Four years

 St. Andrew's-by-the-Sea, NB. Honeymoon capital of Canada*

We were married four years ago today. I loved our wedding. I loved getting married to Matt.

I feel like all I've been doing lately is explaining how Matt and I started dating, fell in love, and jumped right into marriage and kids. I wish I could tell you that I've been crafting these experiences into a worthy memoir, but no, it's only because Canada wants to know all these details for Matt's immigration application Maybe I could just drop The Children off at their offices, you know, for "proof of relationship," but I like to think the Canadian government is filled with hopeless romantics who just want to hear a great love story (I might drop off The Children just in case). I remind myself of this daily as my fingers are cramping from the 587 forms weI need to fill out. And then re-fill out when the PDF typed fields disappear as I print them. 

Don't even get me started about the impact of a certain postal strike on our immigration efforts.

But back to romance. The story is a familiar one, but it's perfect just the same. We met on our first day of graduate school at the University of Toronto. Matt tells me that he fell in love with me that day, but I don't know. Do you think that really happens? I guess I do, because something did quietly simmer between us for a year and half before he finally accepted my offer that he should ask me out on a date. Let me be clear that he turned me down for a year. If you ask him, he'll tell you that I never really asked him out on an actual date (I would always invite him to join me and a few other people to do something, like go out for dinner or to spend the day at a festival) and so it never counted. I think that's awfully fine print of him to challenge my attempts at courtship. But eventually he got the idea and we finally got together. Finally. Here's just a sample of what was going back and forth between us during those weeks that we got our act in gear and finally told each other that we were smitten. This one is from Matt:

I remember that day so vividly in January: you were so wonderful, funny and kind and beautiful; it's when I started to learn about you, and I was so happy to learn later that one of the names your parents called you was Princess, just as I knew it would be. [Editor's note: I'm not a princess.] Although I had been interested in you long before (you know I think it really started when I saw you right before I left for the States last summer, you had just gotten over being very sick and you were working in Barb's office--I think you were stealing office supplies), it wasn't until that day I decided to tell you how I feel--and look, it only took six months!

I've been going through these old emails (again, for the benefit of those gushing government officials), and I just can't stop smiling. It was three or four weeks after we started dating that Matt told me he wanted to marry me. He didn't exactly propose that night--think of it, he said, as him just making his intentions clear. I wanted to say yes right away, but instead I asked him to ask again in six months. Six months seems like a responsible number of months, doesn't it?

So what does Matt do? He "practice" proposes every Friday night, every Shabbat, just to remind me of his intentions (I know, he's lovely). He was getting pretty good at it around month two. On November 4, a month or so shy of my six month cut-off, I decided to say yes. For real. Enough practicing already. We were in love and ready to celebrate.

Matt is still in Poland so we're celebrating over a long distance. It's hard being apart like this, but that shouldn't surprise me--marriage is hard all by itself, never mind when one of you has been abandoned for the thrills of Europe. Four years doesn't seem like a long time, but it feels as though we've packed those years with enough things (and Children) to warrant a proper celebration. As Matt reminded me this morning, "only 71 years to go until we can celebrate 75!"

71 years indeed.
Love you.

*Or maybe it was just us.