Valentine’s Day
Posted by Richard | Filed under Richard
Hi Readers! Arianne did a Groundhog day post… so I’m gonna do a Valentine’s day post: This one’s for my wife
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Dear Jane,
When this gets posted we’ll have been married 354 days. We’ll have known each other for 1,689 days.
It’s hard to write out what you mean to me. I hold your hand on the subway, and I relax. You answer the phone when I tell you I’m running late, and I feel like I’m home. I kiss you while you sleep in the morning before I leave, and I walk as if the wind itself is carrying me to work.
Lots of people have told me that the first year of marriage is a romantic whirlwind. I’m not much of a romantic, so I don’t know if the tornado of my love has swept you off its feet, or anything that dramatic. And it’s been a terrible year for both of us. For ways I can talk of in this letter and ways I can’t. So I haven’t been looking for romance: I haven’t needed a Venus, or a Diana, or a Minerva; I have needed a Juno, and that’s what you have been for me.
You indulged me enough to let me pick the date of our wedding for numerical reasons; more complicated than can be easily explained: and I love you for that.
You gave up your dreams of a grandiose wedding so it would be one we could pay for right away. And when I think of you making that sacrifice, I learn something about love. Over the course of the past two years, I found that my passion about you had turned to love when I stopped dreaming of “me;” when I put away my childish habits, and started to think of “we.”
Now, I’m writing this to you on a finance blog. And love and money are not good partners. Neither love of money, nor money for love, commend themselves as character traits in anyone. Love can be passionate and unpredictable, it can transcend time, culture even sanity. And there is nothing about money that won’t bring you crashing back down to earth in its time: as I have come to learn over the past decade, it is not the stuff that dreams are made of.
But, Jane, I find my life more wonderful about my life with you in it. I find you at the intersection of my dreams and of my reality. Because you are there in my life, we make it work. You make the debts I owe easier to handle, and I hope I do the same for you. And we don’t have a physical building to call our home yet, but I love the one we share in our hearts. Money and love may be different things—but I hope we can always find a way to make it work.
I pray we have many more years together Jane. I pray we’ll live up to our vows, and that we’ll always be honest with each other, and that our hearts will be filled with love.
I have considered many ways to close off this letter, but I’ve been writing it with Hamlet on my mind, so let me close with one last line, and hope that my love can shine for you through the words of another writer:
“Doubt thou the stars are fire;
Doubt that the earth doth move;
Doubt truth to be a liar;
But never doubt I love.”
I give you all my love, that’s all I do,
Richard.
Thirty and married, Richard and his wife, Jane, don’t have kids yet, but are hopeful. Currently renters, Richard and Jane are saving for a place of their own. Richard recently lost his job. “This was a hard blow to take.” He’s since found a new job. Yeah Richard.
February 14, 2012 at 10:43 am
Wow. That brought a tear to my eye. Happy Valentine’s Day!
February 14, 2012 at 12:29 pm
Wow, great letter. And I really hope your love for each other holds you together forever. It truly is a blessing to have a partner in life that loves you for being you. Hold it and cherish it.
February 14, 2012 at 3:57 pm
WOW…those are some very pretty words Richard! Your wife is a lucky lady to have you…and I suspect that you’re a lucky man to have your wife! May your years together be full of love and laughter…and not too many fights about money!
February 16, 2012 at 3:35 pm
RICHARD!!! Ahhh…so has cloning humans become real? That is the sweetest thing in the world of worlds. I can’t believe I’m only getting to read it now. She’s a lucky woman FOR SURE.