Years ago now, Elliott Smith wrote a song called “Say Yes”.

I remember the first time I heard it.

It struck me.

 

“I’m in love with the world, through the eyes of a girl, who’s still around the morning after.”

 

 

 

 

The sheer simplicity of that quest for a constant.

It broke my heart because it made me admit that I wanted it too.

A love you know won’t leave.

It was so human.

His hope sounded grandiose and sad all at once because his surprise is so universal and his fear so familiar. It resonates through art everywhere. The hope of a love that won’t leave you guessing. “Will you still love me tomorrow?”

 

“They want you or they don’t.

Say yes ”

 

 

 

 

Say “Yes”.

 

Over two years ago now, after a dreamy Summer in the arms of love in Alaska, The Chief and I asked ourselves these same questions as we parted ways for our first time.

For five weeks we found ourselves stolen from one another, torn from the grasp of new love and placed back into our lives we led before love struck.

In those five weeks and even in the double rainbow fairytale months preceding them, we wondered…

Would the overwhelm of new love fade? Would the cover she gently places over a less shiny reality be stolen away, leaving us with a change of heart? Would our Summer love become simply a Summer fling that didn’t fit as the Fall fell upon us?

 

 

 

 

We both walked away that Summer knowing very well that this could be the case. Perhaps the Summer Camp simplicity of the endless days and the endless new would, in fact, end with the changing of the guards at the shifting of the seasons.

Perhaps.

 

Yet deeply rooted in both of us was a knowing.

A knowing that it might get hard.

A knowing that everything might not line up perfectly.

And even so, a knowing that we had to try anyway.

 

There was something there, something different, something we’d never felt before nor allowed ourselves to dream up lest it never arrive. We weren’t going to force it to fit but I know both of our fingers were crossed that it would.

Our reunion solidified what we already knew: together, we had found home.

 

 

 

 

 

We were in an entirely different state, moving from place to place, yet my constant had returned. I felt rooted. Uncertainties abounded around us but the one constant held true: we were saying “Yes”.

 

The shifting seas of life swelled up around us and rocked us through high and low tides.

 

Becoming a family, Lou, The Chief and I

Making our house into our home

Learning to live in a tiny cabin together

My first Winter

Dealing with illness

Shifting our careers

Dealing with baggage that just didn’t want to be lost

Losing our Lou.

Becoming a unit of two.

 

 

 

 

For the last almost three years, we’ve been saying “Yes”.

Through the ups and downs, the answer has been known.

Which is why, when The Chief asked me a very specific question recently, I without hesitation (but with plenty of tears of joy) knew what my answer would be.

Yes.

 

 

 

The Chief and The Scribe are getting hitched.

 

Cheers to leaping even though you’re scared.

To moving forward when you want to turn back.

To putting your heart out there, knowing it is meant to be loved.

To the constant.

Cheers to the people who truly see us and help us to shine.

 

Cheers to saying “Yes”.

 

Happy Solstice, Happy New Year, all. Thank you for coming along on this wild ride.

 

 

 

Say “Yes”.