(Extra)-Ordinary Romance
After we wrapped up dinner last night, my husband Austin and I sat down at the recently cleaned-off table with pens and paper to write each other letters to exchange on Valentine’s Day. Tonight, after a homemade dinner of pasta, we’ll exchange the letters. It’s a tradition we’ve built over the years, through the circumstance over our now five Valentine’s Days together, and one that I deeply cherish.
I know that Valentine’s Day has a high level of cringe to it, but I’m a romantic mush, so I’ve always loved it, not just since Valentine’s Days that I’ve spent with Austin. Growing up it was a time to create valentines for my family and walk into the kitchen to see it decked out in pink and red ribbons and paper hearts. As an adult, it was an excuse to bake and decorate cookies for family and friends and appreciate all the loved ones in my life. First as a girlfriend, then as a fiance, and finally as a wife, it’s a time to celebrate our relationship. As much as Valentine’s Day is a Hallmark holiday, I find it also deeply meaningful, as every year it invites to me reflect on what’s behind, and appreciate what’s ahead, all while falling ever deeper in love.
Since last Valentine’s Day, our lives have changed so much — we’ve lost a pregnancy, changed jobs, moved, and gotten pregnant again. We’ve shared big moments and grand gestures. Yet it’s the simple, common expressions of love that remind me how deep and wide and broad our love is. Like when Austin would rub my back and bring me a glass of water as I vomited in the bathroom throughout my first trimester. Or when we find a quiet moment to lie back and try to feel our baby bouncing around inside me. Or when I read and give feedback on Austin’s articles for his blog. Or even things as mundane as cooking dinner, putting away our laundry, or cleaning our apartment, together. It’s these common, ordinary parts of life where our romance truly lies, where it has always been.
We’ve always loved the simple moments — so much so that when Austin proposed, he did so without pretense or scene setting. I simply turned around from washing the dishes and there he was on one knee. It wasn’t because he was lazy or didn’t care for romance. Rather, Austin wanted to propose to me in the place where we fell in love, the place where we shared so many memories together, in his apartment after making dinner together. Our Valentine’s Day dates have always been at home - for one reason or another - until it became a tradition, but these simple at-home date nights were always deeply special. When I say simple moments, it feels like a misnomer, because as simple as moments like that were, they were far from simple in meaning. That’s the real mystery and beauty of love. It’s both perfectly simple and deeply complex.
It’s through these simple, though powerful, moments, that I can see the evolution of our love. People talk about the “honeymoon phase,” or about how the feeling of “falling in love” fades and how loving your spouse is something we chose to do each day. Yet, I’d argue that we continue to fall in love with each other. It’s different than those early days, our engagement or early in our marriage, but in ways that are beyond my ability to express fully. We were perfectly, deeply, incandescently in love then, and yet somehow, we’re all the more now. I know it when Austin calms my panic attacks over the baby in the middle of the night. I feel it in the way we clean the kitchen together while talking about our respective work that day. Somehow, each day I love this man, and his compassionate, generous heart all the more. I adore his mind, his passion for the world around him, and the way there are never enough answers to all the questions in his head. It’s evident in our smiles, in the way that we look into each other’s eyes, that this love, the beautiful, heavenly thing that knit us together, that perfects us every day, is always deep and complete, and yet the next day, is somehow, miraculously deeper still. It takes our ordinary life, and makes each and every moment extraordinary, just as it’s taken us, ordinary people, and made us extraordinary.
So I sit here, late in the afternoon, awaiting Austin’s arrival home from work, pondering. Pondering not only the past, but the future, and how different this day will look next year and all the years ahead, as we share our love with our child. A child no longer within my womb, but here, with us, with its babbles and cries and needs and snuggles and laughs. I can’t wait to share my love for this cheesy holiday with them, decorate our kitchen with paper hearts, and have them help me bake seasonal snacks. Life is full of big moments and milestones, of plans and bucket list items. Life is equally full of the simple moments, the mundane acts of romance, and they’re the reason that I love Valentine’s Day, and why every year we exchange letters and cherish them forever.
