Stoked on Stoker

Stoker lives an hour and a half away from me. While he was in California, a very difficult time for me because I'm such a sap (in case you didn't notice), he decided to take the bull by the horns (as he put it) and move to Salt Lake. I'm thrilled about that, really I am. It's difficult to properly convey 'to be thrilled' through words, so it sounds like I'm just being sarcastic. But I'm not.

Anyhoo, he's been putting this plan into action with a little help from me since he arrived back in Utah on Sunday. I don't want to pressure him, though, you know. So when he expresses dismay or doubt, I suddenly get aloof and say things like, "Well, do what you want. You don't have to move down here." Which is not true, because now that he has said he's going to move down here he absolutely has to. And by down here, I mean both in terms of latitude and elevation. He lives north of here, in Logan.

So I'm the worst when it comes to disappointment. Let's be honest, who is good about disappointment? No one, not really, but I'm more terrible than the average person. If Stoker tells me that his flight arrives at 5:45 (to pull a random example out of the air), then it damn well better arrive at 5:45. Because I'll plan everything around that schedule and when he tells me the night before his flight that it actually leaves at 5:45, it will take me about 24 hours to recover from the disappointment. That anyone anywhere is willing to deal with me and my overwhelming complexity (compliment disguised as self-deprecation) never ceases to shock the hell out of me.

I don't know what's going on tonight with all the colorful language.

So tonight Stoker is approximately 2 hours away from me (his parents live a half hour away from Logan), telling his parents that he's going to move to Salt Lake and quite possibly marry me. I don't know how they're going to take this news. They could be happy about it, they could be disappointed about it. I'm not sure. But I haven't heard from him for approximately 2 1/2 hours. This could be a good sign or a bad sign. It could mean that he's enjoying a long, deep, comfortable conversation with his parents about the choices he's making and everything is great and wonderful. Or it could mean that he's enduring a painful, vulnerable and arduous conversation with them and they're telling him he's making awful, deplorable choices. They could be telling him that they don't like me, they were just faking it and hoping he was just going through a phase with me.

I hope they're not telling him they hoped I was just a phase.

I've never had much good luck when it's come to any of my boyfriend's parents.

I really love Stoker and I hope his parents can see that and appreciate it, because you know, it's really something when a person loves you and you, amazingly enough, love them back. How that ever happens is completely magical. Especially when you get two great people together who are not abusive or murderous or incredibly dysfunctional (Stoker and I are both very functional in a healthy way). Stoker's great and I'm not bad myself. It would be an amazing match. Our children would be beautiful geniuses. I'm not even exaggerating. Fine. So maybe just a little.

Let me tell you some of the things I love about Stoker.

1) he likes to read. But it's not just reading literature. He likes to learn about things and he'll read some random book just to learn something new. His parents gave him a subscription to National Geographic for Christmas and he loves it. Anyway, to me a genuine thirst for knowledge is incredibly sexy.

2) and by the way, these are not in order. He loves his family and those are the relationships that matter the most to him. I've never met a guy with so much sincere love for his family, and plus, they're usually very supportive of him. As far as I can tell, he has this amazing sense of self and security that I think comes from loving and kind parents. I hope that if we do get married his feelings about the importance of family transfer to the family we start together.

3) he has a really beautiful smile and great laugh. I talk to him on the phone a lot, obviously since he lives a million miles away, and so I've listened to his voice more than experiencing any other sensation of him. I like the dimensions of it and the way it curls around words and then his laughter--how it develops in his throat and then lifts out into the world. Getting to know someone's laughter is a beautiful thing.

4) He likes to talk to me about how we met, the things we said and what we each were thinking, and then how everything developed. I like remembering those things by myself, but that he wants to talk about them and reminisce with me. That's really great.

Anyway, this list could go on for forever. I'm going to call Stoker.