The Roommate Experience Pt. 06

- "This is where we had our first kiss. Do you remember?"

By that point, I was already down on one knee.

- "Rose? Will you marry me?"

***

We'd been living together for a while, so there was no need for a long engagement. On the other hand, there was no pressure on us to get married early. We decided to take out time, and to start saving aggressively.

One of the things - one of the many things - I loved about Rose, was that she wasn't materialistic. As long as she had books and good food, she was pretty happy.

- "You forgot sex." she said.

- "I don't remember you mentioning that, before."

- "You weren't listening. And I'm adding it now."

- "I thought you only needed food for your mind and you body." I teased.

- "Well, now I've discovered that I need to feed my emotions ... and my soul."

- "I love you, Rose."

- "Show me."

Yeah, I have to admit it: we were pretty sickening. Those years of living together, and then our engagement, and the first years of our marriage were absolutely incredible.

It was a great decision, and one that I never regretted for an instant. We rarely fought; somehow, we just managed to work on our problems as a team, instead of trying to score points off one another.

I've heard of plenty of couples who had power struggles, and I've met several who would say hurtful things to each other - in front of other people! That wasn't us.

We didn't have much money, at first, but it didn't matter. We were on the same team, working towards the same goals. To be completely honest, I don't think we really needed all that much money.

Rose passed me a strange book - definitely not my usual. It was the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. I didn't understand all of it, but the passages on friendship and marriage really spoke to me. There was one piece, especially, that hit me right in the heart.

A loaf of bread, a jug of wine, and thou

What more do you need?

Sure, it was nice to go to Florida, or to splurge on a trip to the Dominican Republic, but life isn't something that you save up to enjoy for two weeks in March. It's every day, when you come home from a long day of work, and find that you partner is even more exhausted than you are.

So you pour her a glass a wine, and rub her feet, and sometimes you get lucky, and she wants to take it into the bedroom - or you get even luckier, and she can't wait that long, so you get busy on the couch, or the floor.

My passion for Rose never diminished.

After three years of marriage, we were blessed with a beautiful baby girl. Shelley was a handful from day one, but she made our happy lives even happier.

It was an incredible feeling, to hold that little helpless bundle, knowing that she was utterly dependent on us - and that we would be completely responsible for her, for many years to come.

I'll admit that the next few years weren't always as easy, and that our sex life declined quite a bit, in terms of frequency and intensity. But our partnership grew stronger, and there was Shelley. We bought a house. More headaches, as far as I was concerned, but I wanted to make my girls happy.

Ray changed his mind about retirement. Karen supported his decision completely. He just wanted to keep working on cars, without the headaches of running a garage. So we became full partners, and I took over even more of the business side of things.

Rose and I are talking about a second child. I think we have our hands full as it is, with Shelley, but Rose suspects that I really want a son.

It's something that we'll have to work out - together.

*****

The End