Allie & Duncan Wojtaszek

My Dearest Duncan;

A wedding anniversary is many things to many people. For me it is the celebration of our love and the life that we live together while in love with each other. Also it is the celebration of family, trust, partnership, happiness, adventure, tolerance, tenacity and sex.

One whole year ago today I married my best friend.

Our wedding day was a long time coming for us, and through the many challenges that were laid across our path over the years, our love grew, persevered and overcame all until it triumphed and we were finally together.

When it was time for us to plan our wedding I asked you what kind of wedding you wanted, and you replied lovingly "one that makes you my wife."

That statement resonated with my soul. Really, that was all I needed to hear.

And together we dreamed of a simple and perfect ceremony that would join us mutually; one befitting our commitment to each other, one that would honour the choices we had made in order to come together, one that would reflect who we were in life, observe the things that were important to us and one that would celebrate the family we were becoming.

We chose a date special to us, the 7th day of the 7th month because both of our favourite numbers are 7, and the date rested exactly between our birthdates, each of us being born on the 7th day of March and October respectively; and our wedding was like being born again as we birthed a new life together, a life that we chose.

We carefully wrote our own vows, trying to reflect the uniqueness and beauty of the love between us and to convey the depth of our convictions and our promise to each other.

Duncan to Allie: "With all my heart I take you to be my wife. I will love you through all times, through the good and the bad, the joy and the sorrow. I will try to be understanding, and to trust in you completely. I will make you a part of me, and in turn, become a part of you. Together we will face all of life's experiences and share one another's dreams and goals. With this ring, I thee wed."

Allie to Duncan: "With all my heart I take you to be my husband. I will love you through all times, through the good and the bad, the joy and the sorrow. I will try to be understanding, and to trust in you completely. I will make you a part of me, and in turn, become a part of you. Together we will face all of life's experiences and share one another's dreams and goals. With this ring, I thee wed."

"I will make you a part of me, and in turn, become a part of you." I love this promise that we made to each other. You truly are everything to me; my soul mate, my best friend, my significant other, my better half… you bring out the very best parts of myself and prepare me as a gift to the world. I want to be as good for you as you are for me.

I remember how everything on our wedding day was perfect. How it was everything we wanted, how it was so "us" that nothing could have made it more special, how we incorporated details that were important to our story, how we became Duncan and Allie Wojtaszek, husband and wife.

Every one who cared about us and knew us best came to join with us on our day, came to be a part of our new life. Came to witness, in essence, our world begin. In the opinion of the skeptic, marriage ends all. But let truth witness that, if you have married as well and sincerely as I have, then it begins it all. Everything I do with you is so much more meaningful than anything I ever did before, I want to do everything with you, and everything for you, and everything there is to do I want to share it with you.

"Newlyweds become oldyweds, and oldyweds are the
reasons that families work."
~Author Unknown

"I figure that the degree of difficulty in combining two lives ranks
somewhere between rerouting a hurricane and finding a parking
place in downtown Manhattan."
~Claire Cloninger (Author of When the Glass Slipper Doesn't Fit and the
Silver Spoon is in Someone Else's Mouth)

We merge our lives together well, I think. We combine four, really. Yes, there is an art to it all, and sometimes it’s definition falls within the realms of utter madness, but it actually isn’t difficult at all. It is with great pleasure and love that we unite and share our lives. It is what makes our living an adventure, and one worth having, rising to meet the challenges we face together, as a team.

It is in this combination of our love, of our two worlds, of the sharing of a lifetime (which in itself is our greatest gift to share), that we find a certain level of completion and comfort that was absent from our lives before we found each other. That’s not to say that we need each other to feel complete, because each of us was an independent, successful, confident and complete person even before there was an "us". I don’t love you because I need you; I need you because I love you. Like the African proverb, "A man without a wife is like a vase without flowers," both the vase and flowers are beautiful in their own rights and all on their own, but together they are so much more.

Perhaps a simple way to describe it further is to say we are taking our lives to the next level.

Dr. James C. Dobson advises "Don't marry the person you think you can live with; marry only the individual you think you can't live without." Duncan, once I knew you I realized I could not imagine my world without you in it.

"Only choose in marriage a man whom you would
choose as a friend if he were a woman."
~Joseph Joubert

When you arrived in my life you quickly became my best and most trusted friend. It seemed as if our world had somehow imploded and there was just the two of us in the centre, trying to share everything, trying to catch up for a lifetime that we had been apart. For some reason I trusted you more than my closest girlfriends and you easily and readily became my confidant. I’d never had a friendship with a man like the friendship I forged with you, and precious few women could come close to being as intimate as we were with our deepest fears and our fondest hopes and wishes. It wasn’t too soon before our dreams became intertwined, and I didn’t know exactly where I ended and you began.

"A happy marriage is the union of two good forgivers."
~Ruth Bell Graham

Acceptance. Complete, total acceptance is what truly unconditional love is. Duncan, you once told me that I had taught you what unconditional love was, and what a gift it had been to you. Forgiveness is, and has always been, a part of that, and even though we are obviously not perfect there has never been anything we haven’t forgiven each other for. There’s nothing that is worth remaining angry or hurt over. There is nothing that can trump the way that we love each other for whom we really are, mistakes and all. We can, and will, face anything together.

"In marriage there are no manners to keep up, and beneath the wildest accusations no real criticism. Each is familiar with that ancient child in the other who may erupt again.... We are not ridiculous to ourselves. We are ageless. That is the luxury of the wedding ring."
~Enid Bagnold, Autobiography, 1969

I love that you know all about me; all my secrets, every bad deed I have done, thought and or said, every mistake I have made, every ill word I have uttered against another – and no matter how ridiculous or irrational or unfair I may have been in those times, you still love me. Your quiet understanding and fervent acceptance nurtures me and I trust you enough that I can be a fool in front of you, and visa versa. I love how you are always on my side. We are more than a team; together we form an alliance. We are "us." No one can change that.

"Love requires a willingness to die; marriage, a willingness to live."
~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966

I knew I must surely be in love with you the first time I realized I would willingly give my life if it meant that you might live… without a second thought, even if the odds were bad, I found I would sacrifice all that I had to give just for you to have a chance. I knew I very surely must be in love with you when, in addition, I discovered that I could not live without you - that there was a staunch refusal in my mind to imagine a world where you were not part of my life. I knew I was in love with you because every fibre of my being was suddenly alive, every colour was abruptly vibrant, every sound was instantly music, every touch swelled my heart with a joy that I thought had been left behind in childhood. Loving you is like learning to live again. Everyday.

Duncan, you have brought my world alive. You have shown me what living was about and all of a sudden I want to live more than anything else I had ever done, if it means sharing my lifetime with you. Long or short, my life is yours; long or short, I am happy each day I wake up next to you; long or short, my life is meaningful because I share it with you. I want to share everything with you.

And every moment of doing so is like a lifetime all in itself, I have lived more since I have known you than I have the whole rest of my life. Each moment that flows into the next I love you a little more, in a little bit of a different way, and like that our love grows and matures and fosters the friendship between us, and I look forward to a lifetime of falling in love again and again with each other. It will take more than one lifetime to love and worship you the way you deserve to be. You are a gift to me.

Duncan, everything about you is wonderful, sexy, classy, touching, amusing, comforting, exciting, strong and amazing. You are all this, and so much more. You are always in my thoughts and my dreams. I desire you and yearn to please you. I want to make you happy.

And I happen to be in love with you. Forever and always.

Your Loving Wife,
Allie

"I have learned that only two things are necessary to keep one's wife happy. First, let her think she's having her own way. And second, let her have it."
~Lyndon B. Johnson

"A happy marriage is a long conversation which always seems too short."
~Andre Maurois

Check out my post at Summer's Daydreams for pictures!

A friend emailed me to say she thought I should keep my own last name.

Here's what I wrote in response:

It's illegal to take your husbands last name in Quebec? I didn't know that!

I thought about keeping my last name, especially since I have written so much that has been published with it, but I don't have my degree yet so I figure I can deal with everything else. Truly, I considerd it very carefully, and this is what I came up with...

My last name is really only borrowed from my ex husband, so it's sort of not my name in that way, atleast not the way it belongs to my children.

I am not wild about my maiden name (Perkins) and was eager enough to leave that behind as soon as I possibly could (maybe even a little too eager). In school people used to call me Allie-cat Puuuurrrrr-kins. They meant well and thought it was cute, but it drove me crazy.

I love Duncan's last name. It's not common and there is something very allurring about going from a name like "Smyth," where there are hundreds of them, thousands even, to a name where there are so few in the phonebook you are likely the only one, and if there are others you are probally related. But yeah, it has character and pride and it's his family name and I am proud to be part of his family.

I actually normally only go by Allie on a daily basis, and have for a very long time, so I indentify with myself as Allie. Thats how I introduce myself, thats what my voce mail says, thats my legal signature. I am unsure how many people might notice I have changed my last name anyways.

I am influenced greatly by native traditions and believe that as you grow through your life and you change then so does your name, so I am very open to the concept of changing my name, excited even. I am not the same... I am not much different perhaps, but I am definatley growing.

Thought about hypeniating. I am undecided but likely will choose not to.

And lastly, but also just as important, I understand how important it is to Duncan to share his name with me. He was somewhat hurt when his first wife didn't want to choose his name, and that pain was tied up in the unusual circumstances surrounding their marriage and how it was kept a secret for over a year, and I don't want him to feel that way, or even associate us and what we have, with past hurts. I am proud to be his partner, I love him and I would be honoured to take his name.

Besides, I want to. I like it, alot :-)