The Ways I Love You

 

I love the way you put up with my snoring. The way we watch shows together, usually focusing on different things so we have to compare notes after a first watch. The ways you organize and decorate the spaces we pass by every day, even the paintings we made that ourselves that I don’t think reflect my potential as a visual artist. I love how we display things around us that show us as we really are, not just how we hope the world sees us. I love the reminders of some of our best times, from the pictures of our wedding to the one poster that simply declares: Let’s Stay Home.

I love the walks that we take, up the hill each way away from home. How the world can be clamoring and insistent on bringing the noise and yet we can blab on the whole time or barely say a word to one another, and just enjoy the company and the familiar journey each time. Or how we can relive the joy of listening to 90's hip hop. I love the way we can split a bottle of wine while playing cards and hardly realize when hours have passed while we play the same game over and over, even as bad as I am at Skyjo.

I love the way you love Harold. And I disagree that you are his spare human, because I know that he loves and appreciates you almost as much as I do. I love that he comes to us for different things, but snuggles us both, and that you get to keep him company when I’m not home the way I do when you are away from home. I love that his favorite times are when we are all sitting, watching something together, because it’s like he also loves you and I sharing the time.

I love the way that you love me so much, you want to protect me, even from things that you can’t always really protect me from. Like sitting too close to a campfire while making s’mores. Or choking on food. Or driving while being a black dude in America. And you even occasionally let me feel like I’m protecting you from things, though we both know that you hardly need it.

I love the way we spend time together at home and away from home. From the deserts in Arizona, the seaside terrace in Kefalonia, the beaches in Santorini, the narrow streets of Florence, the rolling hills of rural Tuscany, the bright colored buildings in Cinque Terre, the dock at Blueberry Lake, and the hills above the bay at Soufriere. I love that we can share our time hiking to a glacier, staring awestruck at the Statue of David, touring Greek olive groves, burning log after log in Northern Wisconsin, getting stuck in a downpour under the colonnades in Vatican City, or just counting the yachts on the horizon in the Caribbean, and we can find moments that are for just us in every landscape we come across. I love that we discover the vastness and complexity of the world over and over again, but it does not seem nearly as scary when you’re next to me.

I also love the way that you love me when things aren’t going nearly as well. The way you made me go to the hospital for my ruptured Achilles. I love how well you handled the fact that we would not be going to Hawaii for our anniversary. I love that you selflessly cared for me and made all needed arrangements until I could walk again. You helped me keep my mind occupied, and you pushed me to stay disciplined with all the parts of my recovery. And you still want us to continue to live and eat and think more healthily to this day, so we can share and experience so much more together.

I love the new life that we have built and continue to build, including the new house that is now just getting underway. I love the amount of time, energy, passion, foresight, and hope that you put into plans for our next chapters. I love that this will be built for just the two of us from day one. And Harold, of course. I love that our future is filled with so much hope for us, so many new chances to discover the worlds chosen for us, and the people we still get to become.

The ways that you love me come blended and random through every day. They are both constantly expected and impossible to truly prepare for, because I keep finding new ways to commemorate and celebrate our love. I find myself working your name into conversations, remembering the first time that you and I discovered a new way to cook a dish or a specific time we drove down a street. The ways I love you is an anthology that grows and morphs a little every time I sit down to write something, and yet I’m blessed by the realization that there’s only one person to share it with.

Happy birthday, my love. I hope one day I can do all for you that you have done for me.