Don’t you wish we were there?!?!  We’ve never deserved it so much.  But I’ve discovered over the past 10 years (where did all THAT time go?) that wherever you are, I am happy there.  No one fills my days as you do, and I am so thankful for your love and trust.  We may not be sitting on that Magen’s Bay beach today, but we’re working toward something really great, and one day, we’ll be back there, better than ever.

It seems so simple to say I love you on this day, but the truth is, I do, and that really says everything.  You make my life matter…here’s to the next 10 years.

“…and now abideth Hope…”

It is a mystery to me how all this happened. We were just kids, wild, gangly dreamers, lost in our own world of horses, poems, beaches, whispered secrets, smoky fires. Through the tumult of youth, the long, crazy nightmare of teen-hood, we were impossibly crazy for each other, drawn by the invisible, overpowering force of longing. It was as if we knew, from the beginning, that this was no summer fling, no exploratory romp in the hay. Something told us that we knew what we were getting into, that there would be no turning back, ever, that there would be no other for either of us. And there was no other, ever. There was only this one unimaginably deep, mysterious love, and it has sustained us.

And now, I hold a whispered midnight secret, look into the face of a dark, lovely mystery, wonder at the depth of our connection. We have built a life, a family, a home…we have it all. But change is in the air, and tomorrow looms uncertain and grand. There is no way to know what the future holds, where the road leads, what the harvest may bring. But with this dark beauty at my side, with this deep well from which to draw, with my dearest friend with me always, I can, and will, go anywhere, do anything.

I am eternally grateful for so many things: life, health, wonderful children, prosperity, good friends and family…but there is no relationship, no possession, no dream so fulfilling to me as my life with Hope. She is everything, and if every glittering jewel in my life were to disappear, and she remain, I would count myself a rich, whole man.

I love you, Hope. Thank you for a wonderful life.

If ever there was a way to make a statement, to testify to the entire seeing world that something’s going on with you, that a tempest is growing inside and will soon have its way with the world…it must be the tattoo.

This, my friends, is my statement. No doubt the range of responses to this action will vary widely. But let me make it very clear that this action, this permanent declaration, means something to me, something very deep and mysterious. Things are changing, life is changing, people are changing. And I embrace change. Let it come to us all in myriad ways, and let us be the better for it.

If you know me well at all, you should get most of the significance of this tattoo. For you newbies, let me sum it up like this. I recently explained the concept of the compass to Emma (my seven year old) like this: “It helps you find your way home.” I have realized lately, as Hope and I celebrate 9 incredible years of marriage, that no matter where I go, or what I do, or who believes in me, wherever Hope is, there is my home. In a sense, I can never be lost, for no matter how far afield the pursuit of my dreams leads me, I know that this dark-haired beauty will be with me, making life wonderful, and feeding the fire in my soul. Many things are likely to change, drastically, in the coming months…how wonderful to know that some things, some loves, will never disappear, regardless of place or time.

In the morning,
I will slip from your room
With the smell of you in my head –
Pass like a breath from your bed –
Knowing the creak of it will not wake you
As you sleep.

You will ignore me as you ought,
Your dream transporting you
Beyond these shadowy walls
Into the blue flickering night of your soul,
Where you dance naked in the field
Beyond the trees,
White as the moon and silently breathless,
Stealing through cornstalks and fence posts
With your toes in the grass disappearing.

Tomorrow, the darkness lifting:
Brushing shoulders with the dawn,
Encountering the east
With a gray smear of twilight,
Lingering like wood smoke
Over the pines
In the pasture I love,
The slow moving river of grass
Yet unsickeled and strong,
Lilting through morning:
Reminds me to turn at the doorway
And witness the last wisp of night light
Fall across your shoulder,
Leaving you as reluctantly as I,
Though leave you we must
And follow the sun westward through day,
Finding our way,
Spending ourselves
In pursuit
Of the end of day breath
And the scent of your breast
In my head
As we lie in the night unfolding.

She haunted me at first, as if from across the Moors.

I was her Heathcliff, and she the edge-dimmed Catherine of my dreams, lilting through the half-light of my sleeping soul.  I thought of her every moment, waking and non-, and found myself in the red-hot love of 18, too young to know what was happening, too entranced to care.

During our days, the torment of adolescence plodded endlessly on, mind-numbingly slow.  There was hardly the idle second with which to speak a word, barely a moment for an unmonitored glance.  Yet in these moments, when at last they were pilfered like a handful of grain by starving children, we spoke volumes in seconds, and wrote poetry on box tops.

And somehow, despite the constant ebb and flow of opinion, in glorious spite of all well-meaning, thoughtless council to “explore your options” and “guard your heart,” somehow, we rose up flaming and beautiful, with feathers of flame and no trace of ash.

We were young when we started, and most of our friends chose different roads, each following the call of his own inner Piper.  Some have met their destiny along the way, some are still looking.  And we, though willing to trade the wild oat-sowing days of an unanchored youth, have discovered the life we so longed for then, and so treasure now.

And I remain haunted by a wisp of a girl, a mere breath of memory, a reminder: that we were once two, dangling from the edges of our dreams, and now, at last, share the air of the living as one quiet soul.