Monday, January 08, 2007

The Bridge


This evening after my husband came home from work, we were talking to each other in the kitchen while I finished preparing supper. All of a sudden he said "Next year I want to take you back to that bridge where I first kissed you, and kiss you there again."

Next summer it will be fifty years since he kissed me for the first time.
We were strangers then and we were strangers when we married. But over the years we have built a bridge to each other so that now we can say we are no longer strangers, but one with each other.

A person can say too much about an intimate relationship that spans fifty years. I could ruin it with too many words and cheapen the intimacy that has developed between us and belongs to us alone. So, I will keep my memories hidden from others and remember in private the times we have been together as husband and wife and the beauty of it all.

A few weeks after we were married, my husband was shipped to Pakistan where he spent close to eighteen months while serving in the Air Force. Shortly after he left, I took the hankerchief which I had carried with me on our wedding day and I sprinkled my perfume all over it. Then I boxed it up and mailed it to him. He brought it home with him. I still have that hankerchief. When we go next year to the bridge where we first kissed, I will give him that hankerchief again.