I celebrated my 34th wedding anniversary this week. We went out to supper the night before with friends, exchanged gifts (he got cufflinks, I got a lovely peridot ring), and our plans to watch a movie and open up that special bottle of whisky morphed into watching ice dancing and drinking herbal tea, but hey, we're old.
It got me thinking though. One of the remarks I hear about my heroes is that they're "nice". Sometimes I hear they're too nice. One faithful reader said she loved Jack Burrell from The Bride and the Buccaneer because he's my "sweetest hero yet", a description that would annoy Jack greatly and cause him to scowl ferociously. He sees himself as a fierce privateer, the scourge of Caribbean shipping.
He is that fierce privateer. But he's also the hero. And I can't write a hero without looking at him critically and asking myself, "Could I marry him?" My perceptions of hero material have been colored by over three decades with a very nice man. I read novels sometimes where the hero may be all rugged and drop-dead handsome, but it strikes me that he's not an especially good or moral person and I wouldn't want to be married to him, much less have him father and raise my children.
So here's to the nice guys of the world, the ones who watch ice dancing with you, and warm your feet at night, and tell you that marrying you is the best thing that ever happened to them. They're the heroes in my books--and in my life.
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