On this, the dawning of our anniversary, I want to take a few minutes to blog about my amazing husband, the wonderful man that I had the stupendous good fortune to wed ten years ago today.

How do I even begin to convey everything this man is to me? I could take up all the available space given and still only scratch the surface. I guess I could just begin at the beginning......

We knew each in other in high school. In fact, we graduated in the same class. Yet we knew no more about each other than two satellites orbiting the same planet; I knew his name and he knew mine and we knew some of the same people and that was about it. He was already dating S.'s mother at the time; that alone would have been reason enough for us to never speak. She was then and is now one big bad mama-jama. If you valued your skin, and I did, it was safest to avoid even looking at him.

Over the years, I heard things about him here and there....a mutual friend told me when he got married, and I remember hearing about S.'s birth in 1990. I got busy with life, marriage, and child-bearing myself and he didn't cross my path again until after my divorce from J.'s father in 1994.

I was working at a pizza place, living with my mom and trying to raise my daughter. I had enrolled at the local community college and was to begin classes in the fall. Changes were in the wind. And one night I got a phone call that ended up leading to the biggest change of my life. It was him; calling out of the blue, not having seen me since our high school graduation in 1986, to ask me out on a date.

Needless to say, I was blown away. Couldn't have been more surprised if you'd smacked me in the face with a dead fish. I mean, I'd never even had a conversation with this guy. It turns out that he was divorced too, and had been donating at the local plasma center to make ends meet. As the fates would have it, my sister worked at the plasma center, and was all too happy to give him my number when he asked about me. He told me later that he'd had a crush on me in high school; in the cafeteria, he would use the crowded room to stare at me without too much chance of getting caught. He tells me he still has fond memories of a tight, pink angora sweater that I used to wear. I loved that sweater; it was my favorite. It trips me out everytime I think about it that I never knew he looked at me.

That first date was the beginning, and it's never ended. 

I think it was his eyes that I first fell in love with. He has these incredible blue eyes. They have little laugh lines in the corners from where he smiles so much. And when he looks at me with those eyes, in that look that he saves just for me, I feel like the most beautiful woman in the world.

He works with his hands, a painter by trade. His hands are big and warm and capable, up to any challenge. I've seen those hands do everything from fix a car to cradle a tiny baby. The same strong, sure hands that can paint a bedroom in two hours rub me to sleep nearly every night, and I could pick them out of a line-up with hardly a seconds look. Those hands were the second thing I fell in love with.

Each year that flies by brings me a greater contentment. I was so right to marry this man!

He treats each person he meets with equal kindness and respect. He's a loving and creative father; I've written before that he attracts kids like a magnet and his own are no exception. He's always the one that has to help daughter J. with her homework because he has an air of patience that I have yet to acquire in dealing with my headstrong child.

His friends are many and his enemies few. He's loyal to a fault; I know that whatever happens, he's got my back. I think that's the most special thing about our relationship....he knows everything about me, the good and the bad, and he loves it all. We have a curious sort of mind-meld born of familiarity that is sometimes spooky. Some examples: We were getting the kids ready to go somewhere when they were younger and I was thinking "I need to tell the girls to get their shoes on" and I heard him call out, from the other room, "Girls! Get your shoes on!" The other night I was sitting here playing games and I thought "I wish I had some chocolate" and he walks up behind me and lays a Milky Way on my desk. Usually I can just think about what I want for dinner and he'll suggest it.

The downside of loving someone this much is that you open yourself up to a world of hurt. My worst fear is something happening to him or one of my children. After that, I have to trust that he's got my best interests foremost in his thoughts, no matter what, and to believe that even if I change physically he's still going to be true to me; that he'll still love only me. I've entrusted him with my heart, but I know that no one will hold it dearer: I am reminded every day, by his words and by his actions, that he cherishes me.

He is my soulmate, and because of him, these last ten years have been the best ten years of my life. I look forward to many, many more. The challenges that we face only make us stronger; we make each other the best people that we can be. If I have to get old and gray, if my body must progress into old age even if my brain still feels young, then there's no finer person I could have chosen to make the journey with.

Happy Anniversary, baby.