Happy Valentine's Day

This is my fiancée. Here, She is performing urgent care for a sick chicken we rescued from an abusive and neglectful home. In these little things, Annie displays a bottomless depth of compassion. It is there for her family, my kids, our friends, and a multitude of furry and feathered creatures. Her heart is full of love for others and she still makes room to encourage me, challenge me to grow, and support my dreams. I am so incredibly proud of who she is, and I consider myself lucky to have her in my life.

We come from different worlds yet our philosophical, political, and religious beliefs are remarkably similar. Our differences are mostly in personality, disposition and temperament, our social habits, and the entertaining hobbies we pursue.

She described some of these differences to a friend of hers while we worked on a weekend fencing project. She always wanted to fall in love with a cowboy, but all the cowboys she met were way too politically conservative. "All I wanted," she said, "was a liberal cowboy. They don't exists. Trust me. So I had to build one." I guess it's easier to turn a liberal nerd into a cowboy than it is to make a conservative cowboy more liberal.

It is mostly an inside joke which makes us both smile. She is not actually turning me into a cowboy. I am learning to do farm work and animal chores because I love her and want to be a part of her world. From that perspective, I am turning myself into a cowboy.

Another friend of Annie's was impressed my daughter's knowledge of comic books. She told me this a few nights ago while we sat on the couch and discussed my daughter's various fandoms. We had some laughs as Annie mixed universes, trying to separate characters between DC and Marvel. I let her know about Zu's crush on Iron Fist and told her my two favorite heroes were Daredevil (the blind vigilante lawyer) and Nightcrawler (the teleporting mutant). She let me geek out for a while, filling her in on backstories and random trivia.

Her daughter is obsessed with Captain America. Annie recognizes the character but knows little about his background in either movie or comic form. Some other superheroes are also vaguely familiar to her, mostly by name alone. She is leaning on me and my knowledge to help her relate more to her daughter and my kids. This is how I know she loves me because she is stepping into my world as much as I am exploring hers.

If we only met in the middle, I'm not sure if our relationship would work. We did not find love by sticking to our own interests. We thrive because I go all the way into her country life and she goes all the way into my geekdom. I am thankful for the love I found with Annie. Today, I wish her the happiest Valentine's Day.