How Do I Love Thee...

How Do I Love Thee (Sonnet 43) by Elizabeth Barrett Browning is my favorite love poem. It's fanciful, sweet and youthful. From the first time I read it in freshman English it became a favorite. Like love itself, it's classic.

Tomorrow the hubby and I celebrate our eleventh wedding anniversary. 

Like every anniversary before it, it is both a little surprising and completely expected that we would be here. I can't fathom a world in which we're not a set. Not an Us. I love my husband more than when we were silly kids. To the level of every day's most quiet need, by sun and candlelight. 

I'm not ever going to be one of those people that pretends that marriage is easy or comes naturally. Melding two worlds into one often feels impossible if not a useless defeating act. Where both parties are unfulfilled by the task of endless compromise.  

Other times it feels like you've just fallen in love all over again. You swoon when your partner kisses you or holds your hand. Maybe if you're like me you go around reciting poetry in your head while your heart skips a beat for your beloved.

Mostly, you go about the day to day in a content mood. Muddling though the shit you hate (possibly your job, commute, housework) so that you can make it to the time of day where you get to do the same thing you do almost every night. Enjoying the moments where you get to laugh together, reminisce, and shoot the shit, because at the end of the day you just don't want to be without the family you chose and made together. 

So my dear husband,

I love thee with the breath, smiles, tears, of all my life!--and if God choose. I shall but love thee better after death

Happy Anniversary, here's to many more!