Our journey together

When I think about almost ten years with you, I don't remember anniversaries or perfect days. I remember meeting you. After four months of loving someone I'd never actually stood in the same room with, there you were at the Delta Hotel at 3 a.m. Both of us relieved the other wasn't secretly an old man. And you were so fucking hot. Still are ;) And you smelled so good. I'd had four months to imagine this moment. Four months of talking to you, wanting you, wondering what it would feel like when we were finally face-to-face. And apparently I used all of that preparation to get into the elevator with you, panic, notice it had doors on both sides and say: “Wow. This elevator has buttons on both sides.” Beautiful. That one still keeps me up some nights lmao

Ten years later, I'm still impressed you kept me. We were so awkward. (I was so awkward). And somehow, underneath all of that awkwardness, I knew. Then I remember waiting. Waiting for phone calls. Waiting to see you. Waiting for you to come home. After a five month of deployment, I stood in an almost-empty airport at midnight and watched you walk toward me looking thinner than the man who'd left. I ran so hard that when I jumped into your arms, my phone flew out of my pocket and skidded across the airport floor.

You've told me that that was the moment for you. For me, it was the moment I knew I couldn't do this forever. I didn't want to spend my life missing you. I wanted everyday life with you. I wanted bills and laundry and stupid arguments and figuring out what the hell we were having for dinner. I wanted you sleeping beside me. I wanted an ordinary life with you.

And somehow, we got one.

I remember coming home at midnight after college and work, completely exhausted, stepping off the elevator and smelling the pork chops you were cooking before I'd even reached our door. Another elevator. Except this time I wasn't standing beside some ridiculously hot guy desperately trying to think of something to say about the buttons. You were home. And I was coming home to you.

I remember us moving everything we owned by ourselves in our tiny grey Ford Focus, making a ridiculous number of trips because apparently we thought moving trucks were for cowards. I still have that picture of you practically folded like a lawn chair against the steering wheel with our mattress stuffed into the back. At the time, it was hilarious. Now I look at it and realize almost our entire life could fit inside that little car. Then, a few years later, we put our babies in it and brought them home. I remember squeezing myself between two tiny car seats because I needed to see both of them. I remember you pulling onto Carling Avenue as we left the hospital and driving so carefully, avoiding every pothole because you didn't want to jostle our newborn daughters. People were honking at us almost immediately. Let them honk. You had your whole world in that car.

I remember waking up hours after my C-section with the twins. The room was quiet. Emma was asleep in her bassinet. And you were leaning over her, just staring. You didn't know I'd woken up. So I didn't say anything. I just watched you love her. It's a picture burned into my brain. When you saw I had woken, you told me that Ava was okay, in the NICU as a precaution and that you'd been to see her a few times already. 

Then we went home and disappeared. Two newborns. Almost no help due to COVID. No sleep. No idea what day it was. PB&J. Chili. Orange Pekoe tea. Folger's. Friends playing endlessly in the background. Feed a baby. Change a baby. Sleep for twenty minutes. Do it again. We were fucking exhausted. I miss it. Not because I want the exhaustion back. I just wish I could visit those two people for a minute. Sit beside them on the couch. See our babies that small again. Tell them they're doing okay. Tell them to look around. You're going to miss this.

And then life did what life does. The babies became toddlers. The days became work, dinner, baths, bedtime, sleep. Again. Again. Again. Nothing particularly remarkable. Until somehow years were gone. Then I watched you hold Madelyn for the first time. I remember wondering how this tiny stranger was going to fit into the family we'd already built. And now I can't remember us without her. That's the cruel thing about building a life. You almost never know you're living something you'll ache to have back someday.

Nobody tells you: Remember this. Remember this apartment. Remember this little car. Remember this shitty dinner eaten on the floor because we don't have furniture yet. Remember the babies sleeping on your chest. Remember what their tiny voices sound like (Ava's sweet little voice always asking, "what's thaaaaaat?"). Remember the way he looks at them when he doesn't know you're watching. Remember yourself here. Because one day, without asking your permission, this will become the old days. You just live it. And then one day it's almost ten years later and someone asks you for your most cherished memories, and you realize they were hiding inside all the days you thought were ordinary.

A hotel at three in the morning. A painfully awkward elevator ride. A phone lying forgotten on an airport floor. Pork chops at midnight. A mattress stuffed into a hatchback. Two little car seats. Potholes. PB&J. Tea. Three little girls. You. Watching you animatedly read them a bedtime story with your work clothes still on, after a long day, because you cherish every second you get with them. 

I met you in a lobby at 3 a.m. and was so nervous all I could manage to talk about was the buttons on an elevator. Then I spent the beginning of our relationship waiting for you to come home. And somewhere along the way, you became home. All those years ago, I wanted an ordinary life with you so badly. I had no idea the ordinary life would be the part that makes my heart ache to look back on. And if I could go back to that awkward girl at the Delta at three in the morning—the one standing beside this gorgeous man who smelled incredible with absolutely no  clue what to say—I think I'd tell her:

Look at him. Really look at him. You're going to spend the next ten years growing up beside him. You're going to fit your whole life into a hatchback. You're going to bring your babies home in it. You're going to watch him become their dad. And he's going to be a damn good father. You're going to have years that disappear because you're too busy living them together. And one day, you're going to look around at this loud, exhausting, perfectly imperfect little life and thank God for every little thing that lead you to him.