Anniversary 9

Our ninth anniversary is a landmark of sorts: we've now been married for as long as we dated. Nine also represents the novena my mother made to get us to make it legal. (Just joking about that. She knows that if she did make one, it's a secret she should take to her grave. But I doubt she did. My paternal grandmother made a novena that her aging son (26) would get married, and she's spent every waking moment since then hating my mother.)

Here's the present I stitched (am stitching). I think I screwed up. I thought the background color was too dark, but I stuck with it anyway. And now there's no undoing. I'll see how I might salvage it.

Erica Michaels

"To Thee My Heart"

40-count silk gauze

Called for fibers (GAST and CC)

Petit point rather than cross stitch.

I did promise a list:

He's kind and, optimistically perhaps, expects people to return his kindness even in the face of overwhelming evidence that they are disinclined to do so. This does not make him become any less kind.

He knows me and my family and still hangs around.

He's really fucking smart. Not just "book smart" and not just in his field. He has an insatiable curiosity.

He lets me invite my internet stranger-friends to the house and helps entertain them.

He is an excellent teacher. When we were working with Lala the other day, his descriptions of how to make bread and pickles were crystal clear. He was encouraging and rewarded my niece with heartfelt praise. He is patient and nurturing.

He's a hottie. And that's not just on my say so.

He has given me more emotional support in the past year and a half than a person has a right to expect.

He attended Pilates for 10 weeks, even though the other women thought they'd chase him away. He owns his masculinity and it is his, not some societal expectation.

He wrote me this poem eight years ago:

"Binding"

The book that we have made together
Is not leather bound.
We have lived no pristine pages
Of classic prose,
Become no gilt-lettered monument
Displayed behind glass
Protected from dirt and judgment.

Our well thumbed manuscript
Remains unfinished.
Fresh words spill in loving ink
Across familiar printed lines.
Suggestions scribbled in our margins
Crowd round a growing draft
Waiting for more revisions and additions.
We need no elegant conclusion;
Ours is a living text.

Happy anniversary, dude.