While tidying up the house today, I went to put a few things in our memory box (it holds snippets from the time we have known each other: receipts, ticket stubs, and love notes) and found these polaroids which we took the "golden summer" of our dating/engagement, "when our love was new and we first set foot on our grand adventure together." Today is our anniversary. Three years, and time has gone by both slowly and quickly in different ways. As we grow older, we change more slowly, so sometimes I don't feel different enough, don't feel like I have covered enough ground for three years to have passed. It could have been only yesterday. And yet when I reflect on all the trips taken, miles driven, meals prepared, three whole birthdays, three summers, three Christmases, two different apartments and a daughter, I realize how far we've come.

Our dreams have changed and grown; together late at night, in the dim glow of lamplight, as the radiators hiss or the warm dark breezes of summer sigh in the windows, we have watered with whispers the dreams we planted that summer, and from the seed they've grown upward, twisting, leaves unfurling in glistening green. And we are drawn to them, bound to them, bound together through them. 

Oh darling, look at all our love has made, and the beauty of the path that lies before us. There is no other who could tread it with me. 3 years, and many many more, I love you.