Chad's Favorite Things: Stephanie

I realized it had been quite some time since I had written a "Favorite" article of any kind. For my topic today, I decided to write something easy, so I picked my wife. It might seem like a "cop-out" of sorts ("yeah, yeah, it's probably easy to just pick and write about your wife"), and I suppose that's true. But I had my reasons and they are in fact related to The Parks, and doggone it, she's earned it! There are a couple of different reasons I chose her to write about today.

How perfectly apropos!

First, my wife is a storyteller. We've been together for over 15 years now, and for as long as I've known her, she's been a writer. She'll write anything she sets her mind to: short-stories, poetry, anything creative. She's constantly writing and sometimes I think it might just be her one true love, excluding me and our sons of course, and sometimes I have to wonder about me. Our 15 years together have been 15 years of me reading what she's written and shaking my head in wonder at her ability to string coherent and beautiful sentences together. I've always enjoyed writing myself, but some "I know more than you and my way is right" professors in college killed my desire to write for quite a while. It's only been just recently that I've begun writing again, and many of you have been here reading me the entire time. I have my wife to thank for that, and it's because of her that I'm a storyteller now, too.

Granted, I do it in many different ways but at it's heart that's what I'm trying to do here (albeit it with words and pictures) - I'm (we're) just trying to tell a story. I don't profess to have her skills or creativity, but she nonetheless has taught me the lesson firsthand that in art (and writing) I write not for others and for their approval, but first and foremost for myself. And if I'm happy with what I've written, the chances are good someone else is bound to appreciate them too. It hasn't been easy to continue writing every day here, and there have been days when circumstances just made me want to pack it all in, because it seemed like people just didn't care. But she was there to continue to push me forward and tell me to keep at it, and she'll be there the next time I begin to feel like that, too.

Second, she supports me in my doing what it is that I enjoy.

And I do my best to support her, even if it DOES mean watching 'Captain EO' again!

Stephanie and I don't get to spend the amount of time together in The Parks that I think that we would both like to. And to be frank, the rest of the family isn't quite as nutty about The Parks as I am. We do spend quite a bit of time there together as a family, but there's just no way they would want to go as frequently as I do. At least, not at this point, but one can always hope! And with trying to maintain a blog, it sort of dictates (and I'm okay with that) that I go a little bit more than your "average Joe", I think.

It would be easy for her to say, "No, you can't go" to me, and I would acquiesce and stay home. But she's never done that. She knows the kind of joy that it brings me, and even though it costs me time at home with the entire family sometimes, she's willing to throw me out of the house herself sometimes because she knows it's what I need to do. And let's be honest, our marriage has always been like that. I've always been willing to let her do what she needs to do for her own sanity, too, especially with three boys thrown into the loop. The truth is, though, a lot of marriages don't operate like that unfortunately. I know how blessed (note that I didn't say "lucky") I am to have a wife who is in full support of me doing what I love doing, even if it is just going to The Park to hang out with friends on Sunday evening and writing about it the entire week after.

So yeah, there you go. The truth is I don't get to spend as much time in The Parks with Stephanie that I would like to. But you know, there's a positive to that, too. It makes the times that I do get to do so that much sweeter. And that's why Stephanie may just be Chad's "favoritEST!" thing in The Parks.

One of the few people on the planet I will happily take my picture with