…i think he’s wondering how he got here from there.

on a May night almost ten years ago after a copious quantity of liquor, i doubt he looked at me and thought, “now, THERE’s a woman i can play dolls with early on a Sunday morning ten years hence. before we even get any coffee. RAWRRR. i wonder how she looks in a ratty bathrobe.”

let this be a warning. none of us ever quite know what we’re getting into.

and we protect what we’re in. it is the unwritten rule, for most of us out here. we don’t write about partners, at least until the bond is falling apart or gone and they are relegated to the dead letters file of mere stories.

a relationship is an impossible thing to put into words.

but this year, i want to put it into pictures. because in some ways, it’s slipping past us, the time we once spent fostering and celebrating this messy, lovely, human thing between us eaten alive by early mornings, latenight laundry folding, the pull in a hundred directions of duty and career-building and responsibility. and yet in there, somewhere, under all the dolls and the grimly contemplative face, i see him, still.

he suggested doing a 365 of some sort this year, the two of us, a collaborative project. i reminded him that – child-rearing aside – our creative collaborative projects always involve at least one miserable evening of me sobbing “we CAN’T WORK TOGETHER!” and taking all my toys to the other side of the playroom. it was ever thus, and ever thus shall be, right from the first time i edited his book waaaay back when god was young and visions of a Sunday morning piled under dolls sounded more like a Warhol film than a shared future.

i do not have the headspace for a 365 commitment right now. but once a week, here, i’ll post a shot chronicling THIS commitment, the flesh-and-blood foundation on which this little house stands.

the home project.

not our home in any domestic glory sense, but he and i. the part of him that is my home.

he said he might even take a picture of me, some Mondays.
***

if you have a somebody, and you want to play along, any Monday, i’d love to see who you love, in his or her house-muse humanity. #thehomeproject on Twitter.