Dear Boy,

I enjoyed my thanksgiving break with you. I'm so glad we could do some things to help my mom and my grandma. I'm glad the kids could have fun with their friends. It was good to see my sisters and the Bordens.  It was nice to have a little break from school.  I'm glad I didn't worry too much about the nursing test. That would have been a waste.  I appreciate your help in getting our room changed around and hopefully less buggish. That's a word. Thanks for more recent walks. I appreciate getting outside and I love wandering (quickly) around little villages.  I like hearing all the water running through the towns around here. I love the old houses, the way people care for them, and even the way people don't care for them. When I see dilapidated buildings I wonder about the people inside them. Are they sick?  Are they addicted to something?  Are they old?  Do they just not care?  Maybe they're poor?  I feel so heartbroken for people. Maybe I project my own experience onto them, but I have the feeling that most people are struggling, that life isn't hard for only a few, but probably most. I feel so weary from it. I hear about people all over the world losing their homes and their lives to disasters of all varieties. I read about people trying to escape violence with their families and finding nowhere safe that will welcome them.  I see so much sickness and sadness in the hospital and it reminds me of the sickness and sadness plaguing my own life.  And it all just breaks my poor little heart.  Well sorry for that tangent. The snow sure is beautiful and all of the new Christmas decorations sure are cheery. I'm so proud of Nolan that he has taken the initiative to improve his room.  It's cute that he even put out some Christmas items in there.  I hope eventually all of our kids will grow into people who enjoy cleanliness and order, who will voluntarily contribute in the home and who will pick up their own trash and dirty socks.  What a dream, huh?  

 I love you.  You're the best thing in my life. 

L

Dear L,

On this day of gratitude and Thanksgiving let me just say that I'm incredibly grateful for you. So very grateful. I don't even know what the right words are to express how grateful I am for you. I suspect that there just aren't words . . .
It's 4:30 on the morning of Thanksgiving and I'm awake and alone downstairs getting the fire going again. I had planned to sleep-in with you today, but the house felt a bit chilly and I remembered how cold it's supposed to be today so I decided I probably ought to come down and get the fire going again before it got any colder and while there were still coals to work with.
I wanted to sleep-in with you because I'm not a big fan of the disparate nature of our sleep habits. I don't like that I fall asleep so suddenly and without warning once evening sets in. I am sorry every time that happens. And I know that you say that you've just come to expect it, but that doesn't mean I have to like it. Though I will say that I've been trying, lately, to better accept myself for who I am and not wait for who I want to be or who I think I ought to be. After all the old saying is that happiness is not in a destination, but in a journey.
So I've been trying to find less fault in myself. To stop being jealous of the things I'm not and like the things that I am.
Oh, but I am growing out my stubble to be sexier :)
I hope that last bit made you smile, because I absolutely love to think of you smiling.
It's tough for me to see you down.
Like yesterday.
I feel so helpless at those times.
I hope that I'm at least some measurable comfort to you on nights like that. I love you so much. And if there's anyway I can better support you please let me know.
So Happy Thanksgiving to you! I hope it's a day of happiness. I hope you enjoy watching the parade for the first time in years. I hope you enjoy that I got supplies for a meat-cheese-cracker platter like I always had growing up. And I even got the chicken-in-a-bisket crackers of my youth :) They may be disgusting, but if so I also got Ritz crackers.
Again, let me just emphasize how much I love you. How grateful I am for you. And though I'm alone downstairs right now, I am so very grateful to know that you and our four children are warm and safe and at peace in this house in your beds.
You are every greatest moment of my life! You are a part of every moment of my life!

.PtB

Dear Boy,

It turns out life is a lot harder than I ever expected. I feel like it's completely broken me. I don't even know what to do with that. I just keep going, you know? I do as much as I can, but I often feel like I would be capable of so much more if I wasn't so on the brink of crumbling constantly. So then I just keep going.  To be sure, there are good parts of living, too. I am so grateful to spend every day with you. I love our four super awesome, unique kids. I feel so good outside among plants and beneath the sky.  Autumn is colorful and fragrant. I look forward to a cozy winter beside a wood fire. I am glad to finally be working toward a goal that I chose for myself.  I feel comfortable with whatever faith I've salvaged from the wreckage of that mess. I'm grateful to be of some bit of help to my mom and my grandma. This little corner of the world we've made home the past many years is so comfortable and feels so safe. There are so many good things. Thankfully, I am surrounded by them, because all of it helps me to keep it together. It being myself. 

Thanks for doing this with me. Thanks for all of the late night walks recently. Thanks for all the million things you do in our home for me and our kids.  Thanks for somehow remembering so many details that I forget -memories from long ago and current tasks like Auby's antibiotics and changing the cars' oil. And on and on. You're amazing. I'm sorry that you are frustrated by yourself frequently. I wish I could take that from you. I'm frustrated with myself often, too. So, I guess we're just two peas in a pod. Ha ha. 

L

Dear L,

Life sure is different, huh?
Like no one and nothing really prepared me for what it was like to actually be an adult. I feel like the first eighteen years of life are lived in a rather sheltered manner that it I, in reality, fairly similar from birth through 18. Simeon else provides your food. Your shelter. Your nearly everything. And, yes, school and parents make vague allusions to what is actually coming for us, but nothing really prepared me for the weight and reality of it all.
Not really.
And this isn't me complaining.
Just thinking.
And I know that I keep most of my thinkings to myself, but I'd like to think I'm tying to do better about sharing them with you.
So my thinking today is just that in the most personal of respects I've felt rather adrift for a decade now. I know who I am as a husband and friend. I know myself as a father. But as an individual . . . I seem to have lost track of exactly what the definition of me is. And your comment from the other day wasn't too far off I don't think.
You said that it seemed like I'd given myself over entirely to an identity that only used to be a part of me. A part that has now seized control and become an entirety. You referenced my time at CFCU and our move to the East and how that may have acted a catalyst to this change. And I suppose that may be true.
Here's what I would say: I think that somehow, somewhere along the way I either lost or gave up on a lot of things. There could be any number of reasons for this. But in short I'd summarize by saying that being an adult took me off guard. I suddenly found myself caring for others (ie. our family) more than I ever cared for myself alone. And I rather rashly abandoned many of my plans and ambitions in favor of our family. And while I have certainly never regretted favoring our family first, I do think (in retrospect) that I could have handled that shift much better.
You've often said that I'm a bit too black and white about things.
All or nothing.
And I suppose I chose my family as the All and that left room for nothing else in my young mind.
Which led us here.
With no plans.
No job.
And a rough few years.
Through it all you and our children have been such a source of happiness and joy to me. I love you all so much. I feel so very blessed every morning I wake up.
But the life of an adult has always meant a lot of time away from my family. And for a while it meant that time was spent and CFCU. And even now that means time is spent at INHS.
And there's not a lot for me at either place.
Not really.
I mean I love the people I've worked with.
And I love that what I do now is truly helping people.
But neither job has ever truly challenged me. Neither has exceptionally interested me. And so I think that what happened was that I became focused on excelling. On being the best. At everything I was asked to do.
And I would not so humbly say that I've pretty well succeeded. I'm good at what I do. At anything I do.
Anything.
Puzzle solving at its best, right?
I've solved them all.
But the truth is that being the best isn't the point. Right?
The point is only to be the best at being yourself. Whatever that may mean.
Happiness isn't in being the best.
Happiness isn't in solving the puzzle.
Happiness is in the puzzling.
Not the solving.
For sure it feels good to excel. Accolades are nice. And a reputation can go to one's head like a drug.
But it's fleeting.
And what lasts is if I can wake up and just be happy. Whether I succeed or fail at solving the days' puzzle. Because it should be enough that I had the day to begin with.
Another day with you.
And with our kids.
And with myself.
And perhaps if I can really embrace that. If I can let go of my need to solve every puzzle. Then perhaps I'll feel a little less adrift. A little less confused and frustrated with myself.
I'm smiling to myself, sitting here in the library and thinking of you. I think I rambled a lot here, but I'm not going to go back through it to proof read. It just is what it is. My thoughts. From my head and heart as they flooded out of me. And I think my thoughts and points grew rather murky and less poignant along the way, but I just wanted to share something with you.
I love you.
You're the best part of every day.
I absolutely love every bit of you.

.PtB

Dear Lady,

Well that was an awesome flight. It's been a long time since I was on a plane for that long. Probably not since we flew out west together.
And I'll begin by admitting that I didn't spend a lot of time gazing out my window. On a five hour flight there's only so much window gazing that one can do. So I spent most of the time watching movies on my iPad (which is now dead, along with the portable charger, and my headphones :) For a lot of that flight we were at 38,000 feet, so al I could see out my window anyway was clouds. And it was strange because the world looked green when I left the ground, but then after hours of flight wherein the world was blanketed in clouds we finally reached a clear patch of sky and . . . Wow, the entire world had turned brown. It was crazy! I'm not sure where we were, but everything was desert and treeless. It was a very strange contrast. Now that we've arrived in California, however, it's become an interesting blend of greens and browns.
And San Francisco has a crazy amount of watery-neighborhoods. I suppose that isn't too surprising given proximity to the ocean, but I hadn't ever thought about it before.
Want to hear something cool (I suppose this presupposes that you didn't think the other things I'd said were cool . . . )? I'm not sure why it happened, but they changed my seat assignment at the last minute so I moved up on the plane. I ended up with more leg room, a courtesy blanket (which I kept as a souvenir), and a full lunch for free! And not just like a drink and pretzels—I got lasagna, fruit, and cheesecake! What!?
Unfortunately I didn't realize the whole lunch thing until I'd already eaten the sandwiches I packed . . . oh well.
Anyway, we're about to take off again, but may all these letters serve as a reminder to you if my love and if how often you are what's on my mind and in my heart.
You are everything to me.

.a boy

Dear Boy,

It's time to get ready for swim lessons. I never fell asleep. Stinker. I had a hard time staying lucid on my way home. We stopped at Wegmans in Geneva to break up the trip and it was closed!!  Not a 24 hour store. That was crazy. Auburn slept in this morning. We were waiting for her to get up so Sam could take a nap. Eventually we went in to wake her up around 8:15. I finally started to fade around 9, but then the dogs woke up Sam.  Sam went back to sleep but I never did and now it's 10. 

I think it's okay, though. We'll have a good day. Our kids are fun and are good most of the time. I wish they wouldn't fight. I don't know how to help them change, but for the most part they are kind, helpful, smart, funny little people and I am humbled and honored to be their mom.

I'm glad you like flying. You do a fair amount of it.  I used to like flying. I'm not sure if I would anymore. It's been almost 10 years since the last time I flew. And I remember being a little motion sick, which was new. 

I hope you find some neat, wonderful things in California, even if you're only there for a short time and mostly doing family things. I hope you enjoy time spent with your family and find your relationships with them strengthened from this. 

I miss you. You leave an ache in my heart.

L

Dear Lady,

I can't believe that there are people in the world (like my mom) who don't like flying. I mean I really can't believe it. Flying is incredible. I love everything about it.

The experience, for me, all begins inside the airport—especially in larger airports. I like the hustle and bustle of people everywhere who hail from everywhere. There's an electricity of excitement and potential in an airport and everyone is waiting to take some journey, like dormant (static?) energy waiting to become kinetic.

The next thing I'll say is that I love that walk down the tunnel to the plane. And I love the walk down the tunnel to disembark the plane for that matter. That tunnel is this great moment of buildup before getting your place on the vehicle that will carry you thousands of feet into the air. Or it's the buildup before spilling you back out into the airport at a new destination. It's the metaphorical second act of a movie or play. And I love that feeling.

Finally (though not really finally but just in the interest of time) I love the sensation of being in the air—especially on cloudy days. I love the feeling as the cabin pressurizes and depressurizes as we pass through clouds. I think it's incredible to be lost in blinding white everywhere, and then that moment when you spill out through the cloud bank into clear sky and can look behind you and see the incomprehensible size of the cloud masses behind you. And I love when the clouds are just below us, and I can watch us skipping along above them, marshmallow mountains at our feet.

Yep. I love flying. I had and felt and experienced all of these things already today and I've only been on one flight so far!

I do love you.
I miss you.
I can't wait to see you again.
You are everything to me.
I absolutely love to travel and to fly,
but I will take your company over any flight any day.

.a boy

Dear Lady,

I miss you.
I love to travel,
but I miss you when I'm gone.
I hope your drive back home went alright, and that Sam (as well as the rest of the kids) behaves for you today. I hope you're able to get a morning nap while he naps. I hope you're happy today. I hope you smile and laugh and have fun with those wonderful kids of ours. I know they can be a handful a lot of the time, but most of the time I feel like I have kids who are so much better than I feel I deserve. They are incredible kids. Thank you for sharing them with me.

If I'm being honest I must admit that I certainly still don't talk as openly and as often as I would like with you. I am trying to do better, incrementally, and I hope you can see that. I'd like to confide more of myself in you and keep less of myself caged up in my own head. Even if it's sharing the same conversations with you that I have with myself (over and over), I still want you to be a part of that, because you are a part of me.
I hope you know that.

I love you so much.
I miss you so much.
I can't wait for Saturday night.

.a boy

Boy,

I keep reading your last letter.  The compassion you extend to me is so astounding and overwhelming and comforting. I just bask in it.  Thank you for loving me as I was and as I am. If that isn't unconditional, I don't know what is.  Your constancy has given me the confidence to grow and change, to strike out on this journey, to ask questions, to find a home with ambiguity and always know I can come back to you. Thank you for being in my life. Thank you for all you teach me about love, service, patience, observance, work, trust, faithfulness. Thank you for wrapping me in your arms and holding my hand and being my comfort. I love you.  

The thing about being real for me is that it's not something I've ever been good at.  It's always easiest to do that in writing. Words on a page don't betray emotion nearly as much as a voice and a face do. I have a very hard time making myself talk out loud about what's really in my heart or weighing on my mind.  I'm not good at exposing my vulnerability but I'd like to be better.  I suspect sometimes that you hold back, but maybe I'm wrong.  I'd like to talk more with you, but I don't even know where to start. I think I worry about being misunderstood or discovering that the things which are very heavy to me are inestimably light weight to you.  Or maybe I worry that everything is heavy to me. That's not your problem, it's mine, but I recognize that if it's my problem that makes it ours. So yes, let's talk more somehow. 

L

Dear Lady,

I'd usually never spend such a time between finding one of your letters and responding to your letter . . . it's just that this last letter from you was one of the most beautiful, personal, at-times-heartbreaking, and comforting you've ever written. I felt that it amounted to an intimacy I was only too privileged to receive. And I didn't want to respond in haste.
I wanted to read your letter.
And then I wanted to read it again.
And again.
And again.
In fact I've lost count of how many times I've read your letter.
Thank you for trusting me enough to write it.
Here's my reply:

I love you.
I have loved you for fourteen years.
You are not the same girl I fell in love with.
And yet you are that same girl I fell in love with. It's just that you've become so much more than her alone. You have become so much stronger. You've become so much more fascinating. So much more beautiful.
And when I speak of your beauty I hope you can gauge the depth my words may not reach on their own. I hope you know I love your body. Your physique. Your face. Your touch. And everything I can see with my eyes. But I hope you also know that I love your mind. Your heart. Your patience. And everything I can't see with my eyes, but feel strengthening my every moment. Day to day.

Now I want to say something meaningful, and personal, and on-par with your last email, but find that I simply lack the eloquence of spirit and character to match you. My spiritual journey has been different from yours. Of course it goes without saying that we each wander our own spiritual path in the end. It's just that while my path was less-orthodox (or, actually, not-orthodox at all) when I was younger and has become more so as an adult, yours has followed the opposite—growing less orthodox with time.
Is that a fair summary?
I don't mean to measure quality one way or the other.
I love you and your journey. I'm blessed to be here and to be a part of that journey. It's caused me to take more time to pause, and breathe, and consider my own thoughts and conclusions and actions and measure them out more carefully before imparting them to others. I know I still have room to grow and to mature and to understand God and His Son. Thank you for all you've done to help me on my own spiritual path. I could not have been where I am without you having been who you are. And I hope and pray every day that who I am is always kind and patient and loving and supportive of not only you, but of everyone. And I hope that your example continues to inspire and strengthen me to be a more complete individual.

Can I just ask one thing?
Can we become better at talking with each other?
Like, for real?
I can't tell you how it breaks my heart to consider you struggling alone with those things that troubled you. How I wish I could redo those years for you, and to have provided you with more confidence in myself. To have somehow carried myself in a way that assured you in my confidences. I hope and pray that I can be that person now. I hope that you need never be concerned that my thoughts and actions will ever be anything other than loving, supportive and intrigued by every last thought, care, and concern that is a part of you.
I love you so much.
I love you now more than I've ever loved you before.
And I'll love you more again tomorrow.
And this love has nothing to do with who you may or not be. Or with what you may or may not believe.
My love for you is only ever concerned with who you are. And if who you are is willing to let me love you then I will. For now and for always. And I promise you that this love will only grow, each and every day.
Just allow me to love you.
That's all I'll ever ask.
That's all I need.
Let me know your thoughts. Your loves. Your dislikes. Your concerns. Your hopes. Your dreams. And I'll do a better job of sharing mine with you.
I just want to talk with you.
And help you feel my love in the confidences I place in you.
From the very first time you opened up to me you've become my sacred space.
You are my sanctuary.

.PtB



Sent from my iPad

Hi Boy,

You asked me a while ago if I felt lonely at church (still? anymore? -don't remember) and I told you I don't. I've thought about the longer answer to that and kind of wanted to share it with you. 

I still participate in church because you do and I think of it as the unwritten agreement in our marriage. I have kicked against this sometimes and at times felt like in being married to you, I was also married to the church and that felt like a trap, but over the past two-ish years, I've come to the conclusion that even if it weren't for outside pressure to stay in, I would still choose to. Now I stay for the sense of community, the opportunities to serve, the times when I feel a call to something higher, and the good framework it gives my kids.  I am grateful for the foundation I was given because of my childhood and young adulthood as an orthodox member.  

There are truth claims made in the church that I still believe in.  They aren't the ones that most Mormons point to when they bear testimony, but I still think they would be valid if I were to get up and testify of them in a meeting.  They are things like the sanctity of service, the importance of looking out for one another, the teachings to follow Jesus, the beauty and even divinity of families, the necessity of sacrifice to a meaningful life, and the duty we have to care for our families and love all people.  There are other things that I can't say I "know" with certainty, but that I still have a deep hope in.  Maybe most members of the church need to "know" the typical truth claims about scriptures, restoration, ordinances, priesthood, etc. in order to stay involved and in some ways, I think that's the expectation, but I don't feel like it's necessary; at least I hope it's not. 

I struggled for many years as my belief in those things morphed and meant new (non-literal, unorthodox) things to me. I struggled because I could see clearly that, more and more, I didn't fit the mold anymore and I didn't know if I could belong with my new type of belief. Honestly, there were many church meetings and trips to the temple that I sat through where the words to Radiohead's "Creep" played in my head on repeat. "I'm a creep. I'm a weirdo. What the hell am I doing here?  I don't belong here.... I don't belong here... I don't belong here...."  Those were some painful, sad, awful years made infinitely more so because I was in it all alone.  It was a lot of destruction and carnage within my soul for a while there before I reached a point where I could start to rebuild. 

It's in the rebuilding that I have become comfortable with myself and sitting anywhere, including church, again.  There may be a litmus test of belief and practice to enter the temple, but there isn't for participating in the community.   If we're all building something good together, then it shouldn't matter how we all arrived here or why we continue to stay. Hopefully I'm not the only one who feels this way. 

Thanks for being patient with me all this time.  Thank you for loving me and withholding judgement.  I have no words for what your gracious response has meant to me.  I love you. 

Lady

Dear L,

Thank you.
Just thank you.
What else is there to say to someone who is no longer just someone, but who has become a part of your very soul and being? Is thank you enough? Is thank you even appropriate?
You have become as natural a part of me as breathing. And does one say thank you to their brain? Or lungs? Yet the way you move in my life and heart and soul seems somehow beyond even breathing. Beyond everything.

. . .

Yes, I had a birthday this week. I'm 36. I've lived for 36 years, and all I can think right now is how very much I regret those 22 years when your life was not entwined with mine.
Oh how I wish to have lived your childhood with you! To have loved that little curly haired girl for her whole life!
Though, let's be honest: we met at the right time. I've said it before, but the me that was me before you was definitely not the guy you would have been friends with (and knowing your school work ethic, as I do, I can't see that old version of me going out of his way to hang out with you . . . ) Somehow we just have to accept the time we get and make the most of it.
I suppose this last thought could always and forever define my relationship with you: happy to just get whatever time I'm given with you. Do you remember me saying that to you so very long ago? That night when you told me there'd been someone else in your life? Someone who was very far away at the time? Someone who so many had told you to tell me about? That someone I'd known about since that night I showed up to ask you on that first date, and seen his pictures all over your room.
Still, I asked you out.
And that night when you finally had the courage to tell me about him I told you that I'd known all along. That I'd always supposed you might, at some moment, realize this was all a mistake and return to him. And I told you that I didn't care. I told you that I was still there because of you. Because you are such an important person in the history of the world that I was willing to take whatever time I was given. Even if you were ultimately going to go back to him, I was happy to have whatever time you would give me.
And how happy I've been to have all this time that you've given to me.
To have shared your life with me.
For your life to have become my life.
You have no idea the peace and love you are to me.
There is very much, anymore, that can truly bother me.
All I need is a few moments in your arms and everything is fine.
Everything is beautiful.
So thank you for that.
Just thank you.

.PtB

Dear Boy,

It's your birthday!  Shout hooray!  Or wish everyone else a happy birthday. Whatever you want. It's your birthday. 

For your birthday, we have running water. And a warm fire. And some snow. And birthday sex. And our cozy little family. And one-eyed Sammy. And a lot of toys in our bed. And a super late night with our friends who didn't know it was your birthday. I feel bad/awkward about that. And cheesecake. And neat new headphones. 

I hope you know how very much I care for you. You are everything to me. You have really made my life. You are the thing of my life. If you were all I ever got, that would be fine. You, alone are enough to have made this worth doing. And I can't thank you enough for that. 

I have so much confidence in you. I can pick up where you lack confidence, because I trust that you will and already have done great things. I see you and know that you have an exorbitant amount of strengths and a whole lot of good about you. You are capable of more than the average Joe. And I love to be here to watch you. And I have loved the experience of watching you over the years as you figure yourself out. I have loved growing up with you. I expect that we will keep discovering and growing forever. That is what eternal progression means, I think. 

So, here's to 36 years on this earth. I hope you have enjoyed it as much as I have (though I'm short a couple years).  I hope you will always find the curious and beautiful and worthwhile things. And I hope you will always share what you find with me. 

Happy Birthday

L