To love her, I have realized, is not to memorize a static image. It is to become a devoted curator of her mosaic. It is to step back and admire the overall composition—the strong, intelligent, kind, fierce, vulnerable woman she is. And then it is to step close, to run my fingers over the individual pieces, to feel the smooth and the rough, the warm and the cold. It is to notice a new piece that has just been added—perhaps a tiny shard of silver from the first day she held her new grandson, or a fleck of forest green from the hiking trail where she finally conquered her fear of heights.
“Nothing,” I say. “Just looking at the mosaic.” mosaic on my wife
She doesn’t ask what I mean. She doesn’t need to. In that moment, she understands. Because a mosaic is not just something you see; it is something you feel. And in the quiet, colorful, complicated, and breathtakingly beautiful mosaic of my wife, I have found the only true home I will ever know. Every tile, every crack, every shade of light and shadow—it all belongs. It all tells the story. And it is, piece by piece, the most magnificent work of art I will ever have the privilege of beholding. To love her, I have realized, is not