An open letter from Ariel Chesler to his daughters, about how he knew their mother was the one for him.
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Dear Girls,
On this Valentine’s Day, here is what I want you to know about how I met your mother and fell in love with her:
Your mother and I were both raised in Brooklyn, but we would never have met each other there. Two million people lived between us. Instead, we met in college in a town outside of Boston. We began as friends. I used to ask her advice about other girls. And then I began giving her rides home to New York. And when you genuinely enjoy someone sitting next to you for hours while trapped on the highway, as I did with your mother, you can see that person being next to you for years, for your lifetime even.
So, we drove to the movies. And to dinners. And to parties. We took many long road trips. Sometimes we just drove around our college campus for no reason. I once blindfolded your mother and drove her to a dinner in Little Italy and then to a spot under the Brooklyn Bridge where I read her a poem I had written her. Now, as New York City dwellers we are in a car so seldom that we feel entirely out of our element when we have to drive somewhere. We don’t have nearly enough time to celebrate our love the way we once did but I know that we both think about each other a lot. And I know that somewhere on a highway between here and Boston the spirits of our younger selves are riding side by side, smiling, debating, meeting one another, while your mother and I sit next to each other on the couch thinking of you both.
Love,
Dad
Photo: Flickr/@ravi