the most beautiful day of the year

Monday night, when we were sitting down to a late dinner together, I started to tell you a story before you cut me off. You asked if I was going to really start our anniversary dinner date with a reference to NPR (yes, I was) and so it seems fitting to start this anniversary letter to you (on the actual day) with another public radio reference. I was listening to an interview last week with one of the organizers of The Great Forest Park Balloon Race, and he was talking about what a miserable event it used to be many years ago. It was held in November, and the weather was always terrible and no one wanted to participate. So they asked the local weather service for the most beautiful day of the year, and they told him it was the 23rd of September. The race was moved to the closest weekend to that date in September and it’s been a roaring success ever since.

I smiled when I heard that part of the story because it affirmed what I’ve always thought to be true. When faced with choosing the a date to get married, we chose the most beautiful. Then I laughed when I remembered the other thing we soon found out about our wedding date. We went to the bookstore to pick up a travel guide about the most beautiful beaches in the Caribbean to visit for our honeymoon and we soon discovered that most were closed or very, very inexpensive to visit in late September. It didn’t take us too long to figure it out. In 2000, the date associated with the largest amount of hurricane destruction was September 23rd. We had simultaneously selected the most beautiful and the most turbulent day to get married. We stuck with the date and started planning our honeymoon in Canada.

I know you thought it was a little weird that I picked out an anniversary card that had rain on the front of it, and two people standing under an umbrella. It seems a little strange to equate love and marriage with a rainstorm, at least on the a day when you are supposed to be celebrating another year of marital bliss. But as soon as I saw that card I knew it was perfect. This has been a tough, tough year. Intense loss and grief, stumbling through the holidays, dealing with some pretty intense stress at work, surgery that left me unable to walk or drive, and now so much of our free time I spend surrounded by notebooks and exam materials. There have been a lot of rough storms – it’s just been a turbulent year.

It’s also been our best year, I think. When I’m so absolutely worn out and ready to throw in the towel, you walk by and encourage me to keep going, and to make whatever I’m working on a little bigger and better. You send me off to each exam by telling me you’ve got this, and then I do. You’ve (literally) carried me more this year than any other. Not the romantic carrying across thresholds, but the real carrying – up stairs, down stairs, to the car, the doctor, the toilet. You’ve carried other loads so that I can run a little longer, work a little harder, study a little more. You’ve carried that umbrella – it’s what you do. It’s what we do, and we’ve done it better this year than we’ve ever done it before.

I love you, and I’m so grateful for that beautiful, turbulent day we picked so many years ago.