Still my Valentine

Hubs and I celebrated Valentine's last week. We almost NEVER celebrate Valentine's on the actual date, due to my dislike of crowds and lines. (Plus, we had a disastrous, but highly memorable, experience dining out on Valentine's Day one year. Maybe someday, I will blog about it.) And now that we have little man, I'll be damned if I'm going to spend precious child-free moments waiting for a table or hoping my server hasn't forgotten I exist.

Anyway, in honor of our little observance, I thought I'd do a quick blog about hubs. I have two photos of he and I together that I have always kept close. When I worked, they were in my office. Now, I've moved them to the house, and they've been joined by a few other more recent ones. But these are the two that I always liked looking at best.

One of them is of us on our wedding day. We are at the cake table, and I can’t remember if we’d already eaten cake and done the champagne toast or not. But we are standing there in our white, my hair long since undone from its barrettes, smiling like we are the happiest two people on Earth. And we probably were that day, with all of our family around us, with our new lives stretching out ahead of us in glorious possibility. We look as if we KNOW, somehow, that we will be happy. Happy in our lives together.

The other one is a photo of us on our honeymoon, sitting at the formal dining table on a Carnival ship, drifting somewhere in the middle of the Caribbean. We are dressed in our best duds, coat and tie, sparkly dress, probably waiting for course number four or some such nonsense. We are smiling again, so earnestly young and hopeful. (And we look good, dammit. What a handsome couple those two are!)

I realized recently that so much of the hope in my young eyes then has been validated. I have been happy. I have shared the kind of life with hubby that I’d always wished I would have. I have enjoyed being married, enjoyed our adventures together and, too, the nights we stayed in, watching movies and eating soup. The day we worked in the rain to build a retaining wall for my garden after I broke the hammer. All the times we’ve cuddled before going to bed. Kissing at the Bridge of Souls in Paris. Marveling at the crazy people who must live in Jerome, Arizona.

And now that we have a new addition in our lives, I am again filled with anticipation of what is to come. Yes, we are wiping up poop, but we are also smoothing lotion over a clean little tummy after a bath. And in the years to come, we will kiss boo boos and make pancakes on Saturday mornings. We will endure countless school “performances” and dye Easter eggs.

With a new little person depending on us for everything, I know it will be easy for the two of us to let our own private moments and joys get lost in the general chaos. But I will always remember, though we are knee-deep in dirty diapers and sippy cups, that everything started with him. With just me and him. He'll always be my Valentine.

Comments

Webmaster said…
What a sweet love note. I hope he reads your blog!