Giddy Up Cowboy Bill!

When Billy was first courting me, a significant role in our tame premarital fore play was email. Our fall into each other's hearts was a fast one, and every moment spent apart was utter Chinese thumb-biting torture. We'd separate for a couple of hours in hopes of reading, writing, or accomplishing some successful maneuver towards a gainful education, and inevitably spend most our time sending emails back and forth. His words were clever and sweet, and I fell in love with his ability to quicken my spine via the internet connection.

The historian in me has managed to save most, if not all, of these emails. Here is an excerpt of one:

"I wanted to tell you a couple of things. First, when I wrote to you in the "subject" part I called you "Little Lady" and I remembered how my grandpa used to call me Cowboy Bill. So if you ever wonder why I call you names that sound a bit old fashion, it's because I have a cowboy heritage that I'm just trying to live up to. I would feel like such a big boy when my grandpa would use my special title. When I was about four or five my mom took me to the pony rides at the mall or someplace. I had it in me to ride the biggest pony (because after all, I was a cowboy; grandpas don't lie!) but the man in charge seemed to feel otherwise. My heart sank when I got lifted onto the weakest, crappiest,
one-foot-in-the-grave, good-for-nothing-except-to-make-glue-out-of-the-hoofs, excuse for a pony I ever saw. I cursed that man for not recognizing what I considered to be common knowledge the world over (or at least throughout all of Idaho and Montana and all the other places where boys were bred to be tough)
that I was a cowboy and that real cowboys ride real ponies! So I did what any other cowboy would do: I bawled my eyes out until my mom came, took the reins out of my hands and lifted me off the saddle. All that because I called you little lady in the "subject" box at the beginning of this letter. You know, it never ceases to amaze me how much I have to tell you all the time."

It was a little over a year and a half ago when Billy and I discovered we were having a boy. Following family tradition, we knew his name would be William, and that he too would be a Cowboy Bill. Just as I fell in love with his father, fast and heavy and irrevocably eternal, I have fallen for this toothy toddler who eagerly

points to the horses in the field and says "Cat!" Giddy up, Liam! You are our Cowboy Bill always and forever.