One Day You Find Thirty Years Have Got Behind You!

I can actually still remember that day, it was a Friday and after work I drove few miles to the Torrance Squash Club. I wasn’t sure who it is, I was supposed to play in a tournament that covered all levels, but here you walked in with your beautiful shy smile. I like to think that I lost the game deliberately, so dinner would be on me, but you have always maintained that you beat me fair and square. I am really not sure anymore, because on most topics, I have gotten to see things more like you and less like me.

Marianne Faithful and Joan Baez not to mention my absolute favorite Dire Straits, this music is really your music, but it is now my music and has been for so long, I am not sure, when it became my music too, but it is.

We agreed on human rights but differed on politics, you were consistently left, I was right and jumping all over the place, as the years passed, especially after my shameful vote for Bush in 2000, I have seen the light, I am still at times, all over the place, but you are my right. So even my politics is far closer to yours today, than it was to my old self, and that feels right too.

I stopped smoking in 1992 because of the one time, just the once, that your tearful beautiful face told me of your fears! You never nagged me, you accepted me smoke stench and all. Alas, it was your fears and worries that betrayed you that one time, you turned me into the health conscious person I am today.

Since that squash game, or really a year and few months after that, you have become the constant in my life of turmoil, living in California, Ohio, London, Boston, Hong Kong and Boston and now finally in rural England. Home for me, is where you are, where your salad mustard dressing is made…. It is your generous beautiful voice that I long for and your beautiful smile that is my home. I look at your beautiful face today and I see the very same beauty that I saw for the first time on June 29, 1984 in Torrance, CA.

The years have passed and we dealt with brain tumors, countless health crises, and we deal with never ending worry for the health of our kids, and with the stresses of losing our loved ones. We dealt with many stresses and differences, but you remain today my wonderful friend and life companion. We still can spend hours talking about the subtle difference in the meaning of words and how one language can express certain things better than another. We can spend hours in silent companionship that is easy and comfortable, we can go on for days with no communication when traveling, we have our way, a non-possessive way that just works.

Not sure, which one of us coined the expression that a true good relationship or love is all about taking the other for granted, I still think that, we are only truly secure, truly ourselves, if we are accepted as we are; you have accepted me for what I was, and I gradually changed to be a better person, changed to be more like you.

The things in me, that I really approve, are the things that came from you! These are things that are actually closer to you. The me that I love, is the me that you created deliberately or not.

Ayman 

June 29, 2014

Ps. I revolted against your negative views of Ash trees and Ash is now my absolute favorite tree. I know it is your least favorite, but I do have to assert my own personality, so here it is I do love Ash trees, especially in June.

Ps. I still think I really did let you win that game.