thirty-nine memories (39)

Memory #39: She's Got a Way

39 things I like about my wife:

1. Her eyes
2. Her relentlessness
3. Her tenderness
4. Her roasted chicken and rice cooked in chicken broth (with gravy)
5. Her mind
6. Her heart and soul (that's two things, I know)
7. The look she gives me when I say something off the wall or mildly offensive
8. The scrapbooks she keeps (she has one dedicated entirely to Morgan!)
9. The noise her yawns make
10. Her lips
11. Her hips
12. Her quirks
13. Her wiffleball skills
14. The way she looks when she's running
15. Her walk
16. That her favorite movie is "The Cutting Edge" because when she was a little girl she dreamed of being a famous ice skater
17. Her singing
18. Her compassion for the weak, for the downtrodden, for the lonely
19. The way she scolds me
20. Her cry
21. The many voices she conjures when reading to Sydney
22. That she is a morning person
23. Her dancing
24. Her sarcasm
25. The way she drives like a Jamaican, though we now live in America
26. Her "can do" attitude
27. Her artistic sense
28. Her artistic ability
29. Her appreciation for good food
30. Her passion for teaching 2nd graders
31. The way she shoots a basketball
32. Her love of the outdoors and walks in the woods
33. The satisfied look she gets on her face when she closes her eyes to the sun on a lonely stretch of beach in Ludington
34. Her ears
35. Her putting up with me
36. The way she smells
37. Did I mention that she's relentless? That you cannot stop her once she puts her mind to something (I love that!!)
38. Her laughter
39. That I have no idea how she will respond to all that I have written in this blog entry, but that I know it will be priceless

None of those are memories, precisely, so here's one.

When I was in a kind of shooting slump my senior year in college, getting frustrated over not playing very well for a stretch during the first semester, she asked me something that I've never forgotten.

"Are you looking at the rim?"

This might seem silly and I did laugh when she asked it. But I also thought about it. And I still do. Sometimes, because I have taken umpteen gazillion shots in my life, I just sort of look in the general direction of the basket and rely on muscle memory to help my (and I don't mean to brag here) picture perfect jumpshot to find its mark.

But you really ought to look at the rim. Zone in on the particular. If you aim at nothing, you'll probably hit it.

So I try to remember, when I'm shooting hoops, to look at the rim. Make your own metaphorical connection here, gentle reader. Seriously.

So you can see why I love this person. I didn't write this song, but it might as well have been written from me to her. After all these years, she's still got a way.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xw-_zLkGn5s