"My husband went to work today."

"We had dinner last week with my in-laws."

"My son looks exactly like my husband's father did at the same age."

"We're having Thanksgiving this year with my husband's family, then the day after with my brother and my parents. What about you?"

A thousand other thoughtless, offhand comments roll from my tongue without my thinking about them, like raindrops from the roof.

I am openly heterosexual.

I would never, ever mention a single thing about sex. Most people don't, after all. What I do in my bedroom with my husband is of course unspoken. Unrevealed. Private. As it should be. It's no one's business but ours, in that uncharted wordless territory in the center of a marriage.

Sex is private. Connections, however, are public.

When I hear people say, "I just don't want anyone to rub it in my face!" I wonder how they feel about their own wedding rings. Their photos of their husbands, wives, and children that adorn desks in offices at work. Their complaints about a mother-in-law, a wife's weird sister, the myriad of family connections as ordinary and unremarkable as potato salad in July.

I am openly heterosexual.

I don't have edit what I say. I don't hide. I don't worry who will sneer when I say that word.

Husband.

I am blessed to be ordinary.

I wish I could welcome my gay neighbors into my ordinary life. Where the words "my husband" coming from a man, or "my wife" coming from a woman, could be just as ordinary. Just as unremarkable. Just as common as rain.