When I was in college, my dad called me one night and said he’d found something that he wanted me to have – an old notebook that he and my mom used to use for writing each other letters, making notes, and keeping grocery lists. My mom passed away when I was eleven, and they divorced when I was three…the keepsakes and relics from their marriage and our brief time as a family are few and far between.

This notebook sits on my bedside table now, next to a new one…a journal that we purchased together last summer and are filling with our own letters and poems (and even the occasional phone call notes and doodles). There are a million things that I love about this life with her, but our notebook is easily one of the things I love most. There are words from the first days after we combined our families, from days when we were exhausted from all the fallout of being together, and quick notes reminding us that even on the hard days this life is worth fighting for. Maybe one day, decades from now, one of our kids will find it and treasure it the way my mom and dad’s has been.

 xoxo, k