Dear Tami,

Thirteen years have passed.  That makes my mind stutter, trying to take in all of the details and compose a “this is how I feel about that” statement, with regards to the breadcrumb trail we have followed together.  Just in the past year we have looked up from that walk through the woods and realized we aren’t little Hansel and Gretel any longer.  We are pretty much all growed up, and it shows in our love, our outlook on life, our bodies (for better and worse), and the certainty which has come with THIRTEEN YEARS.  We have ALWAYS had the ooey-gooey, lovey-dovey gravity between us, and we have always said to one another since our wedding vows, “Ever & Always”, “Always & Ever” (we even had the cups engraved. LOL.).  But sometime in the past year, post-house construction, the cement finally set firmly.  There is a deepened knowledge of who we are together now and there is a certainty that transcends the pretty phrases, the eye gazes, the intimate moments…   I suppose because who we are has played out over time and even survived trial by fire.  We have grown, conquered, failed, overcome, been reduced to ashes and risen from those ashes in the same Ever & Always iteration so as to make us CERTAIN of one another.

 

I suppose it could sound like I am saying “reliable”, or “played out”, or “predictable”, but that is not it at all.  We are “certain” now and it feels really good.  Surprising too, because it feels like we are entering a secret stage that I wasn’t paying attention to.  I heard the messages about what my twenties were supposed to look like, and I figured out what our thirties were supposed to be.  I got the outline for a young married couple, for young parents, read the memo for how to be creative thirty-somethings, but I skipped the chapter or dropped the course for what to expect from the beginning of middle age.  It always got explained like a twilight… the beginnings of Ragnarok.  Any whisperings of it from others make it sound ominous:  the beginning of the end.  But the past year or two have led us to something that is much more of a sunrise.  This feels like a really wonderful dawn… like an early morning when the bags are packed and downstairs by the front door.  The coffee maker is set to brew at 5:30 so we can make our morning flight to somewhere new.  Like we can take on bigger and better things because we are vetted and know how to accomplish things together, even when things get tough.

 

Can you see who is holding the train?

I feel like society has lied to me and undersold, or just isn’t bothering to appreciate, what we are heading into.  I LOVE this part of our life because we are one THING now, we aren’t just trying that mantle on anymore;  we are becoming seamless now.  We are that grafted cherry tree out in the yard. The grafts took.  The fruit actually grew (it was a little touch and go there for a while, but we popped two of them out.  Phew).  Now we get to stretch out the branches and grow some more.  Sure we have to keep the red aphids from eating us to ribbons, and minimize any frost damage on that sensitive Black Tartar grafted limb, but this is the summertime of our life.  Let’s do this thing with certitude.

I love you more than bees have knees, and trees have leaves.  I mean that more so than ever, because there is more to weight that phrase with- the first few volumes in a library of our lifetime behind us, and more certainty to cement it with.  Thanks for a pretty spectacular thirteen, my love.  I will follow you down any path with or without breadcrumbs.

 

Lovingly,

Bradley


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