Dear Amy,
Tradition would have me give you a gift of cotton on our second wedding anniversary. Well, my jeans are made of denim, whose source material is 100% cotton. You are welcome to take them as often as you wish. Preferably while I'm wearing them. Rip them off, I don't care. And, should you eschew your hands for your teeth in the removal of that garment, in no way will I hinder you. Indeed, I will shout encouragement from the rooftops to spur on your effort. (What we're doing on the rooftop with my jeans in your teeth is a matter I'd like to discuss in some detail. In private.)
A more modern tradition, or so says the internet after a brief search, is to bequeath a gift of china on the second anniversary. I've been to China. A very neat place to visit. Hard to find a fork. Lots of people. Big wall. You and I have a toddler boy-child, two dogs and a domestic penchant for borderline cleanliness. China would get boxed up and packed along with those of our wedding gifts that won't get used until the kids move out.
Plus, we're broke.
So you get a letter. Lucky you!
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Looking back, I am so very glad that I was right pissed off that day. I have no idea what niggling, inconsequential tidbit from work spurred me to the point of being irate, but it allowed me to tap into some vestige of my feminine side and created in me an urge to placate my rising ire.
I wanted to go shopping to make myself feel better: retail therapy.
It was summer, I needed some new sandals. So where, in all of God's creation, does one go for God's own footwear? If you live where I do, you go to West Edmonton Mall. The Mall is to retail what The Wall is to China: huge, ungainly, lots of tourists and takes a bloody long time to drive around. But you can get sandals at The Mall, so thither did I wend my way.
I am a typical male shopper. Stereotypical, even. I know what I want, where to get it, and any money saved by several hours or days worth of comparison shopping is worth nowhere near as much as the time wasted doing so. Up I went to the second level, between the Ice Palace and the three-quarter scale replica of the Santa Maria, to the R'n'R Outdoor Outfitters. It was a lovely August afternoon. Hot and sunny outside, a wall full of sample sandals for a seeker just like me in the air-conditioned vastness of The Mall. A quick perusal of the offerings presented a couple pairs that I liked, and so I turned, seeking some assistance...
...and saw you, a hazel-eyed vision in an auburn halo, gliding towards me from across the store. Seeing impending aid, I pulled both my hands from my pockets (where they were definitely NOT doing anything untoward) and quickly gave you the double-gun salute, complete with flicking thumb trigger motion as if to say, "Hey! You're just what I was looking for."
You, with a quirk of a smile and a cock of your head, rapidly returned the same salute, but it was not until afterwards that I was to learn its more insidious meaning: "Hey! A willing target! I'm so going to fleece you and make you come back wanting more."
That day, after being willingly handled by a woman of incomparable charisma and capability, I left the store with a pair of sandals, some Sierra Design pants, an incredibly light-weight pair of Columbia shorts and a blossoming knowledge of having been taken to school by a buxom young thing who knew how to work a mark.
I knew then that I had to have you.
Since my initial phone call back to the store, a tactful two days later, found only your absence, I had to gussy up the courage to try again later. By the time 'later' came, a week had passed and I figured I'd better make an actual appearance.
I recall pacing to and fro outside the store, wearing a track in the floor, waiting for just the Right Time to arrive. It took me about 15 minutes to realise that the Right Time NEVER arrives The Right Time dodges responsibility like a conscript on draft day, and action must be taken in spite of that.
I strode into the store, accoutred in a thin veneer of confidence and was immediately overwhelmed by several debilitating thoughts: Is she even here today? (Oh yeah, there she is.) What the hell is my opening line!? Holy shit, I didn't even check to see if she was wearing a ring the last time!! I bet she's wearing a ring... there's no way she can't be wearing a ring... (I glanced at your finger)... Oh CRAP!! She's wearing a ring! Waitjustafreakinsecond... that's her right hand! Left hand: no ring. SCORE!!
And then, just as you were turning away from a customer and we saw each other, I realised that I still had no opening line. Thus was I inspired to throw up both hands in a gesture of surrender to your sales(wo)manship and utter, "I'm not here to buy anything."
You were, thankfully, just as astute then as you are now and had the good grace to invite me to lunch with you where the most serendipitous of opportunities presented itself. You had recently bought a lovely coffee table while sight-seeing in Canmore but, without your truck at the time, were not able to bring it back and would have to make a second trip. (Do you know the scene in the Looney Tunes cartoons where the main character gets a really good idea and a bright, cartoon light bulb springs into existence above his head? That's what happened to me at that exact moment.)
"Well you know, Amy, I just so happen to be driving down to Canmore this very weekend to run in a half-marathon. And I have a truck. If it doesn't seem too forward of me, I'll offer to go and pick up your table and bring it back for you." (I know I wasn't quite that articulate at the time, but it looks better in writing than, "Uh, me run race same place, got truck, get you table, bring back for you, huh?") At that instant, I felt like the entire future of our completely non-existent relationship hung in the balance, awaiting your answer.
"Yes," you said. Just like the "I do" I was to hear from your lips two years later, that word was music to my ears and that moment, thinking back now, marked the beginning of our lives together.
Fast forward two months and our fledgling relationship is put to the test by Oktoberfest. (Thrust a new couple into the midst of thousands of beer-swilling 20- to 30-somethings with sauerkraut on the breath, cow bells around their necks and wearing funny feathered hats: what could possibly go wrong!?) A convention centre filled to the rafters with pseudo-Germans for an evening of bratwurst, beer and bawdy ballads at the behest of the Black Forest Band. Intending to pace myself, I quaffed only a gulp from my free with ticket purchase, glow-in-the-dark plastic stein whenever the M.C. spurred on the crowd with, "Ziggy zaggy, ziggy zaggy, hoi, hoi, HOI!" Seeing my temperance for what was apparently actually pansy-assed sissy drinking, you were then inspired to broadcast those immortal words: "Jesus Christ Simon, be a man for once!"
From what was recounted to me by friends several days later, I was green, cold to the touch, sweating profusely and sporting a 'shit eating grin' by nine PM, incapable of extricating myself from the slouch I was inhabiting on one of the collapsible chairs. Well into the throes of alcohol poisoning. Not only can I lay the blame for the evening's fiasco at your feet, but also for my eventual recuperation, being poured into my truck, driven home and forced to embrace the porcelain bus before being sloshed into bed. All this before the headline act had taken the stage that year. You stuck by me through my lowest low.
I remember discussions around moving in together. How we'd both been burned before and that you wanted certain 'guarantees' before you were willing to take that risk again. You chose to take that step with me anyway and issued an investment of faith on which I knew I would do my damnedest to pay back high dividends.
We got a fish together. It was a start. (Myth, short for Mithter Fith.) But he died. Fish are fleeting, and better with butter anyway.
I eventually got you that guarantee you were looking for. A 76-point 'guarantee' set in 14 carat gold. The look that day on your face was priceless. I'm so glad I thought to propose at the photo studio, ostensibly to get pictures taken for Christmas gifts. Your mascara didn't even run, I was so proud of you. I seem to recall shaking for most of a day after that. Holy Commitment, Batman!
We got a house, and then a dog, to keep you company in the house while I was away up north at work for weeks at a time. I really do like him more than I let on... most of the time. The fact that it was your idea to give him a Star Wars name further endeared you to me.
After the house and the dog, we got married. Seeing that wedding ring nestled beside my engineering ring made me stop to think. The one I had earned by spending five years at school and was forever entitled to by merit of efforts already expended. Stainless steel, hard, plain, functional. The other had just been given to me by you in trust, and I took it upon myself as an obligation and a desire to spend the rest of my life earning the right to wear it. It was heavier, softer, more pleasing to the eye; and I still keep in mind the fact that the gold can be easily scored by the steel worn so close. A daily symbolic reminder that I wouldn't have were I not left-handed.
Nine months minus a week after our nuptials, our son arrived. And a new puppy this past June. Then the news that we're expecting our second baby in March.
So why this not-so-brief history lesson about everything you already know?
Our lives have become so busy and so delightfully, painfully, joyously, agonisingly, wonderfully FULL... that we barely have time these days to take some spare moments just to enjoy each other's company.
I remember taking the ferry ride across the bay towards our honeymoon destination in Costa Rica and seeing you, from a short distance, with your eyes cast over the rail and one foot propped behind the other, a distant look in your face. I thought to myself: this is the woman I'm going to spend the rest of my life getting to know. And that thought didn't scare me in the least. Which is a huge part of what makes this, ALL of this, feel so right to me.
And all through the dirty dishes, chronic fatigue, shitty diapers, backyard doodie minefield, unsorted laundry, bare bank accounts, baby-snot-stained upholstery and occasional showerless weekend, there are a number of undeniable truths that have come through those varied hostilities completely unscathed and shining brighter for having had some of the veneer scoured off:
You are still the sexiest thing that's ever had the good graces to cross my path. As the mother of my child, soon to be children, your luscious sex appeal waxes eternally in mine eyes and I yearn for you a little more with each passing day.
Even though most of the time we do spend together can be euphemistically categorized as 'domestic bliss', please know that I treasure each moment, even the ones with dishpan hands and harsh words, and my love for you remains undeniable, unrestrained and unequalled.
Happy anniversary my hazel-eyed, auburn-haired beauty. I love you this much:
Oh! Oh! Oh! I can say nothing else! Oh! [recovering]
What a gift this will be for Declan and his sibling someday: proof positive of a father who was crazy about their mama. It doesn't get any better than that.
Happy anniversary, Simon and Amy!
Posted by: Jenn | Tuesday, 09 August 2005 at 07:40 AM
Simon, When you write about your love for your wife, you remind me soooo much of my husband. And that is why, after 30 years ... We're still havin' fun, and he's still the one ............ Tina
Posted by: Tina | Tuesday, 09 August 2005 at 09:25 PM
It is letters like this that you will both look back on, reflect on and treasure far more than the ( what was it again) gift on the anniversary... I have every letter written by hubby and got all teary-eyed thinking of how verbally backwards he was in trying to articulate his feelings for me..which made them all the more precious...you carry them to keep you warm; you hold on to them like a life vest when times are tough and you find your way back to each other, because that's where you are supposed to be....now having said that, Mithter Fith???? That's just silly! ;) Congrats on getting it right and keeping it right, Simon and Amy!!!!!!
Posted by: Penny | Wednesday, 10 August 2005 at 07:51 AM