Wife: Slow Life In The Country With One--39-s Beloved

There is no rush here. The closest we come to a deadline is the moment the sun dips behind the ridge, when the light turns the color of summer honey and spills across the kitchen table. That’s my signal to pour the wine.

The love of a younger couple is a firecracker—loud, bright, gone. The love at thirty-nine years is a woodstove. You feed it a little at a time. You bank the coals at night. You know exactly how to open the damper so it breathes just right. It doesn't roar. It holds . It keeps the chill off your bones for decades.

My wife—my beloved of thirty-nine rings on the tree—is out on the porch, snipping chives from the terracotta pot. I watch her through the screen. She doesn’t know I’m watching. That’s the secret of slow life, I think. Not the big declarations, but the small, stolen glimpses.

In the city, we used to live by the second hand. Now we live by the season. Spring is the mud on her boots and the first rhubarb pie. Summer is the creak of the porch swing and the sound of her turning a page in the shade. Autumn is the woodpile growing against the wall, and her hand on my back as I bend to stack it. Winter is the long dark, made short by the firelight catching the grey in her hair.