Love

"I'll tell ya what, I'll make us some cocktails and we'll sit out on the back deck and solve all the world's problems," drawled Keith affectionately.

"It's a date," I cried, delighted. "I'll be there!"

"Well, I look forward to it," Keith replied in his rough, mischievous voice.

God, I am so in love with my husband. It's like I'm sixteen all over again, before everything in my life went bad. When talking on the phone with him I find myself slowly sinking downward until my head is resting on whatever object was available, the stair rail, the back of a kitchen chair. If he calls at night, I tend to throw the bedclothes over my head and huddle down into the pillow, hold the phone with both hands and whisper.

We talked for a long time last night and then all of a sudden he had to go. We said our "I loves you's" quickly and then he was gone. Ten minutes later I heard the phone ring again.

"Baby, are you ok?" I asked immediately.

"Yeah," he said, shy. "I just had a coupla' more minutes to talk."

"You know what I was day dreaming about it?" I asked wistfully, kicking at the bedclothes.

"What were you day dreamin' about?" he asked tenderly.

"About grillin' out on the back porch this summer when you get back and for some reason, I was thinking about your crazy friend and his wife and how they were always over..."

"Hun!" he cried. "I saw him a few days ago, did I tell you?"

Actually, I had been day dreaming about how we would grill out on a rainy day, because Keith loves rainy days and how I would sit on the wide porch railing close up the grill. And in between tending to the grill Keith would be leaning into me and I was remembering how good he always smelled, even if it was just his skin, or the cotton tee shirt.

Throughout the entire deployment we have been remarkably chaste in our conversations together. Sometimes I couldn't help teasing my poor husband just a little bit, mostly just because I love the way he responds with "Honey!" in such a darling and helpless way. "Now, honey, you be good," he'll plead, laughing.

Well, lately the tables have turned. The first time he did this, my first and instinctive reaction was lady-like horror; no one talks to me that way! Who does he think he is...And then a shiver of pure pleasure went down my skin in a rush from head to toe when I realized that he was my husband and had every right to talk to me that way.

"Poor Abby won't know what to do," I told Keith last night. "I trained her not to sleep on my side of the bed and she won't be able to sleep on yours anymore."

"She can sleep on the goddamn floor for all I care-that's my bed," Keith replied, matter of fact.

Yes, it most certainly is.