"O! What's occuring? I won't lie to you, at the end of the day.... Tidy."

- 'Nessa

Somehow, my sephardi-semi-Kurdish-Israeli boy... person. beau? has fallen head-over-sneakers for 'Gavin & Stacey', the brilliantly funny series based on the whirlwind romance and marriage of an English lad from Essex to a Welsh chick from Barrie Island. Doesn't seem like it'd be that funny but oh, the brilliance (currently awaiting the 3rd season with anticipation). The D loves it. Actual laugh-out-loud enjoyment. If we were counting, or I was interested in points systems of any kind, he'd have gained at least 320 extra points for the loving of G&S.

Funny how only two posts ago (and I hereby own up to it : I am, in truth, a lazy bloggerette. Yes.) ONLY a short time ago, he was anonymous, just this 'brilliantly funny' man I was exchanging dating site messages with. Now he is my D, and the world is different.

There have been times I've thought that possibly this is too difficult, conducting a relationship with someone who sits on the opposite side of the river. You know, The River. That clever man John Gray called the two sides 'Mars' and 'Venus'... wherever they are, they're really far away from each other. In my mind, the D and I have canoes (mine is avocado green with lilac piping) in which we row across The River calmly, meeting in the middle. These are the lovely, smooth days. The days when he comes to pick me up after work and we drive to the beach, standing knee-deep in the sea at sunset, thinking 'This is it. This is him. Here is my husband'. Walking home with sandy feet and happily tired smiles, cooking dinner together, discussing The Future. Nothing seems overwhelming with him, he is good for me. Or as he likes to say when he pretends he doesn't know English "You is doing good to me, you. Yes. And I is doing good to you. Yes". He is even better and beyond and more than I expected, and somehow entirely different and nothing like I thought. Quirky in a different way to my own oddness, quite often silly and ridiculous, he doesn't put up with my awful stubbornness or tendency to wander off into my own head. He knows when to give me my space, and that sometimes I need to go sit in a cafe and disappear inside a book. I know that he appreciates small gestures, is the most zionist Israeli i've ever met, is a really good son, and needs to be appreciated in a way that girls don't quite get.
Sometimes we forget all about our sensible canoes and jump in thoughtlessly, splashing all over the place, getting knowhere. I focus on our differences, he focuses on the fact I can't get past them. The comforting piece of the puzzle is that we've been brought up very similarly - the same values, I think, just in completely different ways - different countries, different frameworks. This past shabbat his family took me in for the entire weekend. Yep, I did it - I met the potentially terrifying, all-judging trio of brothers! Having spent the day on a drip in the ER I was so relieved to no longer be tied to an IV, that my fear of meeting them dissipated. I think I was embraced as far as strangers can embrace a random English chick that Brother no.2 has brought home for the weekend. Shabbat afternoon was spent trawling through his baby photos, army photos, hearing stories and learning friends' names. It's funny to look at a person you're beginning to love and understand that you have known them for the span of... less than a moment in their lifetime. I am a happy jam fiend, in this moment.