There’s beauty in true patience, just ask my wife

Jason GallicOpinions in Paradise

You see, this is what I’m talking about. It’s 1:51 p.m. on Christmas Day, this

holiest of occasions reserved almost exclusively for friends and entirely for

family. Yet I sit here at this computer, attempting to bring a piece of myself

and a piece of my life onto the screen for you, The Garden Island

reader.

And this wonderful person who began as my high school sweet heart

and now is just my heart, the only representation of family I’ve got close to

my side, sits and waits again. You see, this is what I’m talking about.

Autumn Gallic has become a skilled veteran at the game – waiting,

patience, love. It happened to her about the same time I fell into my first job

as a sports intern in Florida. We’d already been a couple for five years, our

love was strong and definite. But in 1997 she learned sharing would become part

of her life. And not just traditional sharing, where I take some of the

Christmas ham before passing it on, but life sharing, the balancing of two

existences.

You see, this is what I’m talking about. If she’d had her

druthers, I question whether or not she would have fallen in love with a

journalist. But then there’s her mistake; she fell in love with a man who’d yet

to pick a profession.

And so as the holidays are upon us, and I’ve given

her lots of little trinkets of my affection, I wonder still if I’m not coming

up short. Of course, you’d have to have been there to understand why.

You’d

have to have been there in the very early days of my career, when I was so

eager to impress my direct superiors that I poured all available energies into

the job, leaving so little for her. You’d have to have been there when I

dragged her out to high school soccer games on freezing Friday nights so that

when the game ended, and I could count the minutes to deadline on my fingers

and toes, she could drive while I scribbled a game story furiously on my Steno

pad.

You’d have to have been there when I’d come home at 3 a.m. from an

all-evening road trip to find her sitting on my couch with a fresh smile,

asking me if I wanted some soup, or if she could run me a bath.

I wonder if

I ever gave the impression of proper appreciation for these bits of magic. I

doubt it. And to show my thanks, I went and accepted the sports editor post at

that paper in Florida. That merely ushered in more long nights, and I began

asking her to play proofreader, to boot.

Her personality is such that she

doesn’t mind alone time, but even Thoreau would have questioned this. But she

never did, except to say that she missed me and that dinner was on the stove

when I returned.

The nights, and the days, are long at The Garden Island,

too. She understands: I’m running a one-man sports department. But her favorite

question, as it has been for the past couple of years, remains the same.

“What time do you think you’ll be home tonight,” she’ll say. And there is

this glow on her face, this clear hope that the answer will be different than

it has been the previous 900 times. I say it’s probably going to be late, and

the hope fades a bit from behind her eyes. But still she glows.

“I’ll be

here,” she’ll say. And I don’t think she understands – probably because I’ve

never told her – that those three words drive me through the day, the night and

on to find the next story.

I give her all the time I can, and she deserves

all the more. There’s a lot of sports watched in our house, and rarely does she

question it. But she’s glorious in her lack of subtlety about when the plug is

to be pulled. A quick glance and cocked head is all that’s needed. And I

understand. It’s the time we are allowed together that makes bearable every

last KIF contest that stretched too long, caused me to miss dinner again and

leaves she and I hoping that tomorrow we’ll at least talk in person.

And so

yesterday was Christmas, and we spent nearly the entire day together. Like I

said, I gave her a host of trinkets and presents designed to show caring and

appreciation.

But this belated gift shall be much simpler. It is a thank

you to her beauty and spirit.

You see, this is what I’m talking about.