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.
I wondered what our life together would look like when we had children after so many years of it being just the two of us. I wondered if we would feel overwhelmed and lose the “us” that we had worked so hard to create.
I realized very quickly that “us” is so much richer than it was before, because now it has a completely different meaning.
“Us” is tag teaming middle of the night cuddle sessions with a sick toddler, tracking down the last mini trampoline in town just in time for her birthday, eyes filled with joyful tears when we look at the heartbeat on the ultrasound machine- for the second time, “us” created a miniature miracle.
I’m not sure what “us” will look like in the future, as we navigate the ins and outs of potty training, soccer practice, math homework, first dances, drivers licenses and graduations- but, I know that through every trial, joy, and milestone, we will grow closer together, the way that we have since before that first Valentine’s Day.
Someday you will walk our little girl down the aisle, or straighten our son’s tie before he greets his bride- someday we will cradle our baby’s babies in our arms, and I will look back at this time, these days where I cannot imagine possibly loving you more, and realize that I had no idea how much room I held in my heart.
This Valentines Day, you will have a girl on (in) each arm and I will struggle to find something that fits my quickly expanding belly. We won’t eat sushi or drink champagne, and we will probably choose a restaurant based on the quality of their kid’s menu.
We will make time for just you and I later in the week, but the day that we celebrate love, we will choose to spend as a family, because “us” is so much more “us” with all of us.
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By Allie Garcia
