I am a creature of habit. I like to run, and I run the same course each time, preferring to know what’s coming, the shifts in elevation, how much road is left, and when I’ll be able to start my final sprint.

In 1998, I lived in a little apartment on School Street in Williamstown, Massachusetts. Each day I ran from my apartment, across the Williams College campus, and up Bulkley Street to Hopkins Memorial Forest. I took the same route each time, cutting behind Lehman and up Mission Park Drive. One day, for no reason I could divine, I felt compelled to take a different route, down Lynde Lane through the Mission Park parking lot. There, I ran into Robbi Behr, a girl I remembered from my college years but didn’t know so well. We said hello, exchanged email addresses, and proceeded to spend a year or so getting to know one another by sending emails back and forth.

I knew from the beginning that I liked her voice, the way she described the world, the way her mind worked. I liked the things she valued and the things that made her laugh. And the things that made her cry. By the time we had been exchanging emails for about a year, it became clear that we got along famously in writing. So we decided to get together and see how we did in person. That was November of 1999. Two weeks later, she introduced me to her parents. That summer, I went to Alaska for the first time. The next fall, we moved in together. Four Novembers later, we decided to make things more official.

On November 8, 2003 to be exact.

And what a decade it has been. From Williamstown to Savannah to Baltimore to Chestertown. I lack photos of the early years, those dark times before the advent of the digital camera. But some of the most memorable moments have been more recent.

In 2006, we turned this:

Into this:

And, finally, into this:

So that we could do this:

In 2008 there was this:

And in 2010, this:

And, finally, in 2011, this:

Which left us with this:

And this:

But it all started with this:

How very young we were. Not so very long ago. It doesn’t feel like yesterday, exactly. But it feels like last year, maybe. Or perhaps the year before.

Today I wake up grateful to have met Robbi, and even more grateful that she decided to spend her life with me.

In addition to being a person I love and respect at my core, she is also, inexplicably, my ideal artistic counterpart and the best mother I could possibly imagine for my kids. She stimulates my brain and settles my soul. She makes me happy. She makes me better. And she’s so good looking to boot.

I’m not sure how I got this lucky, but I’m selfishly going to ask the universe for ten more years of the same. And then ten more. For as long as the subscription is renewable.