All Wrapped Up

It was a typ­i­cal evening for us dur­ing our first months of dat­ing. We’d spend hours at Bor­ders play­ing cards and laugh­ing. Laugh­ing because I kept beat­ing him at his own game. Today I couldn’t win a game if my life depended on it. I’m begin­ning to be sus­pi­cious that he used to let me win. We fin­ished up another game. The night was dark, but the city lights shined brightly through the win­dows as we peered out onto Michi­gan Avenue. He looked over at me, “Let’s sit here until they kick us out.” I laughed at him and blew him off, “No way! Come on, let’s go.” He refused to get up and some­how con­vinced me to stay sit­ting there with him.

The employ­ees at Bor­ders started com­ing around pick­ing up books that were left behind. The announce­ment rang through the inter­com that the store would be clos­ing in five min­utes. As every minute ticked by, I became more and more uncom­fort­able. I almost gave up when the friendly employee came to remind us that the store was now closed. But Vitaliy didn’t budge. He made us sit there and wait until they lit­er­ally asked us to leave.

That should have been the red flag for me. A big loud warn­ing sign of what my future would hold. Could this have been some kind of ini­ti­a­tion with him? I’d think it was except for the fact that I’m still being tested all the time and we’re four years into our marriage.

As often as this leaves me with knots in my stom­ach, it’s actu­ally one of the things that I admire most about Vitaliy. He is com­pletely free. Some days I’m like a lit­tle kid — wish­ing I could grow up and be like him. I’ve never expe­ri­enced life the way I have with him.

This past week­end in Tahoe it was about 59 degrees out­side. I had three lay­ers of cloth­ing, a hood over my head, and a scarf wrapped around my neck. And this was Vitaliy.

Babes, I’m so thank­ful that you refuse to allow me to stay wrapped up in all my rules and reg­u­la­tions. You’ve peeled layer after layer off of me the past few years as you chal­lenge me to live each day freely. I’m thank­ful that today we get to cel­e­brate your birth­day because it means I have another year ahead to finally grow up to be like you.

Happy Birth­day, Vitaliy. I love you so much.