It’s hard to believe that when the summer ends this year, it will be ten years since we first met.

Ten years since I walked into a bowling alley expecting to have a fun night with a couple of my girlfriends, and left with the first impression of you on my heart.

In some ways, it feels like forever. And then sometimes, I ask myself, how have we made so much in just ten years?

Ten years, two graduate degrees. A car. An engagement, a wedding. A house, and then a baby. The car traded in for a van. A second child, and then a third. One house sold, another purchased. The city where I was born, left behind.

And still, you keep leaving those impressions on my heart. Like the tracks left by wheels in a dirt road, I’m intimately familiar with the place you have made for yourself in my life, the space in my heart that holds you close.

I remember the second time we saw each other. Eating take out on the back porch of my part-time retail job, because I was working a double shift and hadn’t brought anything to eat. It didn’t bother me, but it bothered you. So you brought me food – pasta, chicken Parmesan, soup – and sat with me while I ate it, even though it was October and cold.

You didn’t ask for anything in return, and I loved you a little bit for that.

Ten years later, and you still never ask for much.

You have given, time and time again. Given your time, your energy, your love. In the daily shuffle of raising three tiny terrors, there often isn’t enough of anything left over at the end of the day for yourself, but you still get up every morning, ready to give it all again.

I’ve watched you share your favourite snacks with Bea because you can’t resist her begging face. Read a sixth, seventh, eighth book with George because he always wants one more, and you just can’t say no to him. Cuddle Flo until your arms have gone to sleep, because you don’t want to put her down when she’s so comfortable on you.

And I’ve seen how you give me your support, every day, without fail, for ten years. My good days are built on the foundation of the support you give me, and my bad days are salvaged by the love you never fail to show me. Ten years, and you have never stopped proving that I was right all along.

My friends and I left the bowling alley the night we met talking about you. The one I suspect had invited you on purpose asked me I thought about you.

“I don’t know,” I told her. “He seems like a good guy.”

A good guy.

A good husband. A good father. A good man.

Happy Father’s Day, my love. You are all that and more.