All I want for my anniversary is a Love Letter.
So, my toddler, JuneBug, still doesn’t sleep through the night. Often I wake to her whimpering, in need of being held against my chest, swaying her back to sleep during the murky blue-gray of early morning-night. This doesn’t come without a little bit of negative side effects, of course: My being sleep-deprived and in need of more than my usual one cup of coffee in the morning or my getting into the office just a teeeeny bit later than I should. But, this reality does have some benefits: 2 A.M. brainstorming. Most recently, this brainstorming took the form of my hugging and soothing JuneBug back to sleep while scrolling the interwebs in search of a good wedding anniversary (EIGHT YEARS!) gift for my wife. I also found myself feeling kinda stumped on what I would even want…
Gifts are hard, ya’ll. You’d think the better you get to know someone the easier gift-giving would become. Au contraire, the longer we’re married the tougher it’s become. I used to just buy her some perfume, a piece of jewelry, or flowers — but as we’ve gotten older, more settled, and these days, more tired — we’ve also gotten so much more practical. She wants things like an oil change, an extra hour of sleep, or a dryer that doesn’t screech when it’s drying its fifth load of laundry for the day. And I want these things too. They’re not exactly romantic or memorable, but hey…who has time for romance when we’ve got a house to clean, pets and a grumpy toddler to feed, and 9-hour workdays to get through?
But this morning, I read a social media post from another married 30-something person who was referring to their decade+ relationship with their spouse. It started out with:
“I have written that line in every love letter I’ve ever written…” and proceeded to take the shape of a modern-day, somewhat short, but still heartfelt love letter to their spouse.
And maybe it’s hormones, or the romantic fall weather I breathed in on the way into work this morning…but I absolutely swooned.
Ah. Love letters.
My wife and I met when we were in our early twenties. It was tumultuous, dramatic, and intense. Within weeks of meeting and falling helplessly for one another she moved across the country, a move that was already in motion and imminent before we met. For the approximately 30 days before I flew across the country to be with her — we wrote each other so many decadent love letters filled with words of longing, craving…and agony too. Agony at being apart, agony at not knowing if it was meant to last but wanting it anyway, agony… because of the longing.
Words have always mattered a lot to me. A single sentence can convey a bounty of emotion, or can sum up a day’s adventures. It was words that really sealed the wooing of my heart into my wife’s hands. It was the three words “That’s your baby” uttered from wife’s lips when I opened a tiny box with a single poppy seed the day she told me she was pregnant. It was words when our little JuneBug sat in my lap with her favorite book and, out of nowhere, said “kitty cat.” Words can wound, words can heal.
At times, I do miss certain aspects of those early days with my wife. And it wouldn’t be news to my wife if I told her I sometimes long for a taste of the old days. Obviously I know, and honestly feel fortunate, that our love and relationship are different now — it is much more solid, and way less chaotic. But in reading my friend’s post about their marriage and about love letters, I found myself thinking…
All I want for my anniversary is a love letter.
A moment where I can slow down time, sink into a luxurious occurrence of the written word of someone just being really, really excited and nervous and turned on at the idea of being mine.
But if I am being honest with myself…at the end of the day, I know…
New love is indulgent and intoxicating. It’s easy to get lost in a mountain of sheets and let the hours pass by. Just like being intoxicated, being newly in love is maybe kinda not so healthy. A brand new relationship, is often mostly lust — it is a huge blazing inferno. It is so hot, so all-consuming and even painful. But, it doesn’t last.
Love letters from before my wife was wife were filled with things like, “I need you,” “My heart pounds…” “I ache for you…” and other things that are just a tad too PG-13 to include in a piece of writing anyone can read…
I think, maybe…these days I still get my love letters. It just takes my wife longer to write. But over the course of a week or so, if I string my texts together they’d look something like this:
“How is your day, Mapa? I am thinking of you. Please come home so we can go and play. Take JuneBug to the park, or on a walk. Or let’s go eat on a patio somewhere, get ice cream and look at the trees.
I love this wild baby of ours. Come home and jump on furniture with us. Thank you for coming home and making dinner like every day of your life. That shit is hard. I can’t even handle it for one second.
Love you. Love a baby. Love a Mapa.”
Those deep, cracking coals at the heart of a fire…those embers left behind after the blaze has settled…that is marriage. They are long lasting, keeping you warm through even the coldest night.