14th anniversary gratitude.

For fourteen years of learning to compromise, so we both do things we want to on anniversary trips.

 

For a man who pushes me so much in life on hikes I cry and fume because: it’s hard. For a man who knows I can do more than I think I can.

 

When I was an overly timid, young child, spending a white-night-scary sleepover at a friend’s house, missing my parents and my safe, comfortable bed terribly, I caught a glimpse of a wall calendar lit up by a swathe of moonlight: “Security is basically a superstition. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.” (Helen Keller) I saw it and my heart swelled bigger than my fear of the dark and I thought, I want that kind of life.

For a husband who gives it to me. He gives me the mountain top.

 

For sweat that pastes my t’shirt to my back and shaky legs and cool, mountain air and birds everywhere. For Snickers bars. For waterfalls.

 

For hidden, pointy-petaled mountain blossoms that stop you in your tracks on mile 5. For a God who thought up something like this.

 

For piping-hot hotel showers and Malbec and a hazy mountain horizon. For being given the mountain-view hotel room, even when you didn’t pay for it. For sunsets on the rooftop.

 

For a husband I can talk with and be quiet with. For going our separate ways all morning. For bookshops with Earl Gray tea and notebooks where I can find myself again in scribbled thoughts and novels that feel like family. For anonymity.

 

For Mexican-Caribbean food so spicy it makes my eyes water and my nose run. For seared plantains and curry and chilli peppers and memories of a childhood island home. For liking the same kinds of food.

 

For walks through side streets of this mountain town and hippies who smoke cigarettes and dance on street corners. For our first couples massage and that glorious, fresh-hatched feeling of emerging from the spa with tingling skin and aching limbs soothed.

 

For looking at each other and asking, “Do you want to go back for a nap? Or go onward in search of chocolate?” And saying simultaneously, “Chocolate!”

 

For window seats and people-watching and couples being romantic on the sidewalk.

 

For getting dressed up and a night on the town.

 

For friends.

 

For a town full of cascading potted plants and coffee shops with twinkle lights.

 

For understanding why we’d go to the same coffee shop and sit at different tables.

 

For discovering a kale salad that will change your life.

 

For knowing that he needs to poke his head in at the seed shop and buy a handful of sweet potato slips on our way out of town.

>>>>>>>

For 14 years of being in love and fighting and forgiving and experiencing God’s goodness. For the houseful of kids that awaits us at home and the lovely and the painful and everything in between. For another year of living and of living together.

 

 

 

Places we loved in Asheville:

Graybeard Mountain (a 10 mile round-trip hike, 15 minutes outside of Asheville)

Hyatt Place Hotel

Salsa’s restaurant

Malaprops Bookshop

High Five Coffee

The Rhu Bakery and Cafe

Sensibilities Day Spa

French Broad Chocolates

Rhubarb restaurant

Trade & Lore Coffee

Sow True Heirloom Seeds