Ew, Gross, GET A ROOM

My handsome husband

Today is my husband’s birthday, and I can’t even begin to say how grateful I am for him. Through all of my surgeries, my chronic pain, my massive neverending self-doubt, my layoff, my ten million rehearsals, he never once wavered in his rock-solid support, love, and encouragement. I am so lucky to have him.

We met as undergrads at Cal State East Bay and dated for a few months. We broke up (entirely my fault) and eventually married other people. We made the kind of predictably poor choices you make when you’re young, and both learned the hard way that when your closest friends and family think you shouldn’t marry someone, THEY ARE RIGHT.

We never completely lost touch. I would run into him from time to time when I was a grad student at Cal and he was working in the scene shop there. (He later told me that when he saw me walking his way on campus, his heart would skip a beat, a story that melts my heart all over again every time I think about it.) A few years later, when I was teaching at CSUEB, he would bring his high school students to our (now long gone) spring Shakespeare Festival. It was at one of these festivals that I asked him to play my Dukes in the CSUEB summer production of As You Like It. I was already crushing on him, of course.

It was during As You Like It performances that we finally got back together, 16 years after our first date. We were married August 15, 2006.

He’s a wonderful man, sweet and supportive, impossibly attentive, beyond patient. We exacerbate and encourage each other’s nerdiness. He’s working the irresistible combination of tall, smart, funny theatre tech, which is my kryptonite. His faith in me makes me want to be a better person so I can deserve him. I can’t imagine what my life would be like without him. I hope I never have to.

See that TIE fighter pilot? I’m hitting that.

Happy Birthday, sweetheart. I hope your day is wonderful apart from the fact that you’re working all day and that I scheduled you for rehearsal tonight.

Oh, the show? As You Like It.