Last night E was having a little trouble settling into bed for the night. She was putzing around her room, stalling, asking for things that were two flights of stairs down or for her thirteenth glass of water since our evening walk. I had counted to ten a few times over when she bopped back out of bed once more and started flipping through her CD case. “I’d like to listen to some music – I have the perfect CD, it’s sooo soothing, and music really helps me fall asleep.” This coming from a girl who has not once fallen asleep to music. NPR perhaps, but never to music. She was holding the CD that was given to us by the hospital where she was born, a CD of soothing music for babies and parents, one that we rarely, if ever, listen to. She started the CD, and as I rubbed her back for a moment in an effort to help wind her down a bit, the second song started up. “Sheep May Safely Graze” by Bach. I was walking out of the room but turned back at the top of the stairs. She had popped up again in her bed, not the least bit sleepy. “Hey, I last heard this song nine years and 364 days ago,” I said. She understood the math and countered with her own quick calculation. “What did you and dad do for those first three years before us?” I know a trap when I hear one, and I resisted the urge to climb back onto that bed and tell more stories, opting instead for the cliff notes version. “Rock and roll,” I said in that geeky-parent kind of way, as if to suggest that she couldn’t even pretend to understand the depth of our pre-child coolness and fun. “Hey!” she whined. “I thought we were the best part of it”, speaking up in defense of her own coolness, and her sister’s, of their essential part in this marriage.
If there is one thing she has never enjoyed hearing about, it is fun happening without her. We’ve tried to tell her details about our wedding, or how amazing the honeymoon travels were, or really any other part of our life before her and she just ends up getting miffed that she wasn’t invited. I actually found her in the living room one morning, when she was supposed to be putting her shoes on, standing in front of the photograph of our wedding cake that hangs right at her eye level. I asked her what the problem was and she huffed that at least we could have saved her a piece of that cake in the freezer. So this was certainly not the first time she’s been bent out of shape over the pre-E life, and I smiled and told her that, in fact, they are the best part of it.
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So you see, my love(s), after ten years it becomes hard to separate those million love(s), they are so knotted and intertwined and woven into the fabric of our being. That baby, who just this morning was sitting in her crib waving one of the books you placed in there last night, and yelling “Da! Da Da!” so that I knew that she knew just who had left her such a treat. That happiness I feel each morning when I walk into that nursery is the same happiness that I felt each afternoon I found one of those long-distance letters in my mailbox telling me of your days and how you missed me, the same feeling I got when a new song started that diverted your attention from the gaggle of friends around you to that girl you wanted to dance with, the same moment that we shared this evening ten years ago, when I walked down that aisle to you and this life, and this home and this family. The better and the worse and the richer and the poorer and the sickness and the health are just one big mish-mash of life that we take on each day, and they are all made that much sweeter by this thing that we started and grew and nurtured and turned into the best kind of life we could have. Ten years ago today. And I’m still never happier than when I’m walking home to you.
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Happy Anniversary. I love you.
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Happy Anniversary. I love you.
Photos scanned and tinkered with in Photoshop to make them look even older than we are!
Happy Anniversary! How can it be 10 years since that perfect night?
Momaw and Popaw and I were just talking about them celebrating their 50th as you began your married life, and now they have just celebrated their 60th as you celebrate your 10th. Life is full of many blessings.