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Sparkle (5)
We have these places, these blogs, where we write. I think often of what I'm leaving behind for my daughter to read, but also, my husband.
I am the type of person who reads prologues and epilogues, and I remember reading the acknowledgments of Heather Armstrong's book, It Sucked and Then I Cried. She wrote in 2009:
Finally, I want to thank ... Jon Armstrong, my soul mate, he who did not leave me when he had every reason to do so. This book is a love letter to him.
Which is interesting, because the book described Heather's descent into post-partum depression and her climb back out of it. But I get it. That idea: He did not leave me when he had every reason to do so -- it's what I feel about my husband.
Love letters take many shapes. Love itself is a shape-shifter. I have at times been absolutely horrible to live with. My husband survived many of the low points of my life, and as I type this, he's still sitting here beside me on the couch, not realizing what I'm writing. It doesn't even matter that Valentine's Day is approaching. The best love notes, in my opinion, are the ones that come unexpectedly. The ones I'm trying at this point in my life to remember to write.
This year, we'll be married ten years. Sometimes I think anyone who could spend ten years with me should get some sort of major award, but especially this man, who seems to have a level of patience at times inhuman. I am raw and difficult and flawed.
Some wise person once told me to marry someone I secretly thought was better than I am.
And I did.
The things I like best, though, are the things he writes down. In this era of typing, it's unusual anymore to see someone's handwriting. I keep his handwriting in a trunk he bought me in one of our first years together. Now it's full with my wedding nosegay and pictures my daughter drew me and every note and card he ever wrote me. In some ways, the archives of this blog and our life together are my love letter to him -- in that I've let him see me, and he's stayed.
This Valentine's Day, I looked through the Internet to find love letters from bloggers to their best loves.
From my friend Erin Kotecki Vest at Queen of Spain:
In this year I have seen many things. I have seen friends step up to aid my family, I have seen others retreat from the fierce reality that was our lives. But more than anything I have seen this man I married, this scruffy, once long-haired, punk rock boy… be the man he is destined to be.
He’s the guy that gives his wife airplane rides.
From a blogger who kept a Post-It her husband wrote her for years:
I doubt my husband remembers writing it. I do. I am convinced that while grand, sweeping gestures are great it is the small gestures that have the greatest impact. Do you have any small examples of love that you treasure?
From a friend of mine who sent me her old love notes when I told her about this post:
I have known many places in my life but never really had a home, so I don't quite know what it's like to be homesick. But you are a man, I am a woman and when we're together, we become a place. So when I miss you, I feel an incurable nostalgia I could only describe that way: I'm homesick.
From a blogger with tips on writing love notes:
Why do we stop doing these things just because we've been married for a while? We shouldn't stop. We should do it all the more. It's vital that your husband know that you love him, and that you remember how much you love him, too.
I love the simplicity of this love note from a blogger named
