"My angelic Laura,
"I'm staring across your back at the silvered wing flying us home. It's not your wing, but it might as well be. You lift me. You lift us heavenward and I'm so glad to have spent the last five days flitting about New York with you. Our honeymoons are the best!
"From the earliest moments of our trip, we've laughed, touched, held, and walked together. We've soaked in more of our world's wonder together. I love that we have seen so much together and that we have so much more to go. I loved adding check marks to our list this trip, even check marks for boxes we didn't know we had on our list.
"At Fraunces Tavern we discovered a dimly lit corner of history and fell a little more in love sharing it. We strolled aimlessly around Lower Manhattan, taking in the beautiful musty history of the Trinity Church and delighting in parks, buildings, and people. Holding your hand through your cute, little gloved sleeves, I fell a little more in love with you again. And finishing the night off with a little gleaming, Time's Square Gatsby-for-the-masses ridiculousness, we headed back to our lush hotel bed close and together, ready for even more moments the next day.
"I love sharing moments with you. Quiet and mundane, yet close. Big and remarkable. Ridiculous and amazing. Other than writing our own little history, though, we rarely share historic ones. But we did this trip! Standing next to you and hearing you clap and chant with the crowd for Mariano's last moment on the mound was fantastic! Seriously, I got to spend the night with a cute girl who really, really liked me and watch baseball. Historic baseball. I love that we've shared baseball together, even if only a little, so you could enjoy and appreciate that moment with me. It was magical. And little did we know when we watched Mariano walk off the field past our bedtime, that we had so much left in our night.
"I'll always remember the way you looked, and looked around, at the low-lit garden of La Lanterna. It felt like Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn could have walked in as part of one of their delightful movies with witty banter, charm, and fabulous clothes. And if they had you still would have been the one who held my attention. I can fall more in love with you any place, but especially that place. When you sat next to me in the dark after-midnight eating decadence and kissing close, my heart overflowed. I could simultaneously live a lifetime on one of those moments and die at the thought of never having another. Perhaps that's one of the best things about our life together: it fills me to immeasurable depths yet leaves me longing for the forever we've promised each other.
"So on we go. Having more days and making more moments. Holding your hand across the Brooklyn Bridge, trying to capture my rapture for you in one of the thousand pictures I take of you, never quite adding up to the real you but always brightening me when I can't be with you and long to see the smiling face that springs when you spy me, the smirking face that humors me, or the beauty that is somehow, undeservedly and unmistakably mine. Feeling and knowing that beauty in full as I held you close that afternoon. Listening to the enthusiasm I first knew on our first date as you now told me all about your teenage infatuation with The Phantom of the Opera, knowing that me being on Broadway with you to see it was part of a dream you once had, hoped for, and never knew the ending to. I love writing endings for you. Checking the box fulfilling a dream you've carried. Few things help me feel my worth as much as you telling me about yet another way I've fulfilled some hope, fantasy, or wish your dreamful heart had before you knew me. Or one you've expectantly made just for me, like so many of our New York moments.
"New York is defined in so many different ways by expectations and dreams. We came to it already blessed beyond any earthly right, unlike so many others for whom the city loomed as a vague longing for something a little brighter when they left their hope-choking homelands. I love that I got to climb their first beacon of American hope with you and fulfill that made-for-your Christopher dream with you behind me. I don't know where my great grandparents got off the boat from England a hundred years ago, but I like to think that the dream we shared and fulfilled that day for you was in some way a part of theirs: that their grandson had enough of a slice of the Big Apple that he could touch the symbol of Liberty to which they and so many others hopefully sailed. That in a world filled with beauty and brutality, wealth and want, and freedom and fear, you and I have earthly beauty in our sights, the promise of eternity in our hearts, bounty at our table, and the liberty to live and dream and hope and strive as we wish. I loved celebrating that life and those dreams and hopes and strivings with you on our gleaming day at the Statue of Liberty. That such a beautiful and grand piece of art is such a symbol of what we have in our country and our home delights me.
"Art is such a wonderful thing to share with you. Just as with so many other things, we share it so very perfectly; our interests overlapping just enough to broaden the other without painful stretching. I loved the Met with you for that reason. You show me things and details that I miss on my own. You teach me to appreciate them. Seeing Van Gogh, Cezanne, Vermeer, and so many masters did that for me. Not just seeing them but watching you see them more deeply than I did. I love that you teach me to see things deeply and appreciate them for their depth. And I loved the Met with you in part because I see art's beauty more deeply with, and because of, you.
"And today. Today has been marvelous, my love. Nathaniel Hawthorne was right when he said that "our Creator would never have made such lovely days, and have given us the deep hearts to enjoy them, above and beyond all thought, unless we were meant to be immortal." I don't know what day Hawthorne had in mind when he wrote that but it must have been something like today. Walking through the soft, mottled light of Central Park while the early, pessimistic leaves began the fall with their premature tumbling was a moment that suits Hawthorne's quote just fine. Rowing you into our private cave of boughs for a kiss was even better. And strolling hand-in-hand down Fifth Avenue (when you weren't in power walking mode!) was just more of the same. It was a beautiful day to say goodbye to this latest honeymoon of ours.
"While it's sad to say goodbye to such a perfect getaway, the checked boxes, unexpected finds, and familiar but deeper closeness come home with us to our sweet peaceful life. So for now, it's a flight away from this adventure and onto the life we've built so well at home. Back to children who delight us while demanding work and attention from which we've been briefly freed. And with that freedom we've grown and strengthened. Those silvered wings that fly us homeward are nowhere near as strong as the ones you use to lift us all heavenward. With your added strength from our New York honeymoon we go home to grow and build and dream of our next journey afar to grow closer together. Thank you, my darling bride for letting me grasp onto you as you fly us nearer to God through this beautiful world.
Love and devotion,
Your Christopher"
