A Husband's Tribute to the Author...

I hope Tracey doesn't get mad at me hijacking her blog. She's subbing at the elementary school today and I have the day off... She told me over the weekend that she loves it when I talk about how much I love her in front of others. So here it is, for the whole world to see...

Wow. Where do I start? I guess the first memory that I have of her will do. She was standing at her locker at the end of the hallway at Conyers Middle School. She had a perm, braces, and stood all of about four feet tall. It was 1985 and we were in sixth grade. I can still, to this very day, tell you where her locker was that year. Funny thing is, my locker was two hallways away and I didn't even know her. I wouldn't know her for two more years. Then in eighth grade I went to spend the night at a mutual friends house (Sam Barbree). That night, Sam was talking to her on the phone and somehow I ended up talking to her too. That was it. I was done. We ended up seeking each other out at school that next week, I'm sure there were a couple of folded notes passed to each other and the next thing I know we we're "going together"... We talked on the phone, I waited for her at the buses after school, we held hands and kissed at the movies, and did the things that every 13 year old "couple" did. Of course, we were 13 and our "going together" didn't last but over the next several years she became my most unique friend. We could tell each other things that we wouldn't talk to other people about. We'd give each other advice on our relationships with other people, talk about our problems, encourage each other when we needed it, or just chat about most anything. All the while I still had this crush on her. The problem was that after a while we were just too good of friends for me to jeopardize our friendship by trying to take it any further than that. We graduated high school on June 4th, 1993 and I can remember it almost like it was yesterday. In the midst of the confusion at the end of graduation where everyone is picking up their caps and hugging their friends, I turned around and there she was, standing in her graduation gown looking at me. It was one of those surreal moments in life where so many emotions are wrapped up in one that it almost is it's own emotion. I don't remember seeing another single soul on that football field that night although I know I hugged and high fived dozens. I remember saying to her... "We did it!" and I hugged her as tightly as I could. The cute little blonde with a perm and braces who I didn't know years before had become my best friend and I loved her. Little did I know that later that night a kiss would set in motion the rest of our lives together. Since then, we've married, stood on Germany's highest mountain peak, kissed atop the Eiffel tower, stood under the Arc de Triomphe, walked down Champs d'Elysee, fed the pigeons in St. Marks Square, done 110 down the Autobahn, straddled the continental divide, drank wine in mid evil castles and beer under the shadows of the European Alps, made two beautiful daughters together, and on and on...
Tracey, you are everything to me. There is no person I love more in the entire world. My love for you grows every day. Just when I think I can't possibly love you any more than I do, you do something that shows me that I can. In a lifetime a person cries a thousand tears, laughs a million laughs... you see life come and you see life go... you have good days and bad days... success and defeat... excitement and sorrow... Out of the billions of people in this world, there is no one I'd rather walk through life with than you. I'd be broken without you. I thank God everyday for putting you in my life. I know that I don't tell you how much I appreciate you nearly enough. It would be impossible to do so. But please know that you have always, and will always be the love of my life. Thank you for being the best wife and mother in the whole world, for being there when one of the girls takes a fall, for grocery shopping, for saying "I love you" at the end of every phone call, for staying on me about going to church, for supporting me in my countless hobbies, for looking past my many faults, and, most importantly, for being my best friend. I love you and I'm proud to call you my wife...