I love you to the moon and sideways, forever and always.
Birthdays by candlelight. Raspberries on noses. A kiss under a wide black hat. The shoreline where I first understood the word home. Here is a small handful of the moments I keep folded close.
A Stolen Kiss
Flowers in HandThe ShorelineYour family is wonderful. I feel so lucky not only to have found you as a partner, but to have found your family — our family — through you.
They made me feel so welcome and included, and it means more to me than I can say.
A table set for two at the edge of the world. Tiki torches, lanterns, crocheted lace under our plates. The sky going from blue to gold to ink, and you in the middle of all of it.
You are radiantly beautiful, truly. There have been times when you stood before me, awash in sunlight with your eyes glittering, that have forever been cemented in my memory. Your lips as soft and fine as summer rain, your hair flowing in the sea breeze, your smile when you look at me lovingly. The world is washed away by your mere glance.
You taught me how to love myself again. You taught me how to trust people again. You taught me how to live again. I could have more easily told you the nature of our stars — brilliant burning firestorms soaring through infinity without a sound — than I could how I was feeling. You showed me a quieter language.
They met on the sunny face of a mountain, ushered together by their friends amidst rolling tree-topped hills and fields of clover. For the first time in untold generations, the prince of the wandering no longer felt lost. The princess had given him the one thing she had that he could never otherwise obtain — a land to call home.
You are about to do the most extraordinary thing a person can do. You already are.
Watching you carry our little one has been the holiest year of my life. Every day you become more yourself, and somehow also more. I cannot wait to meet the person we made — and to spend the rest of my life loving the two of you.
A small moment, kept on tape
And then there were three.
We got married. We had a son. We named him Oren. Everything we thought we knew about love quietly rearranged itself, and made room for something even bigger.
The first time I saw you hold him, I understood what every poem had been trying to say.
You became a mother the way you do everything — fully, fearlessly, and with a softness that I will spend my life trying to deserve. He is the best of us both, and somehow already entirely himself.
“Loving you was the chapter that taught me how to love him. Loving him is the chapter that taught me how much more there was in you.”
Forehead-to-forehead on a sheepskin in the afternoon light. A first dip of tiny toes into a turquoise sea. A pumpkin hat in autumn. The first frog pajamas. The grin that broke us both wide open.
A striped hospital hat. A red string on your wrist. A swaddle the color of sea glass. The first tongue stuck out at the world. We brought him home and the whole house seemed to lean in to listen.
Some evenings are made of nothing but breath, and a little body warm against yours. These are the ones we'll remember longest.
First snow under tiny boots. First silly hat. First golden hour on your shoulders. First time in the clouds, watching the world get small. We get to see all of it twice — once through our eyes, once through his.
Picnic blankets on the grass. Tiny hands meeting tiny hands. You laughing in the middle of it, the way you laughed the first night I met you — like the world is a wonderful joke and we're lucky to be in on it.
Chapter one was finding you. Chapter two is becoming a family with you. I cannot wait for the rest of the book.
And above all — my love for you stretches farther than the furthest moon.
To be with you is to my greatest honor. Happy Birthday, Noa. You are my favorite story.