gestures of love...

this week marks 3 years of marriage to my sweet babboo... and over 8 years of dating him.  i can safely say that we've been together for awhile.  it's strange to have 8 y.e.a.r.s. roll off of my tongue and still feel as happy and satisfied as i did when we first started dating... though our love has continued to grow and change over time.

i started writing this blog last month with hopes to post it on valentines day.  but these days... everything takes longer than i think it should.  i'm constantly behind the times (i just sent out thank you notes for some things leif received at christmas time and it's MARCH for goodness sakes!)  so enjoy the fruits of my february labour of love... and the additions that came to it for our anniversary.

valentines day...

i remember always walking around the halls of my high school or church with a wistful longing that some fetching young lad would approach me and profess his undying love and devotion to me... with a handful of roses, of course.  

but it never happened.  

i was just never one of those cool cats.  

you know the ones... the girls who left school on valentine's day afternoon with a hauling of loot from the boys (or A boy).  they'd trapse out of school, carting their vases and balloons, sharing their chocolates with their friends, all with the promise of a wonderful date that evening with their admirer.

me?  

i'd go home, sulk... and drown my sorrows in a box of conversation hearts my mom lovingly set at my place at the table.

and then i'd sigh and think... maybe next year.

now that i'm older and wiser, i know that dudes absolutely hate valentines day... especially my dude... and that the last thing most of them wanted to do was profess their awkward love to some sappy girl on february 14th.  

when i started dating kjaer, i learned that valentines day was just another day to him... and that a man who really loves you makes lots of celebrations of love for you throughout the year.  kjaer has spent the last 8 years of our lives showing me he's loved me by making these gestures in a quieter, less hallmark-y way.

the early days... kind of (2007)

you see, kjaer and i had been friends for about a year and a half before we ever even considered dating.  when we did start dating, it was because there was suddenly an explosion of chemistry that just couldn't be contained.  we had started hanging out quite a bit outside of work.  one december afternoon he walked oh-so-casually down the hall (i always loved watching him saunter) and asked me if i'd like to wake up in the middle of the night and watch a meteor shower with him.  his first grand gesture of many.

here's how you know we were young:

1) we would be meeting at 2 am

2) it was a "school" night (ie - we worked the next day)

i tried not to let him know that i was the least bit excited and very casually said, "sure."

he told me he'd call me and wake me up.

i'd never been so excited in my little boy-adoring life.  here was this handsome guy asking me to rendez-vous in the middle of the night to watch stars, for crying out loud!!!  

AND IT WASN'T EVEN VALENTINE'S DAY!!!!!

when he called to wake me up around 1:30 or so, he glumly explained that the skies were overcast.  "BUT," he told me,  "we have options."  we could go back to sleep or hope that the skies cleared by the time we got out to our viewing spot.  

probably a level-headed person would've said, "oh well, that's too bad." and have gone back to bed.  

but not us. 

we decided to hope for a miracle and i hopped into my car to meet him.  (though i'm sure there was plenty of primping but only enough to make me look like i rolled out of bed beautiful).  when i got to kjaer's he had made a thermos of hot chocolate (!) and had his old jeep cherokee packed with blankets and a telescope.  he ushered me into his car and we took off into the cloudy, blackness of night.  

he drove me out to a desolate field, set up the telescope, cracked open the thermos, wrapped us up in blankets and then we settled in to wait for the stars to emerge from behind the clouds.  while we waited, we talked and scooted closer to each other.  

we waited the entire night for that meteor shower... and it never did make its grand appearance.  but something was ignited on that chilly, fateful night.  the next morning, i found myself rubbing sleep out of my starry eyes while trying to teach a room of 30 second graders.

and i tell you,  i just could not get that boy out of my head.

as the weeks went on, kjaer and i dabbled a little more with the idea of not just being friends... until finally a few weeks later... that handsome man kissed me.   it was the night before christmas eve... affectionately called christmas eve's eve from then on. ( i used to make kjaer celebrate this date as our genisis.  each year he'd call me... and i could tell it was to appease me... to wish me a merry christmas eve's eve.  i appreciated the gesture.  that man knows how to float my boat.)

needless to say, when february rolled around a few months later, i was quite excited to have my own real valentine.  it still felt a little awkward... it was like we were the best of friends who kissed too much and couldn't stop holding hands.  ahhhh.... young love.  but i'll never forget our first valentine's day.  he had just bought his house (now our house) several months prior.  it was a hud home that had been refinished in the saddest way by contractors.  he had purchased it and was in the process (which turned out to be a 2 year process) of gutting and refinishing it himself with the help of his family.  we'd often meet over there early in our relationship to hang out, kiss a little and dream of his bachelor pad.  he'd tell me with great big sweeping gestures which walls would be torn down and where new ones would go, how he'd do this or that to it.  i'd gaze at him in amazement (i still do when i think of all he's done with it) and trip over myself because i was so crazy about him.

so on that first valentine's day he invited me up to the roof of his house for an evening picnic.  we'd spent a lot of time up there already, bundled under blankets (must've been a pretty mild winter that year) watching stars.  so i met him there.  we climbed up the ladder to our perch on the northwest corner, he pulled out our dinner (sub sandwiches and potato chips) and we stayed up there for hours talking, laughing... and probably too much kissing again.  he told me he'd build an observation deck for us, so that our things wouldn't roll off of the roof and we could relax up there.

i still think he plans on building that...

all of this rambling is to say that my man has the most extraordinary ways of showing me he loves me.  he's quieter than most men and he thinks my loud gestures of adoration a tad bit goofy... though i know they are endearing to him.  but he has spent the last 8 years creating countless moments of love that have never been initiated by a greeting card company.  and though he made me a nice dinner on valentine's day this year... its the other 364 days with him that prove to me that i'm undoubtedly loved.

like how he makes me peanut butter french toast every saturday morning while i read aloud from our novel, how he listens to me when i cry and get a teensy bit hysterical over nothing (generally speaking), how he sometimes gets my coffee ready for me while i nurse leif before work (3 tbsp of amaretto cream and 1 tsp of sugar), how he makes me a juice packed full of fruits and veggies everyday for a snack at work, how i find my windows scraped on cold mornings when he's left 1/2 an hour before me.  how he sends me songs and emails throughout the day to let me know he's thinking of me.  how he feeds and waters trooper, even though trooper used to be one of the hardest parts about me to accept.  how he has quietly held me in his strong arms through the happiest and saddest seasons of my life.  how he is constantly compromising his hopes and dreams to make sure that he and i (and our family) are rock solid for years to come.  and how he strives to be a wonderful husband and father each and every day.

his kind of love doesn't show up in the form of roses and chocolate (though he has gotten me flowers a few times... which always emits shrieks of giddy pleasure from me... my old high school self feeling vindicated!) and that's the way i like it.  i'd rather have him romancing me the way he does best... not how the world tells him to do it.

it reminds me a little of the reading from our wedding.... 

"If the old fairy-tale ending "They lived happily ever after" is taken to mean "They felt for the next fifty years exactly as they felt the day before they were married," then it says what probably never was nor ever would be true, and would be highly undesirable if it were. Who could bear to live in that excitement for even five years? What would become of your work, your appetite, your sleep, your friendships? But, of course, ceasing to be "in love" need not mean ceasing to love. Love in this second sense-love as distinct from "being in love"—is not merely a feeling. It is a deep unity, maintained by the will and deliberately strengthened by habit; reinforced by (in Christian marriages) the grace which both partners ask, and receive, from God. They can have this love for each other even at those moments when they do not like each other; as you love yourself even when you do not like yourself. They can retain this love even when each would easily, if they allowed themselves, be "in love" with someone else. "Being in love" first moved them to promise fidelity: this quieter love enables them to keep the promise. It is on this love that the engine of marriage is run: being in love was the explosion that started it."

-- C. S. Lewis

when i reread these words, i feel a healthy sense of pride in the man my husband is.  he is a man of devotion, kindess and has a deep sense of commitment.  a man who understands that our love changes and grows, but it never ceases... and like a garden, it requires constant tending.  i'm so thankful that God has blessed me with him and that he is the head of our family.  

last night kjaer and i celebrated our three years together by going out to dinner where we had our wedding reception and then walking over to the hotel where we promised our lives to each other.  the sage room was set up for a brunch the next morning and vacant, so i dragged him in there, right up to the front where we had said those vows 36 months ago.  

i could feel my heart beating wildly as i nervously looked him straight in the eye, grabbed both of his hands and i said those vows to my valentine again.  because my man deserves grand gestures too.  and if i've learned anything over the course of our love story, it's that loving each other and telling the other so, will never be in vain.  

so... i'll say it every year, just like i did at the end of our wedding.

kjaer...

"if my heart was a compass, you'd be north."

i love you as big as the moon and beyond...

and i'm so glad we have a lifetime of valentine's days... and un-valentine's days... ahead of us.