(10 years)

10 years.

That’s 1/10 of a century. 1 decade. 120 months. 521 weeks. 3,652 days. 

I don’t know why I’m so focused on the numbers, numbers aren’t really my thing, though they are impressive. 

But I think I’m focused on the numbers because I’m procrastinating getting to the words. I’m a writer, words are my thing. But what words can I string together to convey what the past 10 years of marriage have meant to me? 

10 years ago we exchanged some words. We read each other our vows. I watched you get choked up reading yours to me in front of 100 other people. We said our “I do’s.” 

I can’t even fathom how many words we’ve exchanged since that moment. Those are numbers I do not have. But what is quantity anyway, without a measure of quality? 

For 10 years we’ve exchanged countless words of support to one another, countless compliments and countless “I love you’s.” We’ve had countless conflicts too, many of which were resolved by feeding one or both of us. And many which came about because we both have wounds and scars. We’re both people who have been through painful things, and when our pain is poked, regardless of intention, it hurts. The thing is that we rarely intend to hurt one another, but it happens. So in these moments of conflict, we’ve had some that have felt really big, we’ve had some that have felt almost impossible to resolve as we go round and round in a circle of feeling hurt. But over these ten years, we’ve both learned, we’ve both grown, we’ve both worked on ourselves and we’ve taken all of that and applied it to our marriage. No it’s not perfect - you and I are both recovering perfectionists, and we know “perfect” is not realistic. But marriage is not about perfection. It’s about trying. It’s about evolving. It’s about prioritizing your partner and your marriage without deprioritizing yourself. It’s about finding yourself, and empowering your partner to find themselves, and evolving as a married unit through those changes. 

And yes, over these last 10 years, you have changed. 

In fucking magnificent ways. 

And I’ve had the front row seat, and let me tell you, I am hardcore team Alex.

I’ve had the joy of seeing you go from teaching young students to directing a team of engineers. I’ve seen you work through your hangups, doubts and criticisms. I’ve seen you be incredibly brave and move our family across the entire country… twice. I’ve seen you fall out of love with creating music and I’ve seen you start falling back in love with it again. I’ve seen you learn to drive a boat, a motorcycle, an RV, and let’s not forget the fully electric Fiat that almost got us stranded on our commute home, multiple times. I’ve seen you beat yourself up over imperfect decision making, but I’ve also seen you learning how to be more gentle with yourself. I’ve seen so much evolution in the past decade of your life and I hope you know how proud of you I am. You inspire me. 

And despite this incredible evolution of you, you’ve never lost sight of the core of who you are: a weird, goofy, thoughtful, intelligent, honest, multi-talented, caring, loving human. 

Do you remember our first year of marriage? 

We adopted the best dog in the world, Bandit boy, and he joined our amazing little family of Lily, Dobby and JJ bird. Our little zoo in our Raymond townhouse felt so complete. And we spent that year learning and growing together. 

Our second year was a bit more trying. Sadly our little JJ bird passed away. We also both had new and different health challenges, Crohns for you and a pituitary cyst for me. Despite these challenges, we found ways to move forward, and in some ways, things got better. You changed careers, and lowered your stress levels. I had surgery and a lengthy recovery, which allowed me to stay home with the kids and bond more with Bandit, who had been so clearly more attached to you since day one. Who can blame him? :) We found that we wanted to add a feathery friend to our home and we found our way to Rigby, who has challenged us and helped us grow in more ways than either of us ever imagined. We renovated our townhouse and kicked off a long journey of being proud and caring homeowners. And by the end of our second year of marriage, you were able to take Bandit to work with you every day- one of the greatest gifts we could ever hope to give our Bandit boy was this gift of being with you or I almost all day, almost every day of his life. 

During our third year of marriage, you were getting more and more established in your new career, and I eventually joined you and Bandit at IAPP. And we took a family walk with our boy every day during lunch break. We put an offer on our dream home, on Mill Pond Road, and we got it. We moved our beautiful little family into this beautiful new home, close to the lake that we were surely going to have epic adventures on. 

Then within our fourth year of marriage, we bought a boat- and I swear we were living the dream. We had the house, we had the kids, we had a lake, we had a boat. We were both working, both building careers. We were both in love with each other and with our lives. We then met two people who would quickly become our best friends, Mark and Amy, and their dog, Cassie, who would become best friends with Bandit. 

During our fifth year of marriage, it was more of that same dream-like life. You and I have both talked about how this was probably the best year of our lives. Even though there were definitely hard moments, and of course it wasn’t all wonderful all the time, but still, life felt so damn good. We even took our first trip to Europe together! 

By year six of marriage (we’re in 2019 in case that helps) it was more of that same wonderfulness. We added a garage and mudroom onto our lovely home- I even got my big circle window. You started really ramping up Nubeer! And I remember constantly feeling inspired by you. 

And while our 7th year of marriage started out with a bang- like your epic 30th birthday party kind of bang, it was almost immediately after this that the year became incredibly hard and we were living in the midst of a global pandemic. Everything was uncertain and you and I took isolation and social distancing pretty seriously, which felt right, but also felt damn hard. But despite this hardship, you and I found new wonderful things: we loved walking Bandit everyday down the street to Bow Lake, we loved getting to work from home, loved to spend our days at home with the kitties and Rigby. You baked more, I did yoga more. We both found a yearning to move onto different jobs, especially now that we were work from home pros. 

By our 8th year of marriage, we were still in the pandemic but with less restrictions. Times were still weird, but we found we were (quite literally) able to breathe a bit more easily. We did more house renovations, which ended up being a huge headache, but hey, we got through that together too, didn’t we? You had started a new job at America’s Test Kitchen and you were so excited. I loved seeing you so excited. I had been unhappy in my job for quite some time, and nothing had worked out yet with finding a new job, until the summer of 2021. Remember that phone call? The one where I got offered the job at Bungie? The one where you ran downstairs all excited and said “Looks like we're moving to Washington!” And what a blur the rest of our 8th year of marriage was- moving across the country in our RV with our little furry and feathered family, selling our NH home, buying a house in WA. Life felt like it was so filled with possibilities. 

During our 9th year of marriage, we suffered the biggest losses we never imagined would happen when and how they did. We had to say goodbye to Lily, to Dobby, and then to Bandit, all within a month and a half. The grief felt all-consuming, and you and I were both lost, hopeless and broken. And you and I really only had each other to get through it because all of our friends and family were 4000 miles away. For what it’s worth, I don’t think I would have come out of that incredibly deep depression if it weren’t for you. And after about 5 months of trying to survive and learning how to carry this grief, you and I started thinking that there’s probably a broken soul out there in some Washington animal shelter who might need us just as much as we might need them. And so we found Joey. Little did we know he would favor me over you. And so we found Hughie. Not only did he favor you, but he kind of rules our household. And he and Joey became best friends. We also found new and amazing ways to better care for and bond with Rigby too. You continued leveling up at ATK. And I started writing more. I took my pain, my grief, and somehow turned it into art. 

Then by 2023, our 10th year of marriage, we simultaneously felt this hole in our lives, missing our babies, while also feeling this really special new sense of family too. You were more in love with your job than ever, and I had fallen so out of love with my job. But I still kept writing. And I’ll never forget the night I had a bad day at work, and I sat at the kitchen table crying about how unhappy I was at this job and you were so supportive and told me to quit. “What if you pursued your writing?” you asked me, which I completely disregarded as unrealistic… until about a month or two later when I told you that’s exactly what I wanted to do. And so began our journey of wrapping up our chapter in Washington and moving back to the east coast. In true Rindone fashion, it was a whirlwind of renovations and fixes, packing and planning, and eventually driving our two cars, a few of our most important things, and of course all our babies across the country. It felt familiar, like when we drove across the country the first time, but different… it felt like coming home, or at least close to it. 

So now at the official 10 year anniversary mark on January 26th 2024, I feel confident that you and I are unstoppable. We have been through some of the hardest things any marriage, any human, any soul could ever endure. And if we can do that, I really don’t know if there’s anything we can’t do. 

And I know I probably got some of these years and dates mixed up. But these are just numbers after all, and numbers aren’t really my thing. These memories, these moments, that have made up our last 10 years of marriage have been of the best quality I could ever hope for. 

Alex, you are by and far, my epic love story. You’re the Jim to my Pam, the Chandler to my Monica. 

But I want you to know that you’re not just part of my story. I want you to know that I see you as the lead in your own story, and I am such a huge fan. See, you’re part Tony Stark & Iron Man, so intelligent, with that engineering, entrepreneurial mind, with a dash of wit and humor. You’re also a little bit Peter Parker & Spider Man - you’re smart and kind, and the way you look out for other people is at heroic levels. You’re pieces of Ted Lasso, the way you coach your peers around you, always believing in people. You’re sprinkles of Chef Gordon Ramsey, your fiery passion for the things you love, your level of care in all that you do, and the way you inspire people. And you're heaps of Jack Black & Tenacious D because, well, you’re you, the man who can do a bit, or make up a song about anything and it's a freaking hit. 

(And no this recipe that makes YOU is not available in the ATK app… but I know a guy who can probably make that happen.) 

But this is the part of marriage that is rarely talked about. Of course we all know that marriage takes compromise, communication, and being there for your partner through the good times and especially the bad. But what about the part where we find ourselves, with our partner right there by our side, witnessing, supporting, and loving our evolution? And over the past 10 years of our marriage, we have both been on our own paths of figuring out who we are. And while to some that may seem scary, like you’re losing a person you used to know, it’s actually quite beautiful, because you’re not losing someone at all, and marriage is not about winning or losing anyhow. But this path to self discovery that we’re both on, allows us to be whole people, aligned people, fulfilled people. And I can’t think of a better way to walk the path of finding and loving yourself than to walk that path with a loving partner by your side. To be witnessed and held by that partner in all that you are and all that you’re becoming. For our 10 years of marriage, I have held a multitude of jobs, attempted multiple different career paths, to now, in our nearly 10 years of marriage, to have finally found the path that I had been too scared to take all these years. I am now pursuing writing, my dream, and you have been my biggest supporter. And it's not just my career and passions, I have discovered what kind of person I want to be, what kind of mom I want to be, that is, an animal mom, almost always covered in fur, elbow deep in belly rubs, rolling my eyes at the annoying and wild things they do, and loving every second of it. And I know this, knowing full well the price of this love is deep grief I will live with my whole life. But as you and I both know, the kind of love we create in our little family is forever. It is beyond life and death. It is bigger than we can comprehend. We are soul mates, all of us. I think I’ve always known this. But somehow, over time, my certainty grows. 

So thank you for holding me, witnessing me, supporting me and loving me throughout my evolution. I am so grateful, so inspired, so in love with the fact that I get to hold you, witness you, support you and love you through yours. Maybe we’re lucky our evolutions, our paths align in the ways that they do. Maybe it’s written in the stars. Maybe we work really hard at it, every damn day. Maybe it’s all of the above. 

In another 10 years from now, I can’t wait to see where we’re both at in our journeys, individually and together. And I know, once again, it’s just another number, just another quantitative measure. But I am quite certain in our next 10 years, 10 months, 10 weeks, 10 days, 10 hours, 10 minutes, we’ll have quality memories we will treasure for the rest of our lifetime together and beyond. And I think we can create a quality memory in the next 10 seconds even, if you’re willing to kiss your wife who loves you so damn much? 

Happy 10 year anniversary, my love.