Kaleidoscope

A kaleidoscope is a couple tubes with a faceted glass lens and a handful of different shaped and hued glass bits tumbling around, right? Its a pretty simple thing, but it can make infinite variations of color and pattern. Like actually infinite. Turn the tubes and you'll get a pattern that will never, ever be repeated. The translucent bits will never rest and refract to make the pattern you see just that way ever again, there's just too many combinations. Keep turning, and what you see will slink and fall and dance into the next shape, itself entirely new, entirely unique.

Casey has been my wife for 11 years now, and I can't think of two years that have been quite the same in our relationship. Love changes flavor over time and keeps changing ceaselessly because the two people in love are individually ever changing.

There was the Casey who sang to me on the porch swing when we were dating, her voice softly lilting just above the dark breeze through the oaks. There was the the Aaron who whisked Casey off to London by surprise a few years after we got married (and discovered upon arrival that I didn't pack nearly adequately for Casey which made shopping fun and a necessity). There was the Casey who amazed me by how effortlessly she became the embodiment of gentle nurturing as a mother for our Jude and Violet. There was the Aaron, on a moped, who scarred the wits out of Casey (on the back) while diving through hairpin turns on an island in the Grecian Cyclades (as it turned out, shopping, therapeutic shopping this time, also repaired that mistake).

There have been lows too, lot's of em, and some very low. But when I look at her, I don't think of any of them. I think about how my love for her has never quite felt like this, the way it tastes, the way it feels today. It's always amazing. It's different than it was last year, and it will be different next year.

What will it feel like then? I have no idea. I'll have to wait and see. But one thing I do know,
it'll be great.