Dear Stuart,
Last night, we arrived home from our trip to Florida, chattering and flipping through the mail as we came up the stairs to our apartment. We put our bags down in the bedroom and went around the house, switching on lights and turning on computers and yelling down the hall what we wanted for dinner from our chinese takeaway.
There was some kind of happiness in that apartment, I tried in vain to pin it to a wall and study it. It was some resounding contentment with how very much our home it was, how perfectly normal it was to walk around in it with you and talk about chinese takeaway and what’s been happening on the internet in our absence.
We do lots of romantic things, you and I. We take long walks and make each other dinners and meet each other for drinks after hard days at work and read from magazines while the other showers. But something about coming home from traveling last night seemed like the most romantic thing we’ve ever done, only in its total normalcy.
A year ago, we stood in front of a judge and swore under the state of New York and the laws of this nation to love, honor, and protect each other. Privately, we also swore to fight each other’s battles with grace and cheerfulness, to be each other’s first resource for love and understanding, to be compassionate and fair and to always make the other smile, even if we’re fighting. We agreed on a lot of things that day – that we’d have children together, foster each other’s dreams, grow old together. We also agreed to never fight to win, only argue to understand. We agreed to consider each other’s needs and desires above all others, we agreed to share the chores of a life together – everything from deciding on graduate school to washing up after dinner.
We were married at City Hall a year ago and we made all those promises. But the very best promise that went unspoken was the one where we’d simply be around each other, every day, forever. It wasn’t something we took for granted back then, only ten days in each other’s arms after six months of trial-by-fire separation at the very beginning of our relationship. It was a tough path we carved from meeting each other in Shiv’s living room to walking into the judge’s chambers together. It was also a path we carved joyfully, with confidence, and above all, with love. We were married knowing we’d never be apart from each other again.
And perhaps that’s what was so beautiful about last night – how very normal it was. Because every day since a year and ten days ago, no matter if we were in Florida, or at work, or at the doctor’s, or visiting friends, we’ve come home to each other. And of all the promises both lofty and mundane that we’ve made to each other, that we continue to honor every day, this is the one I love the most.
Thank you for marrying me, but more importantly, thank you for just being with me.
Love,
Krissa

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