a hand me down dress doesn't either. You are what you are and you should be treated accordingly.

When I was growing up, I had lots of jobs in food service or retail. I remember trying to run the register at a health food store on my first day there and being dressed down in public by a lady with nose cancer because I didn't know what hippy dippy herb she was looking for. I still feel about an inch tall when I think about how paralyzed I felt and how all of the words backed up in my brain somewhere behind my hot, ringing heartbeat.

Satu is experiencing the same thing now, which she shouldn't be at this point in her life because she doesn't have to, Somehow instead of feeling more stable and established, she has started to doubt herself, so when people treat her like shit, the wall is a little lower than it was before.

Bad people treat you like shit, especially if you aren't. It makes them feel even stronger to take on someone who looks like Satu. She seems like a tank, wears an air of confidence and when she shows you kindness, sometimes you know it is just because she is a genuinely good and kind person.

Shitty people get under there and destroy from within. I wish that Satu could spend a second seeing herself the way that most people see her. She would understand why people who are disillusion and
angry will never trust her. They don't trust anyone, never had someone be kind for no reason and don't know how to treat strangers as if they have the same tender fragile souls that we all have somewhere.

I hope that as our lives go on Satu finds more people who will love her as much as I do. I want her to feel surrounded by people who realize how special she is. I want everyone to laugh when she surprises them of feel  their hearts break when she looks them in the eyes. It is the way people should connect.

I wish that I could keep her away from ass holes, but I think that one of the things I like best about Satu is that she will never assume that the next person will be as bad as they are, and the constant let down surprises her.

All of us deserve better than that. Being a person is hard enough without all of the other people that are trying to do it breaking you down.

The expert in things

When Satu gets interested in something, she studies it and learns it like it was her life's work. It is a constant exercise for her. She is an expert in many things because if she is going to do a thing, she will not do it half way.

Since I have been with her, I have seen her become an expert in plane crashes. She knows what went wrong in many crashes and is interested enough to follow up after the investigation is not in the news.

Satu is an expert in cigars and restored her own humidor which she populates with collections that interest her for various reasons. Usually she will find a theme and go with it.

Satu is an expert in cats. She speaks fluent cat and patiently studied our new cat and taught the scruffy stray how to play, chase and stalk her without viciously attacking like many cats do.

She is an expert in prop furniture for two different television shows and will carefully hunt down and catalog everything in the background from tables to books to drinkware.

My beautiful wife is now becoming an expert in pipes. She doesn't want to smoke, but she has her father's old pipe and wants to restore it. I think there must be something about this object that makes her feel connected to the owner.

I  think with the other pursuits there is something about learning about little sub-groups by finding one little niche to explore. It is a doorway to becoming a part of more and developing a bigger life.

Since we have been together, Satu has become an expert in me. It is one of the reasons that I know without a doubt that she loves me. She knows my body language when I don't realize my body is talking and she knows exactly the right weight to put into a caress or a hug. I am flattered that she can imitate me or speak my mind even when I don't think she could possibly know what I am thinking.

Satu will probably find a new interest to learn next week or next month, but she will always know me better than any other person could.

A minus

My wife has lived her whole life without ever knowing her blood type. She has been through two surgeries and has a medical record the size of a dictionary, but it is missing the A,B and O pages, so she ordered a test to solve the mystery once and for all.

Satu is able to handle a lot of pain, but not a tiny ounce of blood escapes her without a fight. Her original plan was to wait until she hurt herself naturally and just gather the blood rolling down her leg or her arm. We waited until a shelf attacked her at work and she came home with a nasty scab to pick.

Unfortunately, the scab didn't produce enough blood to test, so I had to hold her hand down and stick her with the little needle as she protested and wiggled and turned green in her seat. Then we squeezed the blood out of her finger onto four little circles and watched for the formation of some blots. It was like looking for shapes in the cloud; You would think that you see a positive reading, or is that a horse or a turtle instead? When the blood dried, I compared the results to the key provided in the test and proclaimed her A negative. Satu was offended. She was sure that she had earned an A plus and the fact that I am A positive made her competitive. She was not going to accept the test results because she feels like her blood should be A+ or maybe some very very rare type that no one has ever heard of.
I think it is important to know your blood type in case you get shot by terrorists or fall off of a moving bus while trying to catch a fleeing villain as he disappears into the subway. When you get to the hospital, you want to be able to tell the bartender exactly what kind of pint you will have before you pass out. If you don't know your blood type, they may just fill you up with salad dressing or something. Who knows. So if something ever happens to my love, I will take her to the hospital and she will say that she doesn't know her blood type and I will tell them that she's A negative, just the rare strain of A negative. You know the type that makes you the most unique, most funny, positive and competitive and irrational kind of person in the world. And please bring the best doctor that you have, because if they can't make her well in 20 minutes, I am going to start losing my cool. and I am the type to draw blood.

I wants to keeps it in me bog

Satu and I have some typical night time rituals now that we have been married officially for over a year. I like to go to bed early because I get up early. If I am going to have a panic attack that night, it will usually start right about the time that she is ready to try to sleep. Just as she closes her eyes, mine will open wide as I try to breathe all of the air out of the room.
Satu is a saint. Even after a couple of years of this, she still offers me a comforting hand and a few calming words before pulling down her batman mask without the eye holes.
Luckily, the bad nights like those are becoming more rare as we are figuring out life in Ohio and I have decided to never, ever take another class or do homework of any kind.
Usually, our night time rituals are calming. I fall asleep after the kitty has had enough pats and scratches and starts attacking Satu's feet.  In this state, I am still awake, but totally useless. Satu says that I sometimes talk, sometimes snuggle and sometimes fight the VC, I was in this state when I reached over to pat my wife gently on the cheek, but she found the limp, clammy handed caress incredibly creepy. "I wants to keeps it in me bog." she wheezed in her swamp thing voice. At the time that was the funniest thing I had ever heard in my life, so we both lay awake laughing until we ached. In my dreams I might swim the Atlantic ocean with helicopter support or carry a house up a hill by myself. I am pretty sure that Satu dreams of high stress shootouts and flying spaceships like a boss.
While I sleep, Satu lies beside me with multiple electronic devices. She will not bring a laptop to bed because people say that it discourages restfulness, so instead, she uses her tiny, wallet sized phone to read on and will surf the web for Japanese pipes, dogs in regal attire, or God knows what else. She likes to read with only one eye open. I hope it is because she is sleeping with the other eye, but I doubt it. Even if she is sleeping, she is probably having bad dreams.
Unlike me, my wife doesn't look to me for comfort. I often find her awake in the middle of the night reading with one eye and just waiting to be able to slow her heart rate.
Sometimes our wind down time will include trying to situate the dog between us so that no one is directly in the line of fire for his stinky, fish breath. On nights when we are both in early, she finds me videos of turtles eating tomatoes or elephants in swimming pools to keep me in a good mood.
I can't sleep until I have gotten out of bed a few times to fetch different things like water or crackers or the pillow I left on the couch. Satu can't sleep until she is good and damn ready and no amount of fatigue is going to speed that up for her brain. It is ready when it is ready.
Our nightly rituals may not involve warm milk or bedtime stories, but I feel like our bed is home base. What I like most about working day shift is that I get to enjoy these moments at the end of the day with my beautiful wife. No matter how many times I have to get out of bed before it is time to sleep. I always want to get back in and run the palm of my hand across Satu's relaxing brow. I do in fact " wants to keeps it in me bog."

First year of marriage

Tomorrow I will have been married to Satu for one year. Here is what I have learned about marriage in the first year.

1. It is not the same as being a long time companion, dating or being a significant other. It is much better to have a wife. When you have a wife, you don't have to explain to anyone that it is serious. People respect marriage in a way that they wouldn't respect any other commitment.

2. I love being married! I love having a wedding ring and the idea that what I have with Satu is meant to last forever. I love being her person. She is my best friend and she is the only person who knows me as well as my own sister.

3. When you are married and you get in trouble for something, you can just blame the other person for marrying you in the first place. For example " I'm sorry I threw out the fresh coffee, but you knew that I wasn't observant when you married me, so you don't get to be mad now."

4. Some days it doesn't feel any different than before we were married, but then I remember her holding my hot, shaking hands when we said our vows, and I know that I will never be the same.

5. When you are married, you get to imagine growing old together and not have parallel thoughts about what would happen if you were alone. You can plan to take care of each in a way that is impossible to do without marriage.

6. Anniversaries are better when they are for the day that you married instead of a first date or a first kiss. Who knows the exact date that you fall in love with someone? It is a process that you get caught up in and then suddenly realize that you are in love. I will always know the day that my beautiful wife told me that she would love me in sickness and in health, for better or worse.

All I have to do is be me and continue to pour all of my love and imagination and happiness into this life that we are building. I think that loving Satu is my real goal in life. I go to work with a happy heart and do well because I am in love. I notice things in the world because I want to see them with her. The first thing I think of when I hear something funny is if she would laugh too.

Satu is my person. She will be my person as long as we are both us and I cant think of a more important thing in the world.