Prioritize Us

 Invest in your relationship to deepen its worth

Here we are, mid-way through our date year experiment and this one ended up being away from home in the Philippines, so it made sense to incorporate date night into our holiday. 

James and I had only arrived in the Philippines a couple of hours before; we had left Sydney in the early morning in the middle of winter knowing full well that we were arriving to high humidity. I was dressed in a spencer, long sleeved polo neck, scarf and jacket. While waiting for our luggage I took off my scarf and jacket but couldn’t remove my long sleeved polo neck because I only had a spencer underneath – James looked at me, sweat pouring from my beet red face and said as if surprised, “Aren’t you hot?” What ensued I cannot be sure except for the fact that I answered him in a flurry of colourful words from which he calmly turned to collect our luggage. Aren’t I hot? Of course I’m hot, I’m boiling, what did he think I would be feeling? There was no air conditioning in the arrivals hall, only a large fan whirring the already fetid air around the large space of crushed people.

In the midst of all this, we tried to purchase a sim card for my iphone because we were meeting up with my sister, Julie, and brother-in-law, Kurtis, the next day on a yacht somewhere in the middle of the ocean – we needed airtime and our Filipino vocabulary did not fit the bill. But we got sorted, got to our hotel, dumped our bags in the room and left in search of refreshments.

This is when we stumbled upon Guitar Guy. James and I sipped or perhaps gulped greedily on our drinks, just the two of us in the hotel lounge when we noticed the live music space being set up right behind us. Great. Just what we needed. Well in fact it was just what we needed. Once our thirst had been quenched and we’d cooled down to at least body temperature again, we felt normalized and began to be civil towards each other once more. It was at this juncture that we noticed the melodic music drifting out on puffs of treble f chords harmonically massaging our ears into restful relaxation.

 Just James and I and Guitar Guy enjoying the seclusion of our private concert. This particular night was always going to be date night, we had planned well in advance that we would go out for a fancy dinner somewhere in Manila, but this right here proved to be everything that we wanted our date night to be.

Everything that we wished for was right here. Romantic music, privacy, delicious snacks to be shared, rounded off with sinfully rich pecan pie. I was floating lightly on cumulus cloud 9, eyes closed absorbing the heavenly sensation of drifting off to sleep. In reality my head was laid back on James' shoulder when I felt him stretching away from me; I opened my eyes, startled to notice that he was reaching behind him for Guitar Guy. Mildly alarmed I sat bolt upright but couldn’t pick out any of their conversation. James returned the crook of his arm around my waist as I settled back into his soft embrace. All around us the gentle sounds of ‘our’ song washed over us. No words, just pure simplistic chords. Caught by surprise, my eyes darted open once more, only to find James smiling kindly down at me with only love in his eyes.

How lucky am I? Not only do I have a husband who cares whether I’m freaking boiling or not, but also cares enough to enrich our date with a personal request for our song. My awkward sense of self-consciousness fell away to reveal a deep appreciation for the breadth of humanity this husband of mine actually possesses. Date year truly was turning into a worthwhile endeavour for our relationship and more importantly in changing my perspective of this man I had married 30-odd years ago.

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