Love Out Loud
An ode to my Southern, hunting, Sex and the City-loving wife…
To know her is to love her, but put her in a box and she’ll bust out. Define her and you’ll shortchange yourself, though, truly, that’s what I’m attempting to do here. Too often, we live in boxes packaged by others writing the narratives. Strangers, communities, and even friends do not see the whole… too busy sizing each other up, tearing each other down, molding into simple shapes what’s too difficult or complicated to understand — I don’t know.
What I do know is that my wife is equal parts a Luke Bryan country song and Sex and the City aficionado. She is a die-hard Samantha and Carrie fan who can back a boat down a ramp with the precision of a seasoned captain. She’s a bow hunter who can skin a deer and quote the likes of Audre Lorde. Both feminine and masculine, she’s everything in between. Her fluidity of gender expression is like a master symphony led by a striking, androgynous conductor.
Politically and personally, she is many things. Yet, people see so little. They choose what they think they know while discarding the rest to their disadvantage. She is more than a Southern girl who grew up picking tobacco leaves and mowing lawns for extra cash in a nod to her future driven self. She’s not just a passionate environmentalist with a fierce love of the outdoors willing to write letters to the Army Corps of Engineers when developers run amok. She isn’t only an avid hunter who mixes and mingles among men with ease while embracing and loving herself as a woman. She’s deep and complex, multi-dimensional and emotional, hardcore and soft all at once.
Two Luke Bryan songs describe her to a tee. I can’t hear Huntin’, Fishin’ and Lovin’ Every Day or What Makes You Country without seeing her in my mind and envisioning the young girl I never knew. I can’t watch Steel Magnolias or Bull Durham without hearing her quote every line with endearing honesty. “Cute? Baby ducks are cute. I HATE cute! I want to be exotic, and mysterious!” So says Susan Sarandon’s Annie Savoy, who is… just like my wife.
I’m lucky to be along for the ride. She’s a rich dichotomy of the human experience in one dynamic package. To know her is to love her but to not know all of her — to not see all that she is — is to miss out. She’s the epitome of living life out loud and it is my privilege to love her out loud, too.
All of her.
