Peach Friedman
author, educator & trainer
intuitive fitness for women

Most days I nag him: Oh my heavens, what would it take for your to put your shoes away just once?? And other days I whisper with girlfriends on long walks or cell phone chats about how men just don’t get it and they never will…

But the fact is, I married this guy for a reason and I would like to tell the world (or the small fraction of the world that looks at this blog) that I love him. Like, a lot.

This month three years ago he wrote me an email:
From: Jeffrey Dumars
Date: October 10, 2006 3:46:27 PM PDT
Subject: Re: hi
To: Peach Friedman

good for you peach-e. you’re happiness brings me happiness.
i’m sure it will pull together for you.
glad you’re coming back to Sac this weekend. what else would you like to do this weekend?

It’s a simple email (complete with spelling errors) but it reminds me of that rush I felt when we were first dating, the rush I’d feel every time an email from him lit up my inbox. I was living in Palo Alto; he was in Sacramento, and we’d travel between our cities every other weekend or so to run around the great state of California hiking, skiing, playing tennis, eating at fabulous restaurants and making lots of noise. When we weren’t galavanting around this state, we were jetting up to Portland, or back east to Virginia. Jeffrey documented much of that year and four months of our courtship (pre-engagement) in photographs.

We were goofy, carefree, and falling in love. No real expectations yet, thus no real let downs yet. No financial stress, no sleeplessness (except the blissed-out pre-skiing nights, but those were self-induced) or baby worries.

That stage of life is gone. My twenties spent dating and blowing all my money on weekend trips and clothes–gone. And what we have now might look a lot different (I’m far less blonde and use eye cream now, plus everywhere we go we tote around a 23-pound, smiley, drooling baby), but beneath all the surface changes, somewhere in there we’re still Peach & Jeffrey, traipsing around the state (or globe, as we did this summer). There’s new stresses, we sometimes feel tied down, and we can’t fly by the seat of our pants quite as often, but still…I love our little life.

Plus, he’s a good dad.