Happy anniversary, Babe.
Twenty-one years married, and thirty-four since the summer we met (assuming my math is right–and it often isn’t!), and I would swear neither of us has aged a day. The photos may disagree, but I’m going by what I see, and you have never looked a day older to me.
That has been on my mind a lot the last month because of a song that has been with us almost from the start, even if I didn’t know it. Joshua Kadison released Painted Desert Serenade in 1993, and I bought it on cassette and wore out “Beautiful in My Eyes.” At the time, you were my little sister’s annoying friend, and it never once occurred to me that I was listening to a song about you. Took me a few years to catch up. It has been a wedding staple ever since its release, but it isn’t really a wedding song. A wedding song promises that nothing will change. Kadison promises the opposite. The seasons will change, there will be tears and sighs along the way, and the lines on our faces will come from a lifetime of smiling. His whole point is that the years don’t take anything away. They make the person you love ever more beautiful.
I believe that more now than I did twenty-one years ago. The last few years have asked more of you than they should have, in ways most people reading this won’t fully know. I know there have been nights when you worried about how much time we get, and about not being here with me. I’ve carried that worry too. What I keep coming back to is the last verse, where they’re old, still holding each other, laughing about how fast it all went. That’s the plan. I’m holding you to it.
We have always loved things that carry their history on the surface. You can’t pass up an estate sale, and I can’t pass up clean modern lines, and between us we’ve learned that the best things usually mix both. A good antique has a worn edge and a softened finish, the marks of every hand that used it, and nobody can fake that kind of patina. Ours took twenty-one years to earn. I wouldn’t sand off a single mark.
We just finished the new season of Ted Lasso, where the women’s team pushes back on the old BELIEVE sign. They already believe; nobody signs up for second-division women’s football without believing. That’s you. You never needed a sign. You just show up. You believed I could build a consulting business and a private practice when I wasn’t sure, and you pushed me until I tried. You come to conferences and sit in the front row as my biggest fan. You set up interview days, help run new intern orientation, and somehow remember exactly what each intern and fellow would love, then put together a gift to match. No wonder one of this year’s interns started calling you the First Lady. You earned the title long before anyone said it out loud.
The new things count too. Lately that has meant things like Teddy Swims and Emily Ann Roberts on the radio in the van, with you singing along like nobody is listening. So instead of a gift with a year attached to it, we’re celebrating in a couple of weeks with a night out to hear Teddy Swims together. I’ll be the one watching you instead of the stage.
Happy anniversary, my love. Twenty-one years in, you are still the most beautiful thing I have ever seen, and you will be in every year we get.
Love you!
P.S. Thomas Rhett wrote this one for his wife, and Teddy Swims made it even better. I can’t sing like either of them, so I’m letting them say it for me. Consider it a preview.
