My Husband’s Birthday

It’s my husband’s birthday today.

I love birthdays. I always have. They’re a day dedicated to celebrating a person, reflecting on the growth they’ve experienced over the course of the year and looking ahead to what excites them about the year to come. In this way, we’ll celebrate C. We’re in Whitehorse for a few days of fun and relaxation and special meals out.

C and I met in university. He played on the football team and spent much of his time at the gym or on the field. I was in grad school and was most often found in the library. We were involved in very different things, but from the moment I first saw him, I was smitten. He was wearing a ballcap and eating a banana. I don’t think he knew I was staring at him.

We’re still different. We have different interests and different hobbies. C watches sports. A lot. I don’t. He likes to go to the movies. Theatres put me to sleep. He is a great dancer. ‘Two-left-feet-and-no-rhythm’ could be my middle name. He loves video games. I’ve never played one. He is calm, always. I’m…well, put it this way, my brain tends to go a mile a minute. The list goes on.

But where it matters, we’re the same.

I’m often asked about the things we do up here as a couple. Honestly, this was something I worried about before moving north. We were used to getting dressed up and going to one of our favourite restaurants for a date. Or we’d go watch live music. Or see a comedy show. Or sit in a café. These were things we liked to do together and we cherished them. What on earth would we do in Beaver Creek? A place without restaurants to choose from, without varied entertainment spots, without new neighbourhoods to explore. A place with nothing but each other.

We wondered if our differences would push us apart when we lived in this isolated northern community. Would we fall apart when we had nothing to distract us?

On one of my first days in the Yukon, in the dead of winter, I watched ‘The Shining’. It might not have been the best movie choice. Oh god, I thought to myself. I’m going to turn into Jack. The cold, the loneliness, and the darkness. The movie heightened the idea that the cold, the loneliness and the darkness might mean the end of the beautiful relationship C and I had built in the city.

In fact, the opposite happened. The north made our beautiful relationship even better. When we moved north, we’d been dating for three years and had lived together for two of those. We were committed to each other. We spoke of the future: marriage, kids, house, dog. We decided that the north would be a test. “It’ll make or break your relationship” someone told me. And maybe that’s true. Maybe a dramatic move like ours is the kind of thing that forces people to grow and whether that growth will be aligned or disparate is what will be seen. I think we were open to that. At least we tried to assure ourselves and each other that we were. And maybe that helped. In any case, the north has made the relationship. It has cemented the bond. We were married in a snowy union beside a frozen river. The two of us, the celebrant, the photographer and Chilli. The kind of wedding neither of us could have dreamed of before moving north, but the only kind we could imagine once we’d moved here. So utterly and breathtakingly beautiful, and so very, very special.

And our differences? It turns out they are something to appreciate.

We’ve learned that our differences make us a strong couple. They provide us opportunities to grow and learn – not only for each of us as individuals, but for the two of us as a couple. While I’m out foraging, or in the kitchen trying a new recipe, or reading, C might be chopping wood or building a fire. He might be honing his gaming skills. Through him I’ve learned and come to appreciate things I would otherwise not have sought out. And vice-versa. He supports me and I do the same for him. We each have what the other lacks—me, the planner; C, the anchor—and in this way we complement one another. We complete each other.

For all these reasons, and more, I cannot to celebrate C.

One of our first pictures together almost seven years ago.