I could sit here for hours waiting on your arrival / I could sit here for days hoping you'd come out and play / I could die in a minute and the one chance for survival / would be the sound of your beautiful name. --"Mountain" by 5591
I have a freckle in my left eye. It's a fleck of brown against blue-gray, and it's something I had never even noticed about myself until I met Mike. Early in the days that dripped with hope and awkward glances, Mike looked over at me late one night and said, "I like the freckle in your eye." He did this, often, back then. He would point out things I had gotten complacent about, stopped noticing or never noticed at all and he would turn those things into gems. I had never noticed that freckle before, but I have noticed it every day since.
This has been quite the year for Mike and me. Just a few weeks after our first anniversary, we conceived our son; our difficult, beautiful, stubborn, suspicious, smart, adorable boy. Since that night, when we made him, Mike has had to do a handful of things that were never specifically outlined in our vows. Things like: holding my leg up near my chin as I gave birth to Kyle, helping me to the bathroom (ass exposed) minutes before I was given an epidural, running to the store at 3 a.m. to get me root beer or Reese's peanut butter cups or a different kind of bottled water, helping me roll over in bed when I was hugely pregnant, grimacing through my SCREAMING at him about bringing plants into the house. And, no, I'm not kidding about that last one. He has handled it all with much grace, some eye-rolling, more patience and humor than one person is really expected to bring into a marriage.
One of the early days of Kyle's life, one of the really dark days when I physically couldn't remember when I slept last and definitely couldn't remember when I last applied lip gloss, I stood in the kitchen, crying, contemplating leaving the dishes piled up as they were for the rest of time, thinking about what I could shove down my throat before my son woke up from his nap. I sniffled and sighed and said to Mike, who was just in the other room, "It'll be OK soon. I know we'll be OK, and we'll get through this." He was watching something, I remember that, and he didn't even pause it or even turn towards me. He simply said, as if it were second nature, as if it took no thought at all, "Of course we will, baby. We can get through anything." Thank god for that man, for that man who saw the freckle in my eye when no one else could, who has done more for me than he ever thought he'd do for anyone, who has seen me skinny and fat and in various in-between stages, and who has always, always, always looked at me as if I am just as I've always been, just as I was in those easy-yet-hard-yet-perfect early days when I never screamed or cried or got irritated with him.
Two years ago we were beside ourselves with joy as we took our vows and then got good and drunk at our reception. Two years ago it was all before us and it all looked bright and spotless. Two years later, we've been through more together than I thought we'd face in a lifetime and, yet, the view is still pretty OK, the company is still pretty great, the drinks are still pretty strong.
Our wedding day was perfect, a day you dream of, a day that seems surreal in hindsight because there was not a bad moment from sun up to sun down. There have been plenty days since then that have been less than perfect, that have been hard and painful and tear-soaked. Yet, today, on our two-year anniversary, I love that man -- that difficult, beautiful, stubborn, suspicious, smart, adorable man -- even more than I did back on that too-perfect day.
And I will love him always, always, always.
Happy anniversary, my love.