The Even Side Of The Street

Something happened this weekend on the roads between Goliad and Galveston.  I realized that after 20 years of marriage and 40 years of friendship, my husband and I don't agree on the basics.  Oh we love each other with a kind of love that just feels like we've traveled through many lifetimes together.  We are true soul mates. But ask us to agree on something like artistic vision and we will defend our separate grounds with gusto. 

 

 
 Standing in the middle of the empty road somewhere outside of Tivoli, Texas, as I was framing up a perfect shot of the sun kissed fields with my iPhone, Kev put the car in drive and started moving on down the road.  He'd had enough of my artsy ways.  I've come to expect these limitations from him.  After all, he was from the even side of the street.

 

Growing up across the street from one another, his house number was 360, mine was 363.  He was from the even side of the street.  The OTHER side of the street. One of THOSE kind. It's the fundamental difference that has divided us like an asphalt river all these years.  It's as black and white as his thinking.  The even side of the street was home to the engineers, the mathematicians, and the architects.  My odd side of the street was where all the historians and free thinkers lived. We were the preservationists, the art teachers, and the activists. 

Road trips lend credibility to the even/odd debate.  Kev prefers a map.  I prefer driving on instinct.  Kev likes Willie Nelson where I like Sublime (though one could argue these two artists are joined by their mutual affinity for weed).  Kev enjoys righting the wrongs of offensive drivers whereas I am just thankful no one caused an accident.  I will stop the car every 5 feet if the sun changes the photo composition ever so slightly.  Kev will roll down the window so I can catch the sun's changes at 80 mph.  If Kev finds a souvenir he likes, he buys it.  I will consider the price and determine I can make one myself... and then regret not buying it because I know I have 654 "things I can make" ahead of it.  You get the idea. 

Luckily we don't sweat the small stuff.  And though there are days we wonder what it would be like to find a mutual fascination somewhere between Shakespeare and the poetic voice behind Eminem's twisted lyrics, we've always enjoyed a healthy debate on even and odd.  But every now and again, we are tempted to drive off into the Texas sunset, leaving the other in the middle of the road.  But we'd always come back.  At least I would.

 

LOVE  &  SOUL MATES