Saturday, February 13, 2016

I Really Hate Valentines Day, But I Really Love You.

A Letter to the Beauty in my Life

Dear Wife,

You know more than anyone that I really hate Valentines Day.  It is a burning hallmark bag of dog crap left on the doorstep of actual love as the billionaires of the world run into the bushes giggling.  The problem for me is not that it exists, it is that us consumers actually open the door and step on it with glee before picking it up and throwing it at our spouse like it's a fucking compliment.  

All of that aside, that is not what this is about.  I don't love you for just one day, and I don't buy you fancy things to prove that I care, and I don't do nice things for you just so that you'll do nice things for me.  I know that you know that, so I don't have anything to prove by not recognizing the spectacular love the two of us have created.  You deserve that.

I try not to think about this often, but there was in fact a time in my life when you did not exist.  I was in one place and you were in the other, unbeknownst to either of us.  There was not a yearning to go out and find you, just as there was not a yearning for you to come find me.  We had no idea the other person was even a particle in this entire Universe.  And yet, we both were.  We both did exist.  We both made choices and sacrifices and endured childish relationships that knew nothing of a real center that led us closer and closer to a destination we didn't even know we were looking for.  And then, in one single moment, there we were...at the center, meeting for the first time.  Life is remarkable in that way, and I really don't care what the truth of it is because all that matters is that in that center, we became one.  

So much has happened in what feels like no time at all and as you know, my memory is shit, so I will not even attempt to embark on a cliche journey though the history of us.  The beautiful thing about what we have, though, is that we have no need to do that.  We have no need to sit around in a snow globe of nostalgia just to feel a connection we hope is still there, only to have it fade into inevitability.  Obviously we are not the poster children of a perfect love story...rocks and hills and rivers made of tears are laid out all around us, and always will be.  To me, that is true beauty.  We don't need perfect, we just need a single moment of eye contact, even if it is the only moment throughout an entire day, to understand how much we still love each other.  Even more so, how much MORE we love each other since the last moment.  In those shining spotlights of significance, the rocks and hills and rivers are behind us.  We went around, climbed and waded through them, and we are still here.  

Gandhi said, "Whatever you do in life will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it."

I agree with him for the most part, but I'd like to make a slight alteration: 

"Whatever you do in life will be insignificant, until you do something that makes it significant."

In two separate yet equally as significant battles, you have birthed our incredible children and become a warrior worthy of every honor.  In doing so you have blessed us with a gorgeous, bright and utterly insane daughter and a devilishly handsome little boy with the tenderness of nothing I have ever known and the spark of mischief in his eye that is all too familiar.  I will thank you for sharing that reward with me for the rest of my life.

You have gone back to school with two kids on your hip, a job and a husband who literally only knows how to make breakfast.  Your strength and dedication to not only succeed, but over achieve in your studies as well as at home all at the expense of yourself has been the most remarkable thing I have witnessed from our lives together.  You have proven not only to just me, but to our children, our extended circle, those that observe from the outside, and most importantly yourself, that it is possible to change a future that was seemingly already set.  

You have shed blood, sweat and tears to ensure our family is strong and thriving, even if it meant that sleep was a far away fantasy you may never see again.  You have struggled with internal fare I will never understand and have come out the other side in triumph.  You have shown us that love is not a single idea, but a bond that is earned and worth fighting for.

You are an inspiration to mothers everywhere, and I have never been more proud in all my life.  

YOU are truly significant. 

So in the end, it does not matter that Valentines Day itself is meaningless, because it is yet another day that I have the privilege of sharing with you. What a wonderful life we have created together, bound tightly by the one that carries the candle in the dark:  My wife, my Beauty.  

I deeply and irrevocably love you and I believe in your love.

Yours for a while longer,

Husband



"Until the heavens stop to rain."