Happy birthday to the best man I’ve ever known. Your smile lights me up and your eyes melt me into puddles of gooey love.
This is from my journal, the summer we first started dating.
August 9, 2009.
Those EYES! They just glitter and shine with goodness I haven’t seen in a long time, much less in eyes that are already so beautiful. At first it was talking, being on the verge, and then not talking, being never satisfied with boys with different eyes. I keep coming back to his goodness, and when he makes up his mind about me once I know it’s not the end. Fast forward, May. Boyfrien. We’re new at this; we have no idea what we’re doing. I ask him if he’s scared and he says nahh, just nervous in a good way.
June is called a little bit of long distance. July, though, he is all mine. We play Scattergories seventeen hundred times, sit on grass, hold each other, try to stop kissing each other. In July, he loves me. This makes me afraid and unsure at first, and then a week or two later we’re sitting with feet dipped in the pool, and he asks what’s on my mind. I bury my face in my hands and yell out “I think…I think I love you.” And off we go.
August brings weightier things than summer nights. Is he leaving forever? Am I never going to get to kiss his perfect mouth again after August 14th? It’s all so dramatic. Who knew this combination of teeth and eyes and strong arms would be such a big deal to me! He is a big deal.
…
And today is your birthday. I’m not unsure anymore; you’re not leaving anymore, ever. I was so afraid of loving you so deep, but gosh I love you crazy. We celebrated this morning for as long as we felt like it, over bacon and orange juice and the filled-up donuts you love and I looked into those incredible eyes, sky-light bright and full of amazing, for the bajillionth time. I tell you how frustrated I get trying to tell you how much I love you, because nothing ever says all I want to tell.
I feel the luckiest woman in the world to spend every August 1st with you, waking up to your perfect humor, your quiet strength, your ambition, your loyalty and your grounded humility.
Happy birthday, sweetheart.
