My Piano Guy

    Today is the birthday of my husband, The Piano Guy. He has taken to calling himself that because of his part-time job as piano tuner extraordinaire. Having a birthday so close to Christmas has taken away from celebration fervor but I am so very grateful that he was born.

   We met long ago at Brigham Young University in church. He was tall, quiet, reserved, and very insightful. Our conversations ranged from the spiritual to the ridiculous. We were always talking together, much more than his roommate and I, who I was dating. I valued the talking more than any characteristic he might have had. I was hungry for honest, open communication. My family did not have an abundance of that when I was growing up. We are still talking; granted some conversations are old and we know each other's lines, but the open, honest communication is still there.
   Last week, when he walked into the Sawbones Christmas Party, my heart went pitter-pat. He is the love of my life.

Love is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion. That is just being "in love" which any of us can convince ourselves we are.

Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident. Your mother and I had it, we had roots that grew towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossoms had fallen from our branches we found that we were one tree and not two.

Louis De Bernieres