March 28, 2022

My dearest,

We must be getting older for the years are beginning to blur together. Which year did we first visit Japan and which year was our last trip there? Our friends get married, have children or plan to, and we can’t remember the ages of these little ones (or their genders, for that matter, in some instances).

Yet the years have been kind to us, more than generous. We are happy and safe, healthy and strong, protected and peaceful, which might all anyone needs.

These days we plan for the future, for our retirement. Some would laugh at us; we’re too young for that, surely? Yet your passion for calculating and recalculating how much we have saved and how much we must save, yes, that is passion and a passion I understand now, more and more.

Marriage is more than a bed but an investment in a life together, in shared interests and in sustained pursuits, in sacred time alone with each other, in building the future as participants and as partners, day by day, month by month and year by year.

It has been seven and seven years now that we have been constructing our shared lives, our many, many journeys and our magnificent destinations.

How fair and unlined our faces were when we first met! Now we have prized wrinkles appearing where none were before, each telling a tale of its own, each a precious memory:

When we hiked the length of the Tongariro Crossing in a single day, and my thighs cramping up in the last few miles, and how you ran ahead to get our rental car before they locked up the parking bay. We were both weary but you trudged ahead, making sure we would always have a way home.

When I was teasing and chatting with boisterous Peruvian kids in the dusty town of Pukara and then had to turn around to look for you. There you stood looking at the orange-red streets and the umber-ochre houses with their crumbling walls and you told me later your soul remembered this place, in a former life. I never laughed for I believed you and more than that, I was happy we came here. (I never told you this, and now I have.)

When we were in the jeep near the lake in Namibia, waiting for the lion to stir from his slumber on the banks. Then suddenly a flurry past our windows. A lioness chasing another lioness, a younger one not from her pride. We never saw them; they came out from the grove of dark skeleton trees. How thrilling! And how glad were we to have witnessed this together, if only because no one would have believed us otherwise. You are always my favourite alibi.

When I sat at the edge of the cliff at Preikestolen and how you told me to hold on to something, to not fall off, please. I’m glad I didn’t fall off and I’m glad I did it, if only never to do it again. What was I thinking? You barely scolded me though; which was sweeter and kinder than I deserved.

When we first ate ramen in a proper ramen-ya, queueing up behind patrons who were still busy slurping their noodles and their soup. How claustrophobic it was! And how you rushed me to quickly finish taking photographs; you were embarrassed. And how just a year later, when we were back in Tokyo, it was I who had to wait for you as you fussed over the perfect shot. Our tables keep turning; this is how we dance with each other.

When you won money at the slot machine in a casino in Macao, the clatter of digital coins tumbling into a bucket our applause. The look of glee on your face, that is joy I want you to always have, that is happiness I always want to be present for.

When we ran out into the snowstorm, our ears freezing as we dipped in the hot baths, the mountain range of Ushuaia around us, the grey shape of Antarctica in the distance, reminding us this is the furthest south we had ever been.

But also that it doesn’t matter if we were north or south, east or west. Whether we have scaled the highest mountain or sailed the deepest sea. What matters is that we are together and happy, that we have been for seven and seven years, and with love and fair fortune, for many, many more.

Yours, ever and always.