Dear Jeff,

At about 5:30ish this evening, we will have been married for exactly ten years. (We will BE married? We Will Have Been seems incorrect. However, it’s much better than we WOULD have been, yes?) Anyway, ten years is nuts. I’ve never done ANYTHING consistently for ten years, and now this! We’ve reached a decade!

When I think back to our first ten years of marriage, I immediately land on our London trip. Although I used to be able to recite the day-by-day timeline, my memories have now sort of jumbled into a big stew (mulligatawny?) with tiny hints of watching Aimee Mann singing Fourth of July on the Fourth of July and lots of tomato mozzarella sandwiches and Mr. Kipling Cherry Bakewells and the little boy who thought the manhole covers in Bristol were made of chocolate. And then I skip forward a bit and think about OUR kids.

When you marry someone who doesn’t have kids and you don’t have kids, it’s really sort of a gamble when you start throwing around the idea of babies. After giving birth to Meredith, I quickly learned that I am not a good baby person. Although I think they’re mostly cute, I don’t understand babies. I can’t make them stop crying. My patience runs thin when they fill their diapers too much (or worse, not enough). You, however, were a gem. You would come home from work, drop your briefcase onto the floor, swoop up Meredith, and suddenly All Was Well. And then Harper came into the picture (how did THAT happen?!) and I became even MORE frazzled (can you imagine?!), and you became even MORE of a great dad. (Seriously. You’re clever and witty. You have great taste in music. You’re a good cook. All of those things should be good enough. BUT, then you had to throw in Baby Pro and so much more. Smitten, I am.)

During those days when I was home alone with an infant and a two year old, I often found myself wishing (against the pastel-colored advice of others) that I could somehow speed up time to the point where the girls could actually TALK to me instead of pointing and crying and throwing themselves onto the floor where they stomped and spat and frothed. The universe listened.

Here we are. Ten years in. I have you, who I consider to be my best friend and perfect match. I have the girls, who are bright and funny and curious and wonderful. (I have the dogs and the cats, who really deserve much more than a parenthetical aside, but right now they’re being jerks so I’ve demoted them from Paragraph to Sentence.) Essentially, because of what happened ten years ago today, I have the perfect life.

This morning I realized that we’ll be celebrating our twentieth anniversary when Meredith is a freshman in college. And then I started thinking about how she might actually go AWAY to college, and then two years later, Harper will probably do the same, and okay. That pastel-c0lored advice doesn’t seem quite so AM radio anymore. My tenth anniversary gift to you? I’m going to try to figure out how to Slow Time Down. (I’ll begin by limiting my caffeine intake.)

Thank you for the past 3,652 days.

We’ve survived the life expectancy of a platypus.

Here’s hoping we see many more generations of playtpuses/platypi living just as happily as we do.

(Did you know that there is no universally agreed plural form of Platypus?)

I’ll always believe that this song was written for us.

Entering Our Marriage with a German Boy Dancing on Jeff's Head ‘ ‘ ‘text/javascript’>

26 thoughts on “Dear Jeff,”

  3. Happy Anniversary!

    Also, “will have been” is correct. Once it reaches 5:30 tonight, you can legitimately say “we have been married 10 years”; that’s the perfect tense. But it’s not 5:30 yet, so describing the future, in which your perfect tense sentence becomes true is the future perfect. “We will have been married 10 years”.

  6. It’s good to see true love. We’re happy and grateful to have you as friends and nieghbors and to be able to observe this success in progress up close. Many happy returns, and if you succeed in slowing down the next decade, let me know your secret!

  8. let me amend my last comment by adding:
    “…and may you enjoy many more life-spans of platypi together!”

  12. I like platypi. I don’t think I have actually closed google reader and commented on something in months! Your tenth anniversary is a special occasion in more than one way. Happy anniversary :)

  13. Yay! Happy Anniversary! Did I KNOW your anniversary was 18 days (well, and 8 years) after ours? All the best people got married in October! We should start a club! No babies allowed!

  14. I just wept a little as I read this–so honest and sweet! Congrats on the milestone, blessings to you both!

  16. Happy Anniversary to the both of you. When you hit 20 years, like me and Lobsterman… you’ll write Happy Anniversary on his Facebook wall and order pizza

  17. i love a man who makes good eye contact. jeff’s best traits, though? his choice in his life partner, his ability to help make the sweetest-looking little girls, and his toe thumb.

    (you forgot to sign your love letter to jeff! it’s anonymous!)

  22. Happy Day to you all! I really liked the song too–I’d never heard it before. Will play it for my Sweetie–we were married 31 years in June.

  23. Very Sweet and happy 10th!

    On another note, my Google reader tells me you have a post titled “It’s all happening”, but I keep getting the 404 page…can’t access it from the archives either

  24. A belated Very Happy Anniversary to you! Such a lovely love letter is one of the reasons you two are still having such a fine marriage. Recognizing what a treasure you are to one another is lost on too many people, but clearly you’re not one of them. Rock on.

  25. Happy anniversary Late. I did think of you on the 20th. What a great wedding. Lotsa of fun and you looked great.

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