17

On my 17th birthday, a boy took me out on my first birthday date. He drove me to the beach and set up a lovely picnic on a private inlet. We talked, we ate, we laughed. We watched the water change color as the sun sank lower and lower in the sky. He handed me a card and said, read it. My first birthday card from a boy. The last line he wrote said, I love you. My heart skipped a beat. Why would he write this, I thought. I know he can't mean the real I love you. But as I looked up, I saw it in his face. He loved me. I shyly said it back to him and it felt right.

I have continued to say I love you to this same boy for the next half of my life.

In that time, this boy and I have grown up together. We have fought loud and loved hard. We have hiked mountains together. Run marathons together. We have traveled parts of the world together. We have held hands through death, loss, and grief. We have witnessed first breath of life together, four times in four different hospital rooms. We have been our very best and our very worst with each other.

I think about the next 17 years and the next and possibly the next. Maybe this "getting older" isn't such a bad thing, afterall.