Grateful for Mike
Life is too short to be serious all the time. As you can tell from this picture, my husband, daughter and I like to have fun and make other people laugh. This is how we showed up for Thanksgiving dinner at my parents’ house. After we hugged everybody and they finished laughing and taking pictures of us, we took our hats/heads off and enjoyed our time together. I told my husband Mike that every family should be as lucky as we are to have someone as spontaneous and fun as him. Although other people might think these hats/heads are strange and inappropriate for Thanksgiving, you have to know my husband to truly appreciate the joy he brings people by being his silly, spontaneous self. He always gets a laugh and people love him even more.
Mike never ceases to amaze me. A few years ago, he decided that he would take us to see a bull riding competition and then he brought home cowboy hats for himself, me and my daughter. The funny thing about this situation is that we live in New England and have only seen bull riding a couple times on television. If anyone else had suggested this to me, I would have said, “No thank you” but I can’t say no to Mike. When we entered the venue with our cowboy hats on and sat down, the rodeo sport started. The first rider got up on a bull and they were released into the arena. As the rider attempted to stay mounted, the bull bucked him off right away. The rider went flying and the bull chased him. I turned to my husband and said, “I can’t believe we’re here right now.” When I looked at Mike’s face, he was so happy to be doing something completely different than what we normally do. This event had invigorated him and even though I wasn’t 100% into the bull riding, I was 100% into Mike. Watching his reactions to the show and thinking of the 3 of us in cowboy hats at this event kept me laughing and smiling all night.
A few weeks ago, Mike had a different surprise for me. He greeted me wearing a unicorn head. Even though I couldn’t see his eyes through the costume, I knew he was making faces at me and smiling from ear to ear. It was so funny. All he said was, “Rainbows and unicorns” which made me laugh so hard because that is the line he uses on me when I try to turn every negative situation into a positive one. I am so grateful to have Mike in my life. He is my best friend, husband, father of my child and caregiver. Although I am a source of amusement to my family and friends by putting a positive and/or feisty spin on my physical challenges with Multiple Sclerosis, Mike makes everyone laugh just by being his healthy handsome self and I love his fun-loving spontaneous attitude.