I love to create, work with my hands, make something good. Restoring old furniture, baking pies, digging in the garden, its like therapy for me. I have always wanted a set of power tools. Not the mandatory introductory tool kit you buy your husband on his first fathers day, but a real set of heavy duty power tools you’d find in a grandfathers garage, that smells like old leather and pipe smoke. My husband and I have always had very traditional roles, he takes out the garbage and cuts the grass, I get the groceries and fold his laundry. Traditionally, the husband fixes the house, the yard, the hard sweaty things. But I do, I have this thing in me that makes me tick, that I want to build things, restore things.
When we dated, my husband used to buy me dozens of roses, always red, rich chocolates and delicate gold jewelry, usually for a special occasion. I used to tell him, I love sunflowers too, (simple and happy), but he’d insist that roses were the best of the best and thats what I deserved. Speaking someone’s love language requires dismissal of your own desires, which takes some couples a lifetime to discover. Many years, a few kids, and houses later, we have that worn in kind of love, like your favorite pair of jeans, the old baseball cap, that college tshirt. We have grown to know each other deeply, the smallest details, good and bad. We have become comfortable in our own skin, and accepted each others true selves.
A few weeks ago, he came home with these tokens, not a special occasion, not a holiday, just because. A hydrangea bush, and craftsman circular saw. I laughed and grinned, this is me. He loves me. Not the fancy girl he dated trying to impress, just me, the jeans and tshirt girl with paint splattered in her wild curly hair, building things with her own bare hands, rugged and rough. He’s not less of a man for letting me enjoy those gifts, he’s stronger than the day I married him, admitting his weaknesses, embracing my strengths. Behind every strong woman is a strong man, behind every strong man is a strong woman, they are one, whole, strong unit. Worn and weathered, handsome and knowing, his beard speckled with gray and Im grinning, he loves me. Just as I am. Just because.
homestead heart 