12 Years
Tomorrow is Howard and my aniversary. We’ll be celebrating as we usually do, by continuing to be happily married and occasionally pausing to hug and say “I’m glad I married you.” We’ve never made a big deal out of aniversaries. I mean we completely missed our first one because we were too busy painting the exterior of our first house. I think we attempted to make a big deal out of aniversary 5 by spending the night at a hotel. At the time Howard was working customer support and was on call via pager 24-7, not a good mix with “romantic getaway.” The big effort at year 10 was that Howard stayed home from Novell and bought me a mcgriddle. Howard even wrote about it in an Open Letter. The funniest part of that for me was all the people who came to me quietly trying to figure out whether I was upset that my only aniversary present to celebrate 10 years of marriage was a mcgriddle. I wasn’t, I was delighted. I love mcgriddles.
Aniversaries are only important as reminders to us to stop and appreciate what we have. I would by far rather have a joyful life with Howard where he shows his love in little ways every day than have a huge effort at proof-of-love only on “special days” 3 or 4 times a year. In this I am lucky because I share my life with a wonderful person who believes the same as I do. We share life, love, religion, children, Schlock, and a host of other things. It may seem cliche to say “My husband is my best friend”, but cliche or not, it is true. When he isn’t around I save up things to talk to him about. Anytime the children delight or frustrate me, or I see an interesting news article, or have an interesting idea, Howard is the one I want to tell it to. When Howard is away I feel unbalanced. He keeps me centered, helps me clean when I don’t want to, takes over when I’ve lost my cool with the kids. After 12 years we can still keep each other up until 2 am because we’re having too much fun talking to go to sleep. I love him deeply, even the things he doesn’t like about himself. I love him bearded & beardless. I’m a better, smarter, stronger person because I have been married to him. I could ramble on for pages and still not be able to cover all the ways that I am grateful to have him in my life. I love the life we have built together and I’m looking forward to continuing to share it.