Happy Anniversary

Dear Pratik,
Of all the words I could use to describe myself, "traditional" would not be one of them. I never really aspired to have the picket fence and 2.5 kids, but I did know that I wanted someone equally as quirky to share my life with. I always wanted to be married, but knew it would take an incredibly special and patient man to put up with me.

God has a sense of humor.

My worn-out joke is that I prayed to marry a doctor, but I should have specified an MD…and when I prayed for someone who likes to travel, I didn't exactly mean someone who is so nomadic that I wonder if we'll ever have dining chairs to go with our fancy table. And honestly, do we really have ANYTHING in common? Your ideal birthday gift is a class on structural molecular biology, while I ask for a murder tour in Los Angeles.

I've learned in our short two years of marriage that the advantage to marrying your opposite is how much you learn from one another. It was difficult for me to adjust to living with someone who wasn't just able to keep up with me intellectually, but is my intellectual superior. Those late night lectures on the stock market may put me to sleep faster than the sandman, but if I've learned anything from you, my chemist, it is that osmosis really does work. Your argumentative nature has taught me how to be a more critical thinker. Most ladies swoon over flowers…I melt over my man's ability to play the devil's advocate.

But of all the gifts you've given me, the best you've ever given me is the world. Home really is where the heart is, and you've made the world my abode. There will never be a better gift to me than the travels and moves we've made to world-class cities. I used to see the world's cities as destinations. Now, I see them as possible places of residence. What an amazing sense of freedom and adventure you have instilled in me.

I always knew growing up the man for me lived somewhere on the other side of the globe and that he would have to embrace my sense of adventure, my love of learning, and my natural affinity to the "unusual." Never in my life did I imagine I would marry a Stanford PhD from India whose brain is so full of complex information, he can't remember how to drive home…and that I would come to love these quirks more than any of his other traits.

Happy Anniversary to you, the quirky man of my dreams, who never ceases to remind me of how small the world is and how big our lives can be.
Love,
Lindsie