Rose is Rose by Don Wimmer and Pat Brady for December 19, 2015

We’re still romantic after 40 years of marriage, coming up on 41. I met her on the reservation when our high schools played each other. I was a linebacker and she was the other team’s drum majorette. We had to wait until Vietnam was over to marry. I didn’t want to make her a bride and a possible widow all at once. Then we eloped as her parents didn’t want her marrying a GI. We still hold hands when we walk, I open her doors, hand her in an out of the car, hold her chair and help her with her coat on and off. She gets jewelry every anniversary (not huge, but nice). She still brings me coffee and I give her behind a little pat every time I walk behind her in the house (and usually outside the house, too). We kiss goodbye and hello when either of us has to leave the house to go do something. After 40 years we’re comfortable with each other. She was a good camp follower during my military career and did the hard part of waiting when I was deployed or on a mission, raising our children and holding the household together on her own when I was absent. Maybe the separation was what made it all the more special, the reunions when I got to come back home, usually safe and sound but sometimes nicked up a bit. We’re both older, grayer and saggier, but we still see each other the way we looked when I was 22 and she was 20, when we married. A slip of a girl with big, brown eyes and jet black hair that I could hold in one hand. Literally, my one arm went completely around her waist. I love her more than I love life itself.