Having Someone In Your Corner

For my first birthday with S., she gave me a framed document which was like a personal love testament she had written for me in the form of an Advent calendar, with a different pledge or appreciation for each day of the month (my birthday is in late December). It brings tears to my eyes just to think about it, it was the most loving gesture anyone had ever done for me, ever. Line after line of carefully chosen items which touched me right to the core. I was floored. Here was this fantastic, wonderful, sexy, exciting, energetic amazing person, and she loved me, and not just frivolously -- she demonstrated that she had identified all the things which make me the wonderful person that I am, the things I am proud of, and she shared it all with me so openly and proudly that she framed it and put on the wall of my (soon to be our) home. One of them was something about what a wonderful father I would make -- V. was still with his grandmother at this point so it was just her and I. My gift to her was actually for him - I put together a box of toys and clothes and books and went with her to the post office where we sent it to her mother -- and she was openly moved. We were so in love.

I remember a conversation I had at a lunch with J., a VP at the company I was working for at the time, early the following year, sometime before S. and I had gone to central Asia to get V. in June. He was not a close friend but we had a definite connection and a taste for sharing with each other. I was working offsite at a hospital downtown at the time and one day he had a meeting with the client and afterwards he took me out for lunch. Like many similar peripheral figures in my life whose perspective of me was broadened by the relative infrequency of our encounters, he remarked on how radiant was my countenance and how stable and self-assured was my manner. He had met S. at the Christmas party and I shared with him how being part of a union with her had helped me to feel so strong and capable. He made an analogy which struck me as very accurate at the time and which stuck with me: there is something very powerful reassuring knowing that you have someone in your corner.