Dear Fraser,
Happy birthday. I hope that you enjoyed your birthday morning with the boys. They have been so excited for your birthday, and they have loved keeping secrets from you. I know that the fanfare over your birthday is more than you usually care for, but they are excited to celebrate with you. And eat donuts. Probably more excited about the donuts than your 36th year of life though, if we’re being honest.
I don’t write about you very often. I rarely post the ‘mushy gushy love of my life’ type of posts. It might make me seem like I’m being purposely coy. Purposely keeping our marriage private. But that’s not really the case, because in all honesty, it’s simply because I can’t usually find the words to explain what you and I share. Yes, I could write about how much I love you, and that would be truthful, but it is even more honest write about how much I am *in* love with you. But ‘I love you’ doesn’t seem to capture the essence of everything between us.
I met you when I was 19 years old. You were only 22. We have grown up together. But, seemingly more important, we have also grown away from each other. In the beginning of our infatuation it seemed that we melded into one singular entity. We were inseparable, and couldn’t see past the end of ourselves. Over the last 14 years we have loved one another, married one another, created three beautiful little humans, and we have also gone through what is hopefully the darkest part of our marriage. It was there, in those dark moments, that I found what I love the most about what we have created. The flaws. The parts where we are broken have come to be the defining parts of our marriage that make us work.
You and I are both strong willed, and fiercely independent. This independence is something that I think we are both just discovering. Somewhere along the way we stopped being infatuated with one another, and we grew into two very different adults. There have been so many times that we have wanted to give into these differences and accept that the two of us might have grown too far apart, but it is actually these differences that attracts me to you the most.
What I love most about you, Fraser, is that you are real. You are flawed. Your flaws and your perfections seem to be the perfect combination to fit with my flaws… and my many many many perfections. ;)
We are real with one another. We laugh together, and maybe more importantly, we also laugh *at* each other. We spend our days trying to find a compromise about who will clean the vomit and who will clean the poop. We barter with one another over chores, and our arguments often resemble two hyenas fighting over a bloody caracas. You cook. I clean… kind of. And then you get mad at me for not cleaning well enough. It is here in these idiosyncrasies that I find comfort. Because this is the foundation of who we are together.
Fraser, you are the love of my life. But you are so so so much more than that. You are my husband. My partner. My best friend. We find that we can fiercely love each other in one breath, and loathe each other in the next. And that is what makes us…. us.
I love you. Happy birthday. I wish that this 36th year of your life is better than the previous years… and that this life we have created keeps getting better with each year that passes.
xo.
Chicken
Photo credit :: Janelle Addis Photography
