My dearest Geoffrey,

At the end of the Wizard of Oz, Dorothy tells the loved ones gathered around her bed, “if I ever go looking for my heart's desire again, I won't look any further than my own backyard,” which doesn’t actually make a lot of sense in the context of Dorothy’s situation, but is something I’ve often thought about in the context of you and I. We talk a lot about the wonder of finding each other, but it’s strange to find something that was in plain sight for so long, at daycare and school, living next door to each other on Cedar, at kids’ birthday parties and community events.. As you know, I have never believed in love at first sight, and that was never more true than when I experienced love-at-thousandth sight one day three years ago when I was picking you up - you came out of your front door and waved at me and instantly I knew I loved you. It was like the houses we look at during our evening walks -- suddenly recognizing the beauty and singularity in something that is so familiar you had just stopped actually seeing it. It only took thirty years!

That narrative of so many near misses is an important one to our story, but one that I hope to turn the page on going forward. I want to promise a lot of things to you, or at least declare my hopes and intentions, but the biggest one is to let go of my grief over the life that we didn’t get to have together and be present in the beautiful life that we do and will have.

I promise to help you be the best version of yourself, as you do for me. I believe in you and admire you and see all of the things that you are capable of achieving. I promise to always be your cheerleader, proofreader, and advocate. I am in awe of your kindness, empathy, intelligence, creativity, sense of humor and sense of justice. I love your enthusiasm for life and people and how it’s balanced by stark realism about the world we live in. The intentional way you move through the world requires so much more effort and strength than most people realize and it inspires me every day.

I promise to do my best to give you grace and assume good intentions because I know that your intentions are always good, and because I know that’s the kind of world we both want to live in. And because I am a work in progress, I promise to continue to work on my patience and hope that you will have patience with me when I inevitably slip.

I promise to be your partner in life as we navigate building our home and blended family, because as much as we love and value each other, there is nothing more important to either of us than our wonderful kiddos - young adults, really - and our job as parents.

I promise to continue to center gratitude in our lives. This world is crazy, and often terrible, and we have been given so many gifts that we didn’t earn - I will recognize them and never take them for granted. Through some miraculous roll of the dice, I am perhaps one of the best cared for people on the planet. I look at all of these miserable billionaires and I honestly feel sorry for them because they’re obviously missing out on so much of what I have been given. I will be thankful for every morning porch coffee, every hike full of good smelling trees, every show where we get to dance our faces off, every sandwich, every exhausted end of day, every shared lament over capitalism, every success and temporary defeat - I will be thankful.

I love you, Geoffrey and I am so honored to be standing beside you today, surrounded by our beloved community. As the song says, you are so very rare and so very fine - the fact that you love me is the greatest endorsement I’ve ever received (and rock legend Dean Ween once endorsed me for Mayor).