And there are a few who love one another pretty well.

Once in a while you stumble across a couple so batshit crazy about one another that it seems like they have some type of disease.

The Ogwife and I are like that. We met while I was on a job in the northern wastes, and began a whirlwind long distance relationship that went on for some time before she agreed to be my wife.

Our love for one another burned brightly, and the amount of time we spent together was small. I would leave work on a friday afternoon, and drive like a banshee to get to north central Ontario, to visit with my lady. Then we’d disapear into a hotel room, or into lake Huron, or whatever, we’d just drop off the surface of the planet for a while.

It wasn’t all gymnasitcs either, though there were times when I feared I’d be too bruised and bleeding to drive home safely I never stranded myself. Usually sunday afternoon I gave her one last long roadside kiss goodnight and screamed 700 miles home, arriving just in time to change clothes and go to work. An awful lot of the time it was just being together, sitting over boxes of chinese takeout from The Ritz Cafe. We didn’t so much have a romance, as when we were together, we acheved critical mass.One time we walked up the falls area and saw the chinook spawning, and I saw the big fish cooling their heels, so to speak, in the fish ladder. I looked in their eyes. They understood me, I understood them.

We spent several years together before we were married, and another after we married before we became parents. During that time, we did what we could to ignite our own nuclear fire, and looking back on the incandescent glow of the relationship still warms me, after all these years.

We’re an old married couple now. We have issues sleeping away from one another, and the moment we go to sleep together is the very best part of the day, the second being the moment we wake up together.

Sure, the flame is still there, the inferno that once consumed us and lit our lives like a Texas A&M bonfire is now banked, glowing coals that keep us warm. Once in a while we throw a log on the fire and let it burn brightly as before, at least until my knees give out. We remember what it was like to be in such love that other people noticed just when we were together.

Happy valentine’s day, Love of my Life.