Two Years, a beautiful wedding, a happy home, and a baby butterman on the way.
It has been the two of us, moving through life, stopping only occassionally to smell the new landscaping we almost died (or killed each other, depending on perspective) trying to put in. We have built a home together that, at the end of every day, is where we are trying to get to. Sometimes desperately. I don't try to get to a place, so much as get to him. He is home to me now, no matter where he is.
He has grown into the husband that I knew he would be all along, and I think I have become the wife I didn't know was inside of me. Somewhere along the way, the 25 year old who never called me back to plan a Friday night out because he got caught up with his friends, has turned into a 35 year old who drives his pregnant wife all the way to work every morning rather than have me take the train that is a block from my house, effectively tripling his commute.
We have stood next to each other, as we promised to do, in good times and in bad. There have been times that standing has not been enough, and we have had to carry each other. I held this man's hand when he buried his grandfather and he carried the casket of mine. I passed him a tissue when his baby sister got married, and together we welcomed my niece into the world on a sunny bright day one March.
I have watched him run into an emergency room, looking frantically for me as I sat in a corner hurting, and felt instant relief when his clear blue eyes found mine. I have hopped off an emergency room table, despite being the patient, to help him as he started to faint. He has brought me juice and water during the throws of the worst kind of flu, and I have unwrapped the bandages of his knee surgery wound and felt the pain it must have caused him as if it were my own.
We have gone through loss, and life together.
I have had the pleasure of watching his expression when he first saw his child on an ultrasound, and felt his hands waiting patiently on my belly for a sign of the life inside it.
In a few months, it will all change, and our family of two will become a family of three. It is part of our plans and hopes and dreams, and I wait anxiously for the arrival. But part of me knows that these first two years...these years it has been just the two of us, together figuring out how to move through the world, will have been some of the happiest of our lives. These two years are the foundation we will build all the rest on. And years from now, when we are rocking on our porch together, alone again after children have grown, I will measure the success of my life by whether or not I have earned the love he has given me.
Two years ago today, June 4, 2005, we stood facing each other, before God and all our family and friends, while the priest asked us to live life from the center. And we promised to do it. To be each other's center, and to live life from that place we would create. And while life has swirled around us, sometimes at breakneck speed, the center has always been calm. The center has always been home. It has always been us.
Thank you for all the lemon waters, all the laundry, all the driving, all the pizzas, every home improvement project. Thank you for working to make the world safer every day, for being my moral compass. For tucking me in at night, and holding me every morning for "five more minutes". Thank you for protecting me always. Thank you for laughing at all my jokes, and being my biggest fan. Thanks for telling me I'm beautiful just when my feet are most swollen and the shirt isn't buttoning.
You have been everything that I ever wanted and needed. You have been my center.
Happy 2nd Anniversary
love, me
