I don’t feature much about the most important person in my life.

He’s quite private, he’s low-key, very hard to buy for because he doesn’t like “stuff”, and the stuff that he does like, he is quite particular about.

He’s my husband, and we’ve been married over 30 years. (I won’t go into how old we were when we met, but I was around my daughter’s age. So that’s a while).

For his birthday earlier this month, we decided we’d go for a nice dinner just the two of us. The kids weren’t home for the holidays yet, and we hadn’t gone out alone as a couple to try a new restaurant in a while.

But what present to get him? Other than dinner? I couldn’t think of an actual gift.

On the morning of his birthday, as I waited for the coffee to finish brewing before I headed to work, I pulled out one of my blank cards. And I wrote him a note, from the heart, about all the things I don’t say to him every day. It was a love letter. The kind we used to write each other when we dated long-distance and saw each other only on weekends, sometimes several weeks in between, and sent things to each other via snail mail.

When you’re together as long as we’ve been, it’s so easy to forget that how you feel, what you say, what you don’t say, really matters. The writing was easy for me.

I left the envelope propped up next to the carafe, knowing he would see it as soon as he reached for the coffee – the first destination of every day. In fact, he often can’t entertain a conversation with me until he’s finished his first cup of java. Me – I’m a morning person. Him – not so much.

I got a text from him later around 10 AM. He loved the card. He thought it was sweet. It made him emotional.

Have you ever written a love letter?