Skipping rocks.

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I was talking to my husband yesterday evening. The Vice Presidential debates had gone off and I was sitting in a chair with my bare feet propped on an ottoman. The BHE was hogging the full length of the couch which, on this day, was okay with me.

We were doing that thing that we always do where we skip from subject to subject like rocks across a pond. And that's okay, too, because there is just so much to say and to hear so we skip forward and backward. Then we put bookmarks on certain parts and eventually just randomly pick back up on that same point without missing a beat. I love those times.

So yesterday that's what we were doing. Harry had lowered the volume just enough for me to hear the occasional excited upswing from the media post-mortem analysis. Otherwise we were focused on each other--talking, listening, and skipping those rocks. That's what we were doing. And like always, something comes out of someone's mouth that makes us both pause and think in silence. Or not in silence saying things like, "Wow, that's a good word" or "Damn, that's real talk" instead. So yeah. We were talking about life and love and raising children and the future. Those rocks were skipping from hypothetical to political to parenthetical to personal. And all of it was cool.

"What do you want for your kids more than anything?" I asked.

And immediately Harry looked at me and said, "I want them to like who they are. I want them to be able to look in the mirror and be alright with themselves and not want to be someone else."

This time it was one of those "sit in silence" responses. And not just for me  but for us both. Almost like it came from his mouth, yes, but he didn't really hear it and get it until it was fully released into the universe. After a few moments, he spoke first.

"You can never win when you aren't okay with you. That's the foundation, the core. Like, I'm not a perfect man--I'm not. But I love who I am. I'm good with me and I know I treat people right. At least I try, you know?" He patted his chest.

I nodded.

"When you say 'you can never win when you aren't okay with you', like. . . what do you mean by that? Like in relationships? In life? In general?"

"In everything." He looked somewhere far away when he said that. Then he looked right back at me. "I think the reason we work so well is because we really, truly love and respect who the other person is at their core. But you can't get there all the way unless you feel that way about yourself first."

I just stared at him. Listening and thinking and letting that marinate. Then I spoke.

"But that's hard. Don't you think?"

I wanted to hear his thoughts. Because Harry is a guy who grew up differently than me. He had to slug some things out and figure some things out that were far, far from my mind during those formative years. So I'm always interested in his take on "life things." Those hurdles have made him wise.

"It is hard," he responded. "And really you can't be in good relationships unless you get cool with you. At least cool enough to not want to be somebody else."

"Damn. That's real talk."

"See that? That's the main thing I want for Isaiah and Zachary. I don't want them to want to be anybody other than who they are. I want them to think their voice is worth hearing and, at the right times, I want them to use it. I just hope they love who they are. Plain and simple."

Something about that grabbed me in my chest and made my eyes sting. The concomitant simplicity and complexity of it all was just so. . .so. . .I don't know. I don't. But I liked it. And I looked at him, this man I married, and loved him exponentially more for it.

"I love you." This is what I said. My rock skipped to that because that felt natural and right.

"You love you, too. And that is one of the things I love the most about my wife." And he said that with his head leaned up against a couch pillow while the pundits kept yacking in the background on a cable news channel. Then he smiled at me for a beat, turned over toward the television and went back to listening to all the he-said he-said.

And that was that.

Man. I love that man. For who he is. For who he knows he is. And for giving me the space to be and know who I am, too. That, I hope, will give our sons their best chance at being happy and whole human beings.

Yeah.

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Happy Friday.