After the first year of marriage things tend to slow down for both of the individuals. Whether they want to settle down and raise a family or there are troubles at work, the passion that once was, just does not seem to be as fiery as it used to be. I never wanted that to happen with my marriage so as our second year anniversary was coming up I tried to approach my gift as a reminder to how much my wife means to me. Out of all the ideas going on inside my head I picked the idea least likely to be chosen by the man of my age. I decided to make my wife something with my bare hands.
Just like in kindergarten, I got out paper, glue, color pencils and our photo albums. I drove to the store to pick up some small rope I could tie my book with after completed. The risk with this present was that my wife might simply laugh, thank me, and then take it up to our room thinking “He made a picture book? What are we, twelve?!” However, this was the idea I decided to go with, and I felt she’d feel special because of it.
The book’s pages were made with simple white construction paper. I cut out plenty of big red hearts and glued them on random pages of the book. Drawing has always been a problem for me, but I managed to draw random clouds, the sun, grass and other things around different pages (We did not have kids yet, or of course I would have asked them to do this for me). I cut out old pictures from everywhere we have been. It was a treat to just look at our old wedding photos, our prom pictures (we are high school sweethearts), old vacations and all that type of stuff. I decorated my new book with pictures all over the place. It made all the pages look like a collage. Next, I found some old magazines in the basement and cut out a picture of anything she liked. Soon, hot dogs, beaches, and sprite started to appear all over my pages. I found pictures of her favorite artists like Jason Mraz and John Mayer and glued them on as well, although I have always been a little jealous of those guys as my wife screamed more for them then she has for me. ;-)
When our anniversary arrived, my wife was puzzled when I told her we were not planning on any dinner or show. “What are we going to do then?” she asked. To that I hugged her, sat her down on the sofa and showed her my book. We spent hours looking at all our old pictures. From that vacation in Cancun to prom night, we had a blast reliving all the memories. Accompanied by chocolate cake I bought earlier (well, I wasn’t just going to give her a book and leave!), we had a fantastic time having normal married-like conversations. I’ll never know if my wife truly liked the book or not, but I have a feeling she did every time she sits down on our bed and opens the book up to look at it again if only for just a moment.
