Your Hand in Mine

[2010]

From that first Halloween party where we met to the years we spent together in college; through that first stint of "distance" after I graduated and you were a senior at Hampden-Sydney; then the warehouse apartment we shared in downtown Roanoke with the brick walls and the lacquered cement floors; to Charlottesville, and the apartment with the green carpet and tiny little kitchen and noisy upstairs neighbors.

And then you went to China and I moved back to the lake, where you returned after your trip. That summer together before we started our careers; and then to Northern Virginia. And now Minnesota has become part of the story, with plans for flights and twice-a-month visits tucked in between lonely weekends apart. I have fallen in love with you even more, and in different ways through each new season of the past four years.

We have come so far together, and there is no one I'd rather be sharing my life with today.

Happy Anniversary, Rob. You mean the world to me.