Light of Her Life

Jen’s six o'clock alarm broke through the early Monday morning dark. Starting most Mondays were hard after being able to start the previous two days rolling out of bed with the sun. Not to mention, the initial waking experience during the weekday wouldn’t be so difficult if daylight savings was permanently ended. The later sunrises were the only thing she didn’t like about the spring and summer seasons. But with a cat demanding breakfast and an obligation to work in ninety minutes, she hauled herself out of her covers.

Over ninety minutes later, daylight revealed cream and dust blended clouds stretching in all directions. Jen turned on the FM radio during her commute in time to hear the weather forecast anticipate low chances of them breaking anytime soon. Great...

Twenty minutes later, she parked in front of a stone gray three-story complex that was equally bland on the inside. Working for a state government office among spans of computers, phones, printers, and filing cabinets, the color scheme of the environment didn’t stray far beyond a palette of black, silver, and gunmetal. Exterior windows that most of the employees could access overlooked a green hillside that broke up some of the monochrome, but unfortunately the scenery would be changing in a few months. Superiors over the office wanted them closer to the capitol complex: a series of concrete and marble edifices accented by a gold-domed rotunda that paled in certain light or angles. Most of them would be trading offices for cube farms after they transitioned the other way barely a year before. Parking down there was liable to be a pain too.

Jen sat down at her desk to start her day with more work than she knew what to do with. A certain project needed her attention for at least half the day, but a glance over the emails revealed a couple fires to put out first. She also had a meeting she probably didn’t need to be part of. Her officemate was also going to be late this morning. Some of their tasks were hard to leave sitting so she’d cover what she could of that too.

Since Jen had the office to herself for a while, she turned on some music to ease the drudges of her work. She put on a Taylor Swift playlist. The chorus to “Red” rang out after a moment:

Losing him was blue, like I'd never known

Missing him was dark gray, all alone

Forgetting him was like trying to know

Somebody you never met

But loving him was red...

Her husband, a long-haul truck driver, was a few days into a run out west after being home for some time off. Those first few days were always toughest. After days of a seemingly constant presence, she woke up without him. She came home to an empty house she managed as much as she could on her own. She had dinner and evenings by herself. They shared I love you’s through a phone screen or call.

While navigating between her work applications, Jen uncovered her computer desktop revealing a photo she took with her husband a couple Julys back. She was kissing him on the cheek while they stood on a scenic overlook boardwalk along the area’s largest waterfall. The trees and mountains further behind them lush with green. The sky above them a soft sapphire glinted with few thin, white clouds.

Jen lingered on the picture for a moment, letting the memory warm her. They took a daycation to visit some extended family he had in the area. They stopped by that tourist spot before showing them a more hidden spring where they swam in the most crisp water they ever experienced. The day was made even more magical when they set a colony of monarch butterflies into flight.

Her desktop--set on a photo slideshow shuffle--transitioned to another image. This time, the two of them smiled in front of a giant orange guitar outside the Grand Ole Opry. A summer moment they captured in Nashville while on their way home from her brother-in-law’s wedding in Mississippi. They visited the celebrity wax museum during that stop, where she was cheerfully startled by the Ozzy Osbourne wax figure screaming, “I’m the prince of darkness!” as she sat next to it for a photo.

Jen clicked to the display herself and landed on a photo husband took of her outside a California museum she always wanted to go to. They made a special two-week cross-country road trip in his truck to visit it. The exterior of the building was modest, but the grounds were interspersed with colorful lifesize figures of the artwork she loved. And the displays inside were vibrant wall-to-wall. More still, the way the staff treated them gave them both an expectation-exceeding experience!

Jen started to think of something. Something that was normally sappy and cliche before she was married, but perhaps it was something she was understanding better now. Her husband was the light of her life. Life before him was fine, but he was showing her more. More color, more possibilities, more experiences, more chances to grow as a person and in their relationship. And he waited so patiently for her to take them, commit to them, and live more life in color. With him.

He’s been wanting her to travel with him since they married. She was hesitant at the outset though, feeling too attached to her job. It didn’t feel so draining back then. She wasn’t sure about that kind of life for a while either until that two-week road trip whetted her appetite. She glimpsed the Great Plains, the Rockies, the Salt Lake and flats. He found a spot off the highway one night to show her the best night sky, complete with the Milky Way and shooting stars. They woke up in a different city almost every night. He introduced to authentic Mexican food truck food and she she discovered potato-scented hand lotion! More still, she felt all her cares were hundreds of miles away. She had to take a flight home though and fought tears as she boarded the early plane. Two weeks wasn’t enough.

“If we want to live like no other,” Her husband often persuaded, “we have to live like no other.” Jen was about ready for that kind of life.