To the Father of My Children (and my favorite person to watch zombie apocalypse shows with),

We spent our first Valentine’s Day together sharing linguini and salmon on a restaurant veranda overlooking the city lights. The sun set behind the mountains and the candles on our table burned brightly. You handed me a large, red, gift bag filled with trinkets that reminded you of the journey that brought us to this place.

You also included something that would symbolize our future together- a children’s book about a family of polar bears and their journey to becoming parents to a little bear cub. Little did I know, at that moment, that nine years later I would witness you open the pages of that very book while cradling our beautiful child in your lap.

I already knew I loved you that first Valentines Day, but there was no way of knowing the magnitude of love that I was capable of feeling towards you. Its not that I didn’t adore you in the days before co-parenting with you- those years of growth challenged us and prepared us for the events that were to come as we brought life into the world and nurtured that life as partners.

One of the most joyful, overwhelming moments of my life was the day you became a father. As you held our daughter against your chest, skin-to-skin, in the first minutes of her life, I had never loved anyone more. Yet, somehow, the love I felt the day we became parents is only a sliver of the love that we have today.

Another girl holds a place in your heart. Under any other circumstances, this would be heartbreaking, but under these circumstances- her place in your heart only amplifies your place in mine. I never imagined that I would feel more love when my husband took another girl on a date than when he takes me on them. I can almost feel the hearts popping out of my eyes when I hear “Beauty and the Beast” blaring in the background and see you twirling her around the room, your fingers interlocked with hers the way that they interlock with mine.

I am confident that she will choose a gentle, kind, funny, joyful man to love someday, because of the way you have delighted in her and modeled what a man should be from the moment she was born.

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