On This, The Tenth Year

On our one-month dating anniversary, we went to prom together. I wore my hair up and a pink princess dress. We rode in a black limo with glowing lights on the ceiling, and we held hands and imagined they were stars.

On our two-year dating anniversary, we got all dressed up and went to dinner. Our waiter gave us a lily from one of their floral arrangements, and then we drove out to the lake like we used to in high school. Just to lay in the back of the truck bed and eat peppermint patties and gummi bears, and look at the real stars.

On our third dating anniversary, you bought me a huge bouquet of pink and yellow lilies. I took them back to Oklahoma with me, and they lived on my dresser for weeks, and looking at them made me smile and miss you at the same time. It feels like some other lifetime that we spent so long so far apart.

A few months before our fifth dating anniversary, you dropped to one knee in the middle of my living room. We decided to savor that moment for ourselves for a few hours, before we called everyone we loved. Elliott kept trying to eat my engagement flowers.

Just after our sixth dating anniversary, I peeked. I held your hand around the wall of the church, but I needed to see you before I walked down the aisle, and so I peeked and didn't say anything. You got choked up when you said your vows, but I couldn't stop smiling at you as you held my hands in yours.

On our second wedding anniversary, we got cupcakes from the bakery that made our wedding cakes, and went back to the bed and breakfast we went to after our wedding. We sat on the floor with our plates resting on the cooler we'd brought from home, and cut those enormous cupcakes in half so we could share both flavors as French music twinkled in the background.

And as our fourth wedding anniversary comes closer, I think about this: that today, I've been yours for 10 years. That I hope for ten … no, fifty … no, A HUNDRED more years of laughing with you, being silly with you, holding you and having the most wonderful life with you.

To many more!