the rose of kiev

Marriage Is: Opposites Attracting (and Annoying) While praying together recently, Dave said, "Sometimes, God, it seems like you intended Heather and I to be together because of how different we are, and it's a good thing even when it's frustrating."   I'm happy with anything, and Dave is picky about everything.  I can make a decision on a dime, but Dave needs a week's notice before he can make a decision.  I crave the stimulation of people, but Dave is perfectly content without it.  I am Dave's excitement and motivation.  Dave is my prudence and wisdom.  I thrust people into Dave's life and he diminishes my need for their affirmation.  It usually works out well, even though our opposing opposites sometimes manifest in ugly nagging and feet-dragging, but all said and done, together we get It done and do It right. A Lot of Kissing I have a dim memory from when I was twelve of walking into our yellow kitchen while my mother was at the stove.  My father wa...

Something amazing happened when I graduated from high school in 2005.  My family was a little more than three years into my parents' divorce when I walked the stage and flipped my tassel, and when it was all over it was time for a celebratory dinner.  Uncles, grandparents and cousins crowded happily around me and the question arose that any kid from a split family dreads - do I want to have dinner with my mom's family or my dad's family?  In such a setting, the potential for family drama was off the charts. But something incredible happened.  I can't even remember who initiated it, but the next thing I knew we were at Don Pablo's and I was at the head of a table of twenty people.  My mother's relatives and father's relatives were all interspersed and passing baskets of chips, laughing together as though the clock had been set back four years and there was no heartache.  I remember little else about my graduation, but that memory sticks clear and strong and p...

There's nothing like the practical to cure moodiness. Everyone has those days when their nasty internal critics catch up with them, chanting poisonous little lies and half-truths.  It's a dirty collection of "always" and "nevers", buzzing like gnats at your ears.  Not pretty enough.  Too lazy.  Not smart enough.  Too loud.  Coward.  Hypocrite.  No one really likes you.  You'll never be good enough.  Like bugs on hot days, there's always at least one or two to swat away, but when they come in swarms it can be paralyzing. During a two-hour afternoon nap last week I was surrounded by a cloud of them, the annoying buzz rising to piercing shrieks.  The dense darkness pressed down as I laid on the couch and watched the clock tick, becoming slowly more convinced that three hundred orphans and a baby kitten would die horrible deaths if I continued to be so incompetent.  And if I can't get anything right, if I can't even keep my own kitchen clean, why...

Right about this time last year, Dave and I were sitting at a card table in the second story of his house on 12th Avenue making an attempt to whittle down our guest list.  We crunched the numbers together on Excel, both per head, and how much each head would cost to be there (food, cake, favors, beer, tablecloths...).  It was one of the more stressful days of our engagement, so we took a break to sit on the roof and watch a distant set of belated fireworks.  While we were out there, my pragmatic Dave had an epiphany. "So...by the time we add up the cost of everything involved in the wedding, how much will that cost in comparison to the stuff that we get?" I scuffed the shingles with my sandal.  "If you add up the bridal showers, bachelorette party and wedding presents together, we'll probably break even." "How does that make any sense?  Why not just use the money we have to get the stuff that we need?  Why all the extra stress?" I smiled and looked tow...

Marriage is: Someone Who Believes in You Girls have these weird things called hormones.  When  those IFAW commercials   come on showing the starving kittens and begging for donations, it's the hormones that make girls cry.   It takes a feeling like sympathy and tips the scale to tears.  And last week, hormones turned my uncertainty about my writing into full-blown paralysis and a tear-choked throat.  Squeakily I asked Dave to sit down and talk with me for a little while because I felt weird.  And with that quiet assurance of his, he laid down on the bed with his arm around me as I clung to him, tears slowly darkening his light blue shirt.  He waited until I was ready to talk, until enough of his warmth and strength had seeped into me to ask, "Do you think I have a shot at being a writer?" He rubbed my shoulder. "Of course I do.  I wouldn't be encouraging something I thought was a pipe dream."  He had cured me in fifteen perfect words. About Honesty Want a go...