Here we are. You’re another year older. It doesn’t seem all that noticeable, if I’m being completely honest, because I’ve lived with you every day of this getting older, from the time you were 21 to the time of now. You are greater and truer and much wiser than you were all those years ago.
Remember that first birthday we were together, when I made you a Reese’s Pieces cake, back before we knew so much about food, and the humidity in that outdoor park split the cake in half, so it fell apart before we even cut into it? Remember how we laughed? Remember how we actually used to do something special for birthdays—like invite family to a park or throw a surprise gathering or even go out for dinner?
It seems like a lifetime ago—back before kids came along. It’s a life we hardly remember. We don’t often have the time or energy to do what we used to do for birthdays, or just to say I love you, or to cheer each other up after a terrible day. Kids are hard. We’re entrenched in the raising of our children, and that means we’re not so entrenched in the raising of us anymore. But you know what? Even after all this time, I can’t imagine doing the work of every day without you by my side.
It’s strange how some people talk about the way love fades over the years, and even though ours has changed since that rainy day in October, 12 years ago, it hasn’t faded, not at all, because what has come to us in these difficult parenting years and these trying don’t-know-where-the-money’s-coming-from years and these I-feel-like-giving-up-but-know-I-can’t years is a deeper, wider, longer knowing of one another. We talk more, we listen more, we love more, I think. We know each other’s dreams and hopes and fears and disappointments. We know each other’s loves and hates and frustrations and joys. And even though sometimes I get annoyed that you’re videoing everything for your snapchat followers, because I don’t like our family being on display all the time, I still choose to love. And even though you get annoyed that I’m always talking about the same old things, because my mind works in circles sometimes, beating something to death, you still choose to love.
When you were brought into the world, my love, all of humanity gained a wonder. You are the most amazing man I have ever met in all my life. It’s true that I didn’t recognize it for a time, because I was shallow, and I was, to tell the truth, a little scared of the way you could see right through to the heart of me (you still can, and it’s still just as unnerving as it used to be), soon your curly black hair and your intense blue eyes and the way you saw good in everything to climb its way into my heart.
What is most significant of all is that you stuck around.
It didn’t take long for you to find my flaws, to locate all my insecurities, to feel the weight of my fears, but you stuck around.
I was a girl who didn’t think anyone could stick around, because the most important one didn’t, and I thought I had been made wrong. I had been made ugly. I had been made twisted and undesirable and insignificant.
But you stuck around, and you picked up all those pieces from the ground and you wrote on them the truth.
Wrongly made, I said.
Perfectly made, you said.
Ugly, I said.
Beautiful, you said. Gorgeous, lovely, stunning. Yes, stunning.
Twisted, I said.
Bent but smooth, you said.
Undesirable, I said.
Wanted, you said. So very wanted.
Insignificant, I said.
Noteworthy, you said. Important.
You whispered it in every way, at every turn, and how could I not begin to believe what you’d written on my shards?
Little by little, you gathered them all—all the pieces that someone else had left—and you showed me that a man could love enough to stay, and a man could be trusted to hold a heart in both his hands and not damage it, and a man could see my weak spots and call them enchanting. Those years began to unfold around us, and trust warmed their edges, and you proved in a thousand different ways that you would not be like him, that you would never leave, that you were in this forever and ever and then some. You told me in all the spaces between words that there was nothing I could do that would scare you away or make you turn your back or hasten your leaving. And I learned that I did not have to be alone, as I had always been alone, safe inside my own protective bubble that prevented me from getting too close to anyone who might hurt me. I learned that I could trust the deepest burdens of my heart with a lover, a friend, a fellow traveler along this journey into adulthood. I learned that I could be loved. That I was beloved.
And now I have the great pleasure of watching you with our boys.
I watch you let the 4-year-olds ride your back to bed. Every night they ask, and it doesn’t matter how tired you are, you do it. I watch you sit with the 9-year-old and patiently walk him through all those choices he’s made in a day, especially the ones that haven’t been the best choices, and you don’t hurry, you don’t rush, you don’t get that tone in your voice that says this walking-through-it is inconvenient, because you desire him to know that you’re always here and that you’re always around and that you’ll always be open to talking with him. I watch you with the 7-year-old and notice, again, how he looks like you and talks like you and looks at the world like you, how he reminds me so much of who you were all those years ago—looking at everything with innocence and optimism and a helping heart. I watch you with the 5-year-old, the way you affirm and encourage and love him even in his most challenging moments, and I think how very fortunate he is to have a dad like you. I watch you play with the 15-month-old, every chance you get, and I marvel at how secure he is, how secure they all are, in your love.
You are an amazing dad. You really are a wonder. I never knew that there could be such joy, such love, such hope in watching the one I love raise up his boys into men who will be just like him. Raising up a generation of daddies who stay. What greater gift to the world is there?
It’s true that kids are rough on a marriage, but what kids seem to have done for me is deepen my love and appreciation for you—because I know that you are a man who plays and takes part and loves. You are a man who stays.
You have changed my life in a thousand tiny ways and a whole lot of earth-shattering ways, too—speaking my beauty when I can’t see it myself, believing in me when I don’t have a believing bone left in my body, sacrificing yourself so that I can get a little rest every now and then. I love you for that.
And I know that I can be whoever I choose to be, and you will stay. There is freedom in that knowing. I love you for that, too.
Today, on your birthday, I want to affirm, again, that I appreciate everything you do. I appreciate who you are. I appreciate what you’ve done in my life, in the lives of our boys, and in the lives of so many others who love you. I appreciate your love and your care and your kindness and your optimism and your heart and your dreams and your stubbornness and your help.
Mostly I appreciate your love.
Happy birthday, my love.
