The Garden
Six years ago today, on a Wednesday in November, Dan and Steff married. This is the garden of what grew, before that day and since: the things that held, and still hold. Every line in quotation marks is Dan's or Steff's, written to each other across eighteen years. The rest is just the paths between them.
Eighteen years, turning
Time runs upward along the spiral, from Shanghai in 2008 at the bottom to today at the top. Then look up: the sky holds 496 stars. The coloured ones are things one of them said or did for the other. The pale ones are photographs, eighteen years of them, and every one opens in its album. Press play and the years go by.
Shanghai, and every strange city since
Her first email to him is from April 2008. They were together from September. The rest is a list of places that each had a kitchen, a walk, and the two of them in it.
Tenerife, La Palma, Springbrook, New Zealand and España 23-24 are Steff's own albums. They open when she is signed in to Google.
We move together through foreign cities with an ease of experience and a sense of team, of partnership, that comes from years, almost decades of handling wild, weird and high pressure situations. We can rely on each other in a tough situation without second thought.
Seventeen years is the deepest chemistry we have. You're my baseline.
You have been my home for so many years, it has been so incredibly beautiful, traveling the world and feeling at home where ever we are together.
Twelve patterns, turned into gifts
In June she asked him for her patterns and he gave her twelve. She gave him ten of his, and wrote gifts under them. In September he wrote the other half: the same twelve, the same order, so she could hold them side by side. "There are no asks in here and nothing to answer. Just the gifts." His words, to her.
Holding your truths in until they're fully grown.
When it finally arrives, it's finished, and it holds. Every letter you've written me this year I could build a house on. Not one you've had to take back. You don't say a thing until it's true, and I have spent my whole life around people who say things by the hour. You are a vault, Steff. Everything I've ever handed you, the worst nights, the folders... has stayed exactly where I put it. Not once used in a fight. Not once passed on. I don't think you know how rare that is.
Living from the moment, reflecting after.
You are the most alive person I have ever met. You don't rehearse joy. Sunset on the beach, dance class, oysters in Mallorca, a via ferrata I still can't quite believe you survived! Ice cream because it was still before 3pm. I've watched you light up a thousand times and every time it was real. Whatever I said in June about the pause... the pause was never your job. The aliveness was, and you never once let me down on it.
Our agreements changing inside you before they change between us.
You honour yourself before you honour a contract. I married you for exactly that, then complained about it for seventeen years. "I don't need to be right. I just need to honour myself." You said that in May and it's the truest sentence anyone has said to me this year. And when you do bring it to the room, you own it all the way down. No hedging, no half. That's the whole gift.
The shifting ground.
Every one of those moves was you looking for a shape we could both fit in. Open, then closed, then open differently, then something new... nobody who didn't care would keep trying shapes. You stretched further than anyone had a right to ask. And you can hold two true things at once without dropping either. "I'm not a no never" and "not now" in the same breath, and you mean both. That's range. Most people can't do it.
Clarity coming slowly.
And when it came, it didn't move. May to September, one sentence, not an inch in any direction. I called that slowness. It's bedrock. I can trust what you finally say precisely because you waited until you knew it.
Different eyes for your growth and mine.
You never stopped seeing me. Not once, not on the worst day of this. "I want to see you shine again... I've seen you so capable, inspiring, striving with clarity." You wrote that in September, after everything. Your eyes for growth are ferocious, in yourself first: Hakomi, the course, teaching, the lion on the wall. And this year, when I gave you every reason not to, you sent your love to people you had every right to resent. I don't have a word for that. Generous isn't big enough.
Wanting my openness while keeping yours.
Your privacy is a form of care. I finally get it. You keep things safe, mine, your family's, your own, and that is exactly why I could hand you everything. I spent years asking you to open a door you'd built to keep people safe. It kept me safe too. You are the safest place I have ever put anything.
The weight of the child question.
The weight was the size of your heart. You have so much love in you it needs another person to land on, and I've watched it land on the kids in Vienna, on your dad, on the dog at the café, on every stray creature that has ever wandered into our life. The longing was never about lack. It was abundance looking for a door. And that you wanted to make a whole new person with me is the biggest thing anyone has ever said to me.
The lens.
You were right. I'll say it plainly because you've earned plain. The lens was love... You told me not to die and made it an order. I asked you for warmth without the worry, and you gave me both, and I could only feel one of them. I can feel both now.
Coldness when we're hurting.
What I called coldness was you keeping your feet when I'd lost mine. "Name what's going on." "Shall we be in silence?" "If we get irritated, let's hold silence." You stayed regulated so that somebody in the room was, and then you came anyway. "Of course I'll come and hold you." That isn't cold, Steff. That's the fire kept low so it doesn't take the house.
The unspoken words.
You said them with your hands the whole time. Chicken soup. Goulash. Knödel on my birthday. The suitcase up from the cellar. The book you ordered to the Späti. And then you said them out loud anyway, and I nearly missed them because I was still listening for the sentence. "If we can, yes." I heard it. I'm sorry it took me so long to hear it in everything else.
The door that closed quietly.
You opened others. Yin, Hakomi, the painting, the Dolomites, dancing, bouldering, a whole life with rooms in it I didn't know existed, and you're teaching people in them now. And you never once pretended a door was open when it wasn't. I'd rather a closed door than a painted one. You gave me the real one every time.
That's the column I owed you. I'm sorry it took a summer. You taught me how to love softly. I'm still learning. This is me practising.
What she did, while he was writing
He worked at it in words. She worked at it in deeds and finished sentences. Counted from their own files.
What Steff said, in order
These are her lines, in order. Each one is hers.
I feel proud to be your wife.
Dan I love you. I love you as a person.
Let's find a mountain top to embrace each other! I love you
I cherish your questions and look forward to answering them. I think it's exactly these kinds of questions that bring us closer.
I'm here, I want to have these conversations with you. We need softness and an openness towards each other.
Of course I'll come and hold you. Shall we be in silence?
I would have liked a porch and a rocking chair by your side. Silly jokes and a million memories we've shared.
If our relationship is ending it is not because of a lack of love.
You're one of a kind and I'm grateful for our adventures together, what a blast!
What a ride! Love you and immense gratitude, you've awakened so much in me.
I will miss you for ever, I hope we can transition into something really beautiful and strong. Whatever shape or form it will be.
If we can, yes.
I love you, I believe in you.
Thank you baby, this really touched me. I feel seen for who I am not who you may want or need me to be.
So so beautiful my love. So much gratitude in my heart for you!
I never regretted kissing you.
It's a deep intense passionate love and life story
What Dan wrote, when he wasn't writing a contract
I love you more than the rain through the trees I love you more than the green on the leaves I love you my wife, my life, my heart, centered. My lungs full of air. My soul, still there, Despite sand filled eyes, I'm whole. Memory of you fair love x
I am married to you for life.
I want us to wake laughing, that feeling we had of being so lucky to have each other.
You're one of the most graceful, sweetest, diplomatic, kind and wise women I will ever meet in my life. It's been an honour.
You are a vault, Steff. Everything I've ever handed you has stayed exactly where I put it.
You are the most alive person I have ever met.
18 years, everything we were, everything we went through, and the love is still real.
"What does a Tuesday look like?"
He asked her that in March: "Not a fantasy. A regular Tuesday in the life we're building. Where do we wake up? What does the kitchen smell like? Who comes over? What do we eat for dinner? Paint it for me." In October he answered it himself: "the moments I'd keep from this year were ordinary ones." Here they are.
Nothing is wrong with normal. Normal, the way I mean it now, is a life I don't need a break from.
A whole life with rooms in it
"You opened others... a whole life with rooms in it I didn't know existed, and you're teaching people in them now."
Both of them did a death meditation at Borderland which touched them deeply. He calls it "a beautiful life-changing practice" and comes back to it whenever the theme is saying what you need to say while people are still alive.
Your eyes for growth are ferocious, in yourself first.
Married six years today.
Together for eighteen.
So much laughter, closeness, care, love and love love love
Happy anniversary, Steff.
With all my love, always, in all waysDan
As in September: "There are no asks in here and nothing to answer."
Made by Dan for Steff with love, light, laughter and tears.