My better half.

They say that behind every great man is a great woman, or something like that. I could sit here and analyze that cliche for HOURS, literally, and bore everyone to death -- if the woman is so great, then why isn't she leading? Does a man really need a woman in order to be great? What does "great" really mean?

Blah, blah, blah, etc. (That literary criticism class has come in handy more than I thought it would.)

I am not great by *any* stretch of the imagination, but I do realize that without my husband's support, I could not do what I have done and what I continue to do.

I tell people that even though Russ and I are almost complete opposites, it works. With my "Extreme Girl" personality, if I didn't have him around, I would be like a helium-filled balloon, floating to the heights without any direction. He keeps me tethered, keeps me real, keeps me rational.

But he also knows when to get out of my way.

When I decided to return to graduate school, he was cool with it. He took over with the kids for the one night a week I had class and the multiple nights/afternoons/evenings that I was at the library. He ran interference with the kids while I set myself up in the kitchen to write papers upon papers. He pretended to be interested in all the literary blahblahblahfishcakes I came home with, saying "Yeah, I see what you mean," and "Hmmmm" at the appropriate times.

When I decided that, in addition to working full-time, going to grad school, teaching a twirling class one night a week and volunteering at a women's job center, I wanted to teach developmental writing part-time two nights a week, he spent his afternoons and evenings juggling kids' schedules and driving from one end of Vidor to the other.

I'm done with graduate school, and I decided at the end of the summer that I needed to be home with my family more than I needed to be in a classroom teaching people about adverbs, but he still supports me:

"Go run," he says to me. "You need that."

"Kids, leave your mom alone for five seconds so she can get ready to run."

"How was your run?"

He doesn't pretend to understand my *need* to run. He likes to tell me that the first person to run what is now called a marathon dropped dead at the end. He trips over my running shoes where I leave them in the middle of the kitchen entry way and doesn't comment. He ignores the tangle of sports bras, t-shirts, running shorts, and socks that I leave in a corner in our bedroom for easy picking.

He's not a rah-rah kind of a guy with my running. He's not going to be one of those husbands who goes to every race, video camera in one hand and lawn chair in the other.

But he knows what I need, and selflessly steps to one side so I can get there.