Dad 2022. Time and Love and Dinner Dancing
You turned seven weeks old on Sunday and today your mom and I are celebrating our third wedding anniversary. And by celebrating, I mean we are continuing to revel in this life we have created with you. To mark the occasion, we got ourselves a picnic basket and we subscribed to a prepared meal service. Yes, this is how we party.
Your mom and I have been married for three years and together for nearly six, so today I think I’ll say a few words about love.
Your mom and I met in the summer of 2016 at a writers conference at Yale, when she was still living in New York City and I was here in California. We met on the first day of the conference while we were both walking to orientation, and we haven’t stopped talking since. We had a long distance relationship for a year, mom moved west in 2017, we got married at the Old Orange County Courthouse in 2019, and suddenly, somehow, six years have gone by, during which you and Apricot have both graced us with your magical presence. There are many facts to fill in on that timeline, places we traveled and your mom’s master’s degree (she’s brilliant) and the friends we’ve made and the adventures we’ve had. But love often blurs the details. It can muddle time and just subsume you with a general warm feeling about life.
Love is perspective and grounding. It’s comfort and strength. Love is laughter and inspiration. Love is lazy on the couch and love is thrilling escapade. Love is knowing how they take their coffee and getting to the train on time. Love is the most right choice you’ve ever made. It’s every crossroads you’ve come to together, knowing you reached the best decision because you didn’t make it alone. Love is saying everything will be okay and knowing everything will be okay.
It took me a long while before I finally found this kind of love in the summer of 2016. Love comes when it comes, and it can’t be forced, or part-time performed, or conjured out of straw. I hope someday you will know love true, in whatever form it takes. Love can be found with romantic partners and it can be found with real friends. On the rarest of occasions, those two overlap. Today I celebrate three years of marriage to your mom, who I’ve known for twice as long. How did all those minutes and hours go by? It’s a blur, but I can say that my life this whole time has been warm and right, through and through.
Last night we ate salmon and green beans and sushi rice at the dining table, and you lay next to us in your little nest on the high chair, and we listened to Bruce and Bob and the Stones and Stevie, and then Talking Heads came on, and it was “This Must Be the Place,” and mom stood up and took you in her arms and danced with you all around the room—"home is where I want to be,” “you got light in your eyes”—and my whole heart melted on the floor. And this is love.