246

We are here. In the Old World. In Western Europe. Maybe our ancestors came through here, but likely not. Leisure travel wasn’t common for our family trees. 

A month of surprise, struggle, and success. A month where we got sick, where we got frustrated with local banking and getting our phones re-baptized to work on local ground. A month where I started a new job and where you continued your old one. New clothes, new foods. So much walking. So much exploring. Immigration forms and other paperwork to say we aren’t tourists. We belong here. We are residents. Not citizens, but good citizens. Grateful for the opportunity. Making a home a little every day. 

We just sent off our apartment application for a place that is just a couple blocks south of here. We want to stay in the neighborhood. Quiet, west of the chaotic city. A walk into the friction and a walk out. Near enough to see it but we away. The city on our terms.

In a week, it’ll be Christmas, our first without having to see anyone under the forced dictate of family obligations. It will be small for us, distant, maybe a little sad and desolate, but people will be coming to us in the new year. For now, this is our home, our tradition, our holiday. And if we are lucky, we will have gotten ourselves a place of our own for Christmas. 

Thank you for being there for me when all this was anxiety and illness and stress of a new job in a new country. I love you.

245

A week from now we will be in the air. A week from now, we will be heading east, into a new life. A week from now, we start again in a new part of the world. Every hour we get closer to leaving what we’ve known for 20 years. We’ve sold our home and we are about ready to get rid of our cars. The anchors that he’d us here are being broken and discarded. For the first time in decades we are debt free. For the first time in decades we have a chance to reboot our lives. We  get a second chance, a currency that so few people get to traffic in. 

Even though the foreign language lessons are enough to throw my laptop through a wall. It’s only been a couple weeks, but I’m hitting that wall with verb tenses and pronouns spoken in accents that sound like audible black ice. 

It’ll be okay. No one is expecting us to learn immediately. Maybe it’s just the sense of gaining control over the environment. So much change so there’s the sense you need to have control over something, anything. 

But we will do it. We will land, get to our temporary lodgings. We will be disoriented, we will be putting our loves together a little bit every day. We just need to do a little every day. A little bit to make the new world our own. 

Thank you for coming with from the second I got the offer. Thank you for being part of this journey, of making this leap with me. I love you.

244

We're 40 days out from leaving the country and I can finally come up for air. All the hoops with selling our home and getting our paperwork together are falling away. Thank you for keeping me centered and seeing the bigger picture. We are going east, to Europe. We are going to a new world in the old one. We are having a new adventure. This is a reboot chance that a lot of people never get. We can change so much. We can be liberated from so much. With a lot of our belongings shedded and sold and stored, we can try new tastes. We are out of a rut, together. Just us, a few suitcases, and the cats. Together. In love. On a journey. We've always been doing this. Now we have new sights ahead.  I love you.

243

And all of a sudden our lives get turned upside down. Last Friday, I got the offer. Senior Writer. And relocation to Europe with it. 

We were out there, invited to see a slice of the world we had been to for a four-hour layover 16 years ago when we were traveling through Western Europe and I was delusional from a fever and the solid grip of a cold. 

But now, I was being recruited. And we had a 100-hour rush on the other side of the world. You enjoyed museums, I hustled through two days of interviews on three hours of sleep total. And I was fabulous. We had a day and a little more to explore, but it was a place where we felt we could live. 

We’d pare down the essentials. We’d start over in a way. A new life, although you will keep your job, which is going to help our finances. I get a job writing at a major studio. 

Thank you for this. Thank you for being brave with me as we make this leap. Thank you for supporting me. Thank you for being my wife.

242

To my love, happy monthly anniversary. And by the time we get to 243, we will have big news. Potentially life changing. One that might put us in another part of the world. Thank you for being supportive on every day that has led to this moment. Thank you for going on this journey, being open to an adventure that could take us thousands of miles away. I don’t think I could have done this without you. I love you.

241

Happy monthly anniversary to my love. I love you and I thank you for being so supportive in this past month. It’s been a month of good tension and tests. Every step of the way, you’ve been there cheering on me or giving my work a sanity pass. Right now, we are waiting for news to see how much our lives will change and how we might be looking toward a new adventure, together. And for this, I'm so grateful for you and us. I love you.

240

And here we are. 20 years. I’m writing this and I can’t believe it’s true. 20 years. How is it you love me still? How am I so lucky? What did I do to find you, earn your trust, and have you remain in my life? In my heart I know the answers and it makes me more breathless and in awe.

I see my flaws every day, and I assume other people can see them as well. I assume that’s all they see. But you see them and embrace me as a whole. You see beyond to a place I want to get to one day. You’re there waiting for me, today, tomorrow, in the haze of the future. 

I love you for it. I love you that you are here and there. It’s what love is, a promise based on potential and trust. It’s the same today as it was 20 years ago as of they were both the same point in time, looping back on itself until today was pre-ordained because it took place 20 years ago already.

I love you. I love us. And I strive to be that person you see me as now and then, when the gulf of time was seemingly collapsed by two words said at a rose arch two decades back on a Saturday in the month of June.

I strive to be always worthy of you. It’s my constant gift to you, even when I have nothing else to offer. I love you. 

239

I love you, my darling wife. We are on the verge of our 20th anniversary and I’m still arranging plans. Hopefully everything can come together once I get the job front straightened out. I believe the 20th should have something special for it, but I know you are content with something low key. I just want you to know that I love you and I have a bad tendency to go big because… well, it’s expected to do something massive for such a special occasion. I feel like I have to go big or I’ll be taking you for granted and I never want to slip away down that path. 

But we will think of something. We with make our own way. We will celebrate. We will craft our own something special. I know it.

238

To my love, I come here again to remember our monthly anniversary. Thank you for being by me when I falter. It’s been a hard month for me. I know it’ll get better, I know you tell me that it’ll get better but my head will wander into that dark forest and tell me that it never will. Thank you for being strong and making sure I don’t go too deep into that forest. I love you.

237

Happy monthly anniversary, my love. Thank you for your strength, your love, and your patience as I continue my look for work in my  first month of employment in… almost a year and a half. I know others are having a worse time, especially with the wave of layoffs in the gaming sphere. I know I’ll land somewhere, but in certain moments, I panic. I think I won’t. I think I’ll never be in a stable job. I think I let you down. You never think that, and for that, I’m grateful and I remember that you believe in me. It gives me pause, especially when I don’t believe in myself. I love you. 

236

To my love, another happy monthly anniversary. Thank you for being so kind, loving, supportive, and all of those other angel traits you keep close to you. I’ve been reorganized out of a job, and now I have the ambient brine-in-the-stomach tension of looking for work. We’ve been through this before, and each time I feel guilty for somehow never being stable at work. It’s always a contract running out of money or a start-ups that needs to reorg. I tend to think something like I’m cured, but you never do. Thank you for your faith when I have lost mine, I love you.

235

To my love, happy monthly anniversary to you. To us. Thank you for being kind, loving, and strong. I don't deserve you. You say that I do. You laugh at my jokes. You say how kind I am, how clever I am. I don't feel it. And I wish I didn't doubt all the time. Thank you for loving me and tolerating my doubt.