Our “staycation” has taken a turn for the worse. We’ve missed out on doing local vacation-type things because Dana’s allergy to yellow food dye has blossomed nicely. She is miserable, and rightfully so. I’m doing everything in my power to stay by her side and keep her comfortable. Translation: I am also very into watching Netflix on the couch. While this vacation has turned out differently than I’d expected, turning my brain off and sleeping as much as possible while I can is just what I didn’t know I needed. So, in a roundabout way, thanks to my honey for getting a freak show of a rash to teach me the moral of that story.

I know what her eyebrows are going to look like when she reads that.

That sentence will make her laugh, which is my favorite thing on God’s green earth. Dana’s laugh, if you’ve never heard it, is the kind that lingers in your memory because you can’t remember the last time you heard that much joy coming out of one person. Laughs envelop Dana like water. When I hear Dana laugh, everything else feels far and away… which is the small vacation I get to take for a few hours each day when I get home and she is there.

People have asked me why I don’t write more about Dana, and my answer is always the same- I don’t talk about her in therapy, either, because I never have any problems with her that I need to think about in long form. I don’t need to mull anything over in my mind with or about her, because we are on the same page; we are two very different sides of one gorgeous coin.

If we are struggling with a particular issue, it’s generally that we both have the same questions and concerns, rather than different ones. I don’t really have the ability to compare and contrast how we feel about things, because they are so similar that it comes across well in conversation, but not necessarily on paper.

I mean that in the best of ways, because Dana and I have been married for so long that our stories are tennis matches. We both know our lines. We love being funny together, and we each know that we’re the perfect person for the other, flaws and all.

In short, I don’t write about Dana because I write to research myself, and the part of myself that belongs to her is all. figured. out.