My Fluke

Twenty years ago I answered the most important question of my life:  Will you marry me?  with an incredulous, almost embarrassing question:  Are you serious?

I was serious in my question, because I knew even then, that it was too good to be true, that it was a fluke, this man wanting to marry me.  But he was serious.  After a few moments of utter bewilderment, I found the good sense, at last, to say yes.

And sometimes when I remember to take a moment in gratitude, I still marvel at the fact that he really did choose me.  I feel like Sally Field accepting her Oscar with, “You like me!  You really like me!”

Because I can’t exactly be easy to live with at times.  I’m moody and take on too much.  I start projects only to learn that I’m in over my head and then require a bailout.  I think I’m right most of the time, even when, clearly, I am not.  I also don’t  always give credit.  I don’t always recognize how smart he is, his innate skills at problem-solving, how hard he tries, how much he notices, what he does to make our lives easier and better.

I don’t always recognize how lucky I am.  How lucky I am that he chose me.  Me, out of all the choices he could have made.  It’s dizzying to think about how he’s helped me to grow and develop into the person I am today.  Without him, I cannot even fathom what my life would be like today.

As I was writing this and thinking of the word fluke, I had to look up its meaning, just to be certain.  And while one meaning, the one I originally intended, is a stroke of luck, there is another meaning.  A fluke is the part of an anchor that fastens in the ground, and while I think that the connotation that first came to my mind is still accurate, there is something even more appealing in this second sense of the word.  And so with much gratitude, today, on this 19th anniversary of vowing to be there forever for one another,  I can only say thank you, Dan, for choosing me, for being my fluke, for grounding me to what is real and solid and true.