The first season we lived together was the summer after Mister Husband’s father passed away. He and B. had been married for 60 years, and she was suddenly alone at 80. We spent most of the summer with her, and then drove the 360 mile round trip to see her two or three times a month after the semester started.

I was an only child who had never lived with anyone before. The then-Mister Boyfriend, J., had been living alone for about seven years. Neither of us was accustomed to taking another person into account consistently. I was not accustomed to caring about or for a family other than my own. J was grieving for his dad. We were both beginning to write our theses and starting our PhD program search. I was starting to try to sort out the law school question. It was not smooth emotional sailing, to say the least. When we made the three-hour drive over to B.’s, I was often in a snit or tears.

There was a Flying J truck stop about halfway over, and we often stopped there. Sometimes we ate, sometimes not. Sometimes the bathroom, sometimes Starbucks Double Shots and water. But we always, always wandered through the array of crap in the store. This is something I learned to do in this relationship. Before, I just breezed in and out with whatever I needed, never noticing the rebel flag tea cups and ceramic skull ashtrays and Dolly Parton cover albums. All of those things are magical to J. And on one night, there were bobble-headed skull dolls: Skull Biker, Skull Construction Worker, Skull Nurse, and, incongruously, Skull Barrister.

I was upset enough and cheap enough that I ignored it and went out to the car to slam the door and sulk in the fetid night. Eventually, along came J, wagging a bag of Double Shots, jerky, and an odd-shaped thing that turned out to be a Skull Barrister. He presented it to me with a flourish and a hopeful grin.

I had long been the recipient of inappropriate gifts from boyfriends. Gifts that showed they didn't really understand me at all, but had gone to the store and grabbed something that looked girlish. The one that stood out the most was a rather expensive porcelain rose. Pink, handcrafted, and actually rather tasteful. And so not me. My grandmother, whose name incorporates ‘rose,’ collects objets like that, but I never have.

But a bobble-headed skull barrister: this was the right thing. I’m not sure what that says about me, but I know what it said about him: he had to be the right person, because who else would have known that something like this was the correct thing to give me at that moment? He knew my sense of humor, he knew about the law school dilemma. And he knew a lot of other stuff as well; he had taken the time to see me in a way that nobody else outside my family had. Right then, he began to become family. And the skull barrister has lived in my study ever since.