Just Powers

Last week, for our third anniversary, a box of flowers showed up at my door. As I walked up the steps towards them, I ran through the list of people who could have sent them to me. Included in that list was Mike - my partner of six years, three of them government-sanctioned.

For whatever reason, Mike and I have never been overly romantic in the traditional sense of the word, but however it is that we show each other that we care seems to have worked so far. Mike will randomly buy me gifts that he knows I will like and occasionally will pick up a bouquet of flowers at the grocery store, but I am pretty sure he has never sent me flowers - oh wait, there was that plant arrangement he sent to my office for my first Mother’s Day. That was very cool, and I have even managed NOT to kill it yet.

So, he has only sent me foliage of some sort one other time. This is not something that bothers me or that I find myself ever even thinking about. However, when I walked up those stairs and saw that box of flowers, and ran through the list of possible senders, I found myself thinking, “Oh please let them be from Mike.” When I opened the card, and they were from him, I cried enough that Emma asked “Mommy so happy?”

I felt like Meg Ryan at the very end of “You’ve Got Mail” when she is standing in a garden in Central Park waiting to meet the person she has spent the entire movie emailing and IMing with anonymously, and who she has convinced herself could be “Mr. Right.” As Tom Hanks rounds the corner, she realizes that her anonymous Mr. Right is actually a very real person she has known for a while, and who she has become best friends with. As they embrace and the music swells, she says “I wanted it to be you. I wanted it to be you so badly.”

My bouquet started out with most of the buds closed tight but with lush beautiful green leaves. When Mike came home that night he was concerned that they didn’t look more colorful, like the picture had looked when he ordered them. One week later, this is what they look like. They are stunning and I love them.

Thanks Mike. I love you, too.