Love is mystery. Love is adventure. Love is our history; it’s our joint venture.

We decided on a day like this one, that this day would be the one where we would be one. Not two. Two is separate. Two is too separate. We are one. That sounds cheesy, but that’s how we love it. You love cheese. You are cheese. I love cheese. I love you.

At first, I thought it was pure coincidence that we saw each other, but it turned out it was planned. Someone planned it. You planned to see me. I planned to continue seeing you. God planned for the moments. We went along with the plan.

Here we are 7 years later. Our first year was like that of an infant. We had no idea what to expect. We didn’t plan for 6 and more years. But we made plans. We planned for sunny skies. We planned for rainy days. We may not have planned far into the future, but we hoped for the best. Then we saw our second year go by and then our third. We had rocky moments, but sure enough we had a fourth year and a fifth year. Somewhere along the way, we planned for many more years. On our sixth year, we planned to get married. It was year one all over again but this time with a plan. We didn’t know what to expect. We have seemingly different family and cultural expectations.

We are so different. You are Bengali. I am Chinese. You are an immigrant. I am a native. You eat with your hands. I don’t like to touch my food. You love spices. Me? Not so much. You are not athletic and clumsy. I am builtto move with finesse and power. You feel hot when I am cold. You are short. Iam tall. You like traditional looks. I like modern simplicity. You love colors. I love single tones and notes. Your idea of beauty is a gorgeous spring day. My idea of beauty is isolated warmth surrounded by the cold. But despite all of our differences, we are singular in one thing. We are common in our love. Our hearts are different sizes. They are different in strength, yet not. I have a heavy heart for second chances, you have a heavy heart for the oppressed. My heart wants moments of action; your heart wants beautiful justice. Yet, behind it all, our hearts just want each other. In some strange way, our hearts needed what they never knew they always wanted: each other.

My heart yearns for a warmth satisfied only by the radiance of yours. You heart needs the certainty my heart doesn’t even know it has. In odd ways, we complement each other. Our differences make us different as awhole. We are similar in our dreams. We dream of a better world and happy days together. We are similar in our goals, to be better. We are similar in our expectations of our unborn children. We share the same beliefs in family and our responsibilities to family. But if we were any more similar or completely similar, we’d make just another version of us when we came to be one. How boring. Our wholly separate and individual lives have meant everything to our character. When we are one, we manifest a whole new entity that was unbeknownstand unforeseen to us. It’s unique.

You would think that we live ordinary mundane lives. We are so used to each other that we don’t normally see how spectacular we actually are. But, if we can reflect for a moment, you’d see the extra beyond ordinary.

None of this would be possible without you. Without you, I am only ordinary. With you, I can be more. On this year, we have in common our love for each other. But, on this year, the difference is the extra. We are an extra year than we anticipated. We are an extra one than we were born as. We are constantly adding to our lives, to our story. We are always adding memories. I love what we’ve amassed. I love the collage of our lives. I love that like our first year, there is so much more of the unexpected we can expect for. I love most that, God willing, I can expect you to be there.

I love you, my wonderful surprise of a wife.