Love bites in Reality

The first time I celebrated his birthday was on Sept 11, 2001. Technically, it was a day before his birthday. We were preparing for a paper on cultural icons in the 21st Century (thanks Madonna!) and also just received news that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Centre. We had only met a couple of weeks earlier and our entire interaction consisted of a handful of text messages and several conversations over Madonna’s biceps. But I remembered thinking, if the world was coming to an end, I wouldn’t mind spending my last moments sitting beside him.

But the world didn’t come to an end, so at the stroke of midnight, I sent him a text message which read “Happy birthday, have a great time.” That was it. No romantic declarations or fireworks. Then I proceeded to destroy his party by ruining the surprise and I think at the end of it, he thought I was a big dork. Or totally hot. Maybe both. A big hot dork. Ok, that’s just wrong.

8 years later and it seems like everything has changed. The wedding, the kids, the house, the bills, the boring routine of a couple who’s been together like forever. Well, everything except the way I feel whenever I’m with him. The way he makes me laugh. The way he looks at me across a crowded room like I’m the only person he sees. The way he leans over and kisses me in the morning. The way he holds me by the waist when we walk, just because. And most of all, the way he does all the little things like crawl out of bed to feed the baby so I can sleep for another hour.

Some days I wake up and I still can’t believe that I actually managed to marry the man of my dreams. To be fair, I’ve got pretty weird dreams, like the time I dreamt that I was shot in the leg while trying to escape from a bunch of assassins by rappelling down a building without the rope. And after that my knight in shining armor showed up and whisked me off into the sunset, bleeding calf and all. You should know by now that I’m not your typical fairy tale kinda girl, but that’s just how I roll.

They say that a relationship is defined by the moments and the memories (I kinda just made that up, feel free to use it). And we’ve got some pretty kick ass ones. I actually came up with 75, but here are my top 10.

10. The time I crashed my dad’s Mercedes into the back of a pickup truck and the entire bonnet was shortened by half. All I could do was sit by the side of the road and cry. The whole time he just held my hand and told me everything was going to be ok.

9. The time he had to run 15 minutes to my hostel room at 4 am in the morning to catch a lizard because I couldn’t possibly sleep with that monstrosity waiting to attack me.

8. The time he bought my brat of a sister a fugly snowman soft toy for her 12th birthday after she’d called him a “monkey face and a thousand other bad names I will not mention here”.

7. The time he first held my hand while his was sweating so bad it kept slipping off and he had to keep rubbing it on his pants to dry it. True story.

6. The time he wrote me a cheesy poem and claimed he found it off the Internet because I’m the kinda girl who likes poetry and moonlight serenades.

5. The time he spent his last dollar planning a surprise on the Christmas of 2001 and had to take a 3 hour walk home because he couldn’t afford a cab.

4. All the times he would say he’s sorry first even though it’s totally my fault.

3. The time he covered a room with rose petals and wrote me a not-that-cheesy poem and went down on one knee and asked me to marry him.

2. The time he held me close and cried for days when my daddy went to heaven.

1. When he turned to me after we got married and said “I think all my dreams have come true”.

Happy Birthday, baby.