Happy Valentine's Day!

I’ve known my husband for more than 20 years and have been married to him for nearly 18 of those years. I know that Valentine’s Day is derided as an overly commercial day, but it is a day that I can specifically spend looking back through time and reminiscing about all the wonderful experiences that I have shared with my love.

From the minute Mike and I connected all those many moons ago on a trip with friends to Port Costa, California, it really did feel like love at first sight, as clichéd as that may sound. I remember playing poker at a seedy restaurant that had a gigantic stuffed polar bear; we drank G&Ts out of mason jars and laughed over shared king crab legs. We stayed at an old hotel that was rumored to be an old bordello and also a bit haunted. I remember him being incredibly kind and then hoping that we wouldn’t lose touch as we began to date long-distance. We’re old fogies, but we did still have AOL instant messenger to chat with each other throughout the day, a technology that made the thousands of miles that separated us evaporate away. We talked about a shared love of Tolkien and role-playing video games and about books and movies; we talked about everything and nothing at all.

And then, 9/11 happened. It was a world-shifting event that made you re-evaluate everything, and we realized that even though we lived across the country from each other, we needed to be together.

We bonded over our love of good food and travel, and through the years, I can’t imagine anyone else who would help me get through a World of Warcraft dungeon, or talk me through feeling depressed about work, or buy me exactly the pink headphones I wanted to use with my Nintendo Switch. When I went through the worst moments of my life, flying out to Albuquerque to be with my dying sister, he dropped everything to be with me, covering me with love and comfort.

It might seem odd to write all of this down in a public blog, but when you’ve found your soulmate, sharing how much you love that person to everyone seems like the most natural thing in the world.