SquawkRadio

My name is Matthew, and I am a Rooster. (In case you don’t know, a Rooster is someone who is proud to be married to a Squawker. And I am!). My wife Andrea is a Squawker, and I am happy to say that the very kind ladies of SquawkRadio have graciously allowed me to write a few words to my beautiful wife, to celebrate her 40th birthday today.

I first heard about SquawkRadio last year after the floods in New Orleans, and how the Squawkers were helping out a fellow author and friend Leslie. For everyone in the Squawk community who helped out – congratulations. In fact, no one was probably as touched as I was – as touched, and as surpised to know that I now own the most expensive unbound copy of Eloisa’s “Taming of the Duke” in the planet! So how better to celebrate her birthday and her life than by writing a few words here, which I am assured is the centre of the planet.

This story is about a woman named Andrea. Andrea is the love of my life, the only girl I have ever known and ever loved, and according to our wedding vows, will be the only one I will ever love until death do us part (good thing to know!).

I first met my future wife in a co-ed boarding school we both attended, back in the early 1980s. Although I’d like to say that it was love at first sight, it was 2 years before she agreed to go out with me, and another 4 years before she agreed to go out with me (again). And another 3 years before she finally gave up waiting, and asked me to marry her on Christmas Eve.  And if that is not enough proof of the synchronicity of the universe, I had an engagement ring waiting for her in my pocket. After knowing each other for 7 years, she had beaten me to the punch approximately half an hour before I was going to ask her!

We agreed to marry each other, and here we are today, bound together in a life sentence. But if I may borrow a few words from Robert Bly, my sentence has been a thousand years of joy.

It happened one autumn when I met you, way back in Grade 9. Of all the girls in our school, you were surely the fairest of them all. Your wicked ways have captivated me, and I have to admit I’m a fool for love. (I was a dangerous man). Andrea, you are my barefoot princess, my shining star – and the woman I hope my daughters become.