32 years ago today, a beautiful woman took a leap of faith with a barely-out-of-his-childhood doofus.
I know anniversaries are good days for reflecting, for being thankful, for taking stock of the journey so far, for hoping for more of the journey ahead.
But I’ll be frank: I reflect every day. On her, on us, on how I’m still bewildered at my good fortune. At some point during any given day, I’ll just stop and ponder how we got here.
I take none of this, of us, for granted. Because I know how precious it all is, how nothing is ever guaranteed. How time is finite. How it feels like both forever and a blink. Together.
They say you should marry your best friend. And while all these years later I still struggle with who, precisely, “they” are, I can’t argue with that logic. We started out by sitting on her front porch, or on the phone, or under the nearest tree, or wherever we could find the space. And we’d talk. About anything and everything. Or about nothing at all. Until all hours of the night.
We still do. The stories have evolved - now including kids and grandkids who we couldn’t have even begun to imagine when we stood, kids ourselves, under the chuppah - but they flow just as easily, her voice dancing with mine as if we’ve been doing this forever.
Whatever I’m cooking up in my tumultuous brain, she’s the one I want to share it with first. She’s my muse, my editor, my litmus tester, my shadow, my mirror, my wingwoman, my all.
She was fearless then, leaping into a life with me that neither of us had even begun to author. And she’s fearless now, continuously laying down the roadmap for us to follow, always setting the tone for who we are and how we move through the days and years.
I look at photos from on and around that incredible day and I cherish all we’ve experienced together in the days since. At the same time I ache for who we’ve lost since then, for the stories that had to end before we wanted them to.
Then I remind myself that this is how this life thing works. Change is inevitable, and the lucky ones get to ride all that change - and opportunity, and joy, and success, and grief, and hellos, and goodbyes - with someone who gets them. Who speaks in words and silence.
She is the love of my life. I’ll never feel worthy of being so ridiculously lucky to have crossed her path and captured her orbit, but I’ll be forever thankful.
Because of her, I focus that much more on squeezing tiny joys out of tiny moments. Not everyone gets that, but she does. Implicitly. And I wouldn’t be who I am if she hadn’t said yes, hadn’t put on a dress, hadn’t agreed to leap into the unknown.
If I could go back in time, I’d change nothing. I’d grab her hand and jump as hard and as far and as fearlessly as we did then. As we’ve done every day since: together.
It’s one of the many things she’s taught me along the way. And one of the countless reasons I love her more with each passing day.
Happy anniversary, my love.
#montreal #ldnont #july5 #blink #LiveLaughLevy #family #everything
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