Love

I forgot to write about my favorite part of Ironwood.  There were a few nights where we slept in the cabin instead of the lodge.  Figured we would get more sleep/peace there because it was only Grandma and Grandpa sleeping there.  So after they and Lila were in bed, Jake and I would stay up and lay on the couch together, just like we did the Christmas 2006.  (It's a new couch now, but same spot.)  The only light came from the Christmas lights on the porch, just like the "old days."  Except in '06 we would stay up till 3 or 4 in the morning, but that's way too late for us now that we're parents and an old married couple. :)

It was a full-circle moment.  The kind that I love.  In 2006, Jake drove from Ironwood to Escanaba before church started to pick me up.  It was the day after Christmas.  I spent two or three nights in Ironwood with his family and it was when we really started to "fall in love."  By the end of that vacation, we were head-over-heels, crazy in love, inseparable.  I went skiing with his family, we went snowmobiling, and got to spend uninterrupted quality time together.

And there we were, six years later, with our sweet baby daughter sleeping in the next room... the room where I slept as a 17-year-old girl.  I could almost feel our "spirits," the ghosts of our past, there in the room... our dreams and hopes for the future.  I think that place is where I first told Jake that I loved him, and I was so scared and nervous to.  That was where I gave him a back rub for the first time (he said I was pretty bad at it back then, hehe).  It's a special memory for us.

So we laid there and reminisced and oh, it was divine.  One of those lovey-dovey moments that are more rare these days than they used to be.  We held each other tight and whispered and smiled.  He told me, "I love you so much, Rudi.  I wish I could have loved you more in the past."  He said he wishes he would have loved me more tenderly and loved me more fiercely back then.  How sweet.  It was so good to have that short time to just remember who we are deep inside... a boy and a girl still madly in love.