The Road to 40 Day 204/365: My Favorite Decision

On this day, we celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary, and our 21st as a couple.

Many moons ago, we celebrated monthsaries, because the relationship was so new to us. We even did it twice a month – one for when we actually got together, and another when we made our relationship publicly official.

Now, we’re counting yerars of us being together. If I had a bag of tricks for surprises, I think I’ve exhausted it a long time ago. It’s even more difficult to pull off surprises now that we’re living together, because I can’t really hide anything in the house.

Case in point: my flowers from yesterday.

So my original plan for this anniversary was to reminisce our days here in Singapore with some kind of scavenger hunt. This was one of the surprises I pulled off years ago in UST, so I thought it would be a nice callback to that time as well.

Originally, it would be an 11-stop journey, but I realized it would be too much work for her on a Saturday morning. I cut it down to about six, and then finally, four.

I messaged some old friends, hoping to have a representation of the families we’ve known here in SG – our Depot housemates, her P&G girls, a couple of Coke friends, and the OFW contingent (at least, those who remain). Unfortunately, not a lot of them were available. I could have probably made it work, but I decided it wouldn’t be worth it to inconvenience our friends for just an hour or so before we head over to Vino’s school fair.

I wrote a letter for each stop of the journey and a QR code to a Spotify song that would best set the mood for that particular stop. I intended to place it in three locations, which Steph said would not be ideal because of the chance of rain.

I was confident it wasn’t going to rain, but it has been a pretty wet week, so I ultimately elected not to involve traveling our of our block. Besides, one of the biggest factors would be Che’s willingness to travel, and I thought she might not want to walk around this early.

With the pivot, that meant I had to print out my letters the night before our anniversary.

The morning started similar to any Saturday – I got up early to “play basketball.” Of course, I have been playing, I used the airquotes now because I didn’t actually play this day.

She already had the flowers, so I thought about a different surprise. I left the first note on the dining table and headed out to but Ya Kun Kaya Toast for breakfast.

Around 8am, Vino and her have gotten up, so she saw the first letter already. The second part of the story was hidden inside my laptop, which she will find after Vino guides her to it.

For third one, I told her to check it out in the mailbox. The final instruction was to head over to the roof garden of our HDB block. There, I left the final letter on the bench and went out of sight.

Back when we were a couple this song by NTwine played on the radio – “I Hope It’s You.” It echoed all our worries about being together so young. It wasn’t a popular song, but as we were listening to the lyrics, we looked at each other and knew that it spoke to us.

After all these years, I think we’ve outgrown the message of the song. We were certain about each other and got married in 2015.

Last year, a new song resonated with us, TJ Monterde’s “Palagi.”

“Sa huli, palagi babalik pa rin sa yakap mo. Hanggang sa huli, palagi pipiliin kong maging sa yo. Ulit-ulitin man, nais kong malaman mong iyo ako palagi.”

Like any relationship, ours hasn’t been perfect. We cry, we laugh, we talk, and we always find a way to work things out. We are living lives we chose together, and we find peace with each other amidst everything that we go through daily.

Through all the decisions we’ve had to make in life, choosing a life with Che has been the best.

“Ikaw ang paborito kong desisyon”

While it’s a bit mainstream, the message of the song just reflects a lot of what we feel now that we are at this stage of our relationship, pretty much like how NTwine’s song spoke to us all those years back.

Now that we’ve been married for a decade, I feel like it was a good time to turn our story so far into literature. I couldn’t figure out how to do it, but I was somehow led by fate to a page of an artist who makes old-school, Filipino-style comics. The timing worked out and the vision came to life.

We celebrated our anniversary with a nice dinner in Marina Bay. Like my plan for a surprise, this also had plenty of versions until we decided that this was going to be the best way to do it.

While 10 years is definitely a milestone, we felt that we shouldn’t be spending too much for it. The most important thing was that we were going to be spending it together.

We’re looking forward to plenty more years together and a lot more chances to celebrate growing old with each other.