Seven Years

November 11th would have been the seventh year that Erika and I had been together. I was recently going through some of the drawers in our house and found the pile of cards that she had kept. She kept all the birthday, anniversary and Valentine’s Day cards that we’d given each other. One stuck out for me. It was this one, one that she gave me for our second year together, in 2015. There are multiple things going on here:

One of the things that we had together was how I could make her laugh. I really like puns and dad jokes. She thought they were kinda corny and usually, not as funny as I did. Early on, there was one joke that I told her a few times, but didn’t remember that I’d told it to her and she’d seem to get a little exasperated that I’d already told her. So one day I thought it’d be funny to just keep telling it to her over and over again, (“A horse walks into a bar and the bartender says, hey buddy, why the long face?”) and I would add on to it “Get it” and make this hand motion miming a horse’s long face and she’d just say over and over again “Yes, I get it!” and for some reason, all of that would make me laugh, really hard. Seeing me laugh this hard was the thing that then made Erika laugh. The joke itself wasn’t funny to her, but the fact that I was laughing at myself was really funny to her. I remember doing this multiple times when both of us would end up in tears from laughter. The laughing just compounded. I’d laugh at her feigned exasperation (and the joke), which made her laugh, and then I’d think it was really funny that she was laughing at me, making me laugh harder. And then it’d continue. So she thought herself to be pretty witty with the pun on the card and then the addition of “get it??”

But then I read the inside of the card and realized that our beginning was as special to her as it was to me. Here’s what she wrote on the second anniversary:

Her writing wasn’t always the most legible, so it says:
“Boo,
I guess we have a job interview in Boston + a Bruins game to thank for us coming together! I love you so much. Thank you for a happy, happy two years and for everything you do to take care of me + make me feel loved and special.
To many more!
Love,
Squeaks”

Yeah, she called me Boo and she was Squeaks. The reasons this meant so much to me is that when we first got together, neither of us felt like we were doing really well. Both were coming out of relationships that had us down. I tried my best to do anything I could for her, be there for her any time she needed and to always make her feel special. Reading this card reminds me that I was doing just that. I just wish that “many more” wasn’t only five more. I wish it’d been fifty more. Happy anniversary, Squeaks.

As for her mentioning the Bruins game and job interview, here’s a little more background on that:

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