i love you and i don't know who you are

i was on the plane
going to DC
when suddenly i saw something shine in front of me.

a million different things went through my mind...
what could it be?
- a penny
- a diamond
- tin foil
- a flashlight
- a disco ball
- a necklace

etcetera.

i leaned forward in my seat and tried to locate the source of the glimmer.
i found it on the head of an old man sitting next to his wife of 48 years.

i stared at his bronze/white hair as the airplane lights shined on it
and i felt this OVERWHELMING feeling of being at home.

i saw my husband in the future, with bronzey-white hair
and i felt so much love for him at that moment.
i felt what it is like to love someone for that long,
that you want to tear up when you look at the way the airplane lights shine on their hair
and you reminisce about when there was more of it
and it was a sandy blonde color
and you loved the way it blew around when you were young and careless in the convertible you bought to take a road trip across the country.

you look at his hair, which has lost all pigment, and think about how you will never stop running your fingers through it,
how your daughters once tried to curl it,
how you have cut it on so many late nights after the kids have gone to bed,
how he still has that cowlick he had as a child...
how nothing has changed and, yet, how everything has changed.

i watched as he lifted his hands to his head to slick what little hair he had back and then brought them back down to rest on his wife's lap. they just sat in silence, as all the years they had between them sang out at that moment.

i don't know who my future husband is.
he's nothing but a blurry photograph in my mind.

but i love him.
and i will love him for time and all eternity.
{photo via papertissue}