the rose of kiev

It was a Wednesday night, and Dave and I had just finished eating a late dinner in the living room.  As the end credits scrolled across the television screen, I lay back on the couch. Long orange light slid across the kitchen floor - it was just before sunset, the night of the summer solstice.  Dave stood up, thanked me for making dinner, and went down to the basement to work. The DVD looped back to the menu, so I rose to eject the disc - season one of The Simpsons , the third disc of three.  I reached for the plastic rental cover and popped it back into place with the two others. I walked toward the basement stairs.  "Be back in a minute - don't lock me out!" I called down to Dave.  I heard the soft thunk of something mechanical.  "OK," he called back.  Discs in hand, I slipped into sandals and opened the front door. It was a beautiful night, and a thin summer humidity cooled by the evening wrapped wide ribbons around my ankles, calves and ar...

Today is my work-from-home day.  It's the day I am supposed to be productive with the writing side of my life. I had planned to sit down and work on transcription, to work on the nuts-and-bolts information for my next freelance article.  But when the time came to sit down to my computer, I just ... couldn't. I am usually able to push past the working-at-home reticence, but when I put my hands against it to shove it aside, I felt this panicked desire to cry. And that's when I thought - maybe tonight is a bigger deal than I thought it would be. -------------------------------------- I am 25. From the time I was born to the summer I was 10, I lived on 13th Avenue in a half-double with my parents and siblings.  In the summer of 1997, my parents bought a house on Norwood Street.  I lived in that house until the September of 2006.  By then, I was 19 and had made the decision to move out into another half-double just north of OSU campus with 6 other girls...

I firmly believe that the most enduring of marriages are made of people who are, not the best matched, but who are the most committed fighters. Marriage isn't about finding the perfectly compatible person, even though compatibility has a helpful place.  It's much more about finding a good person to fight for who will fight for you, too. That fighting?  That bloody-nosed refusal to lay down and quit?  That's what commitment looks like. Commitment, real and long term, takes a rough strength.  Pledging vows is easy in the heat of infatuation; "In sickness and in health" is an easy promise in the midst of health and youth. It is a harder vow to hold when it is ugly and overweight, tired and sick and irritated.  It's harder to hold to when it is aging and angry, insecure and emotional. It's hard to stay when you want to leave. It's hard to still commit when it's no longer easy. But, in a marriage, we promised to commit then, too: in weak...