September 28^th 2013

Dearest Rossco,

Just a little note on the high seas to let the whole world know that I love you! You are a wonderful husband, Father, friend, and lover. I could have told you this on a Facebook status update… but bless your unconventional heart, you aren’t on Facebook. I know over the 19 years we have been together I have written you a lot of love notes, but it has been too long – so I have tried to make this one something special!

For the lucky folk who find this bottle of love.. let me tell you a love story. Rossco and I first met in 1994 at the age of 16. We were both rebels without a cause at that age. I was listening to The Pixies, The Cure, Sonic Youth, and Nirvana, and he was into death metal. I was trying to stay clear of him due to his reputation as a cad. He was attracted to my wise-crackin’ disinterest.

We lived 3 streets away and caught the same train home from school. We kept bumping into each other, and I discovered he was hilarious. He took me roaming suburbia with he and his mates. He stole signs for me to paint on, took me to a cemetery overlooking a river, took me down storm water drains by candlelight, and climbing railway bridges to clutch to the underside of the tracks as trains roared overhead.

You got under my skin and despite myself, I fell in love. We both did. We couldn’t have enough of each other. We were in it together. We left home straight out of school and moved into an old queenslander that was condemned for human habitation. We shared our 2 bedroom flat with 2 friends, 1 slept on the verandah with a sheet for a wall. We survived on lentils. You drove the ‘smurfmobile’, a blue Datsun 120Y.

To stop ourselves from starving we got married at 18 years old. We knew our families wouldn’t approve, so we eloped without telling anyone except a few friends, as we were needing 2 witnesses. We were both full-time Uni students and getting married was the only way to access Centrelink Youth Allowance at the time. I remember you putting purple flowers from Woolworths in my hair which matched my purple tablecloth dress the chick at the markets made me. You were wearing your brother’s green suit. The best man wore stubbies shorts and thongs because he didn’t believe we were serious. We went to Subway afterwards for our “reception”.

I didn’t have an engagement ring because you couldn’t afford one… Instead I had an engagement stick you found on the beach under the moonlight when you proposed. It took a month for the rumours of our elopement to get back to our parents, my Mum found out from her boss at work. We both felt bad about that, we naively had planned a fake wedding 5 years down the track when everyone would be happy for us. Everyone told us our marriage wouldn’t last. Everyone thought we were just dumb young kids.

5 years later, you graduated your Engineering degree, and I graduated medicine a few years later. We had our first furry babies – Maya our border collie, Vishnu our black cat, and Fiesty the silver Persian. We worked hard, we fought sometimes, we wrote dozens of apology letters to each other promising things would get better. We bought our first home together – a ramshackled shitbox on a pretty 5 acres outside of Logan.

We celebrated 10 years since our elopement with a fabulous Anarchist wedding. You had green spikey hair and I wore a black tutu with a tartan bustle. I walked down the aisle to Billy Idol’s “White Wedding”. I had made a giant heart fire sculpture that fell over and started a grassfire. You put it out with the fire extinguisher from the Kombi and everyone cheered. Our bridal waltz was a fire-twirling display and dessert was a cream pie fight. It was the best wedding I could have dreamed of!

Soon after we fell in a rut. We were turning 29 and our youth was soon to be over. We both took each other for granted and realized that it was time we grew up and started thinking about children. We both wondered if this was “as good as it gets”. We didn’t know, because we had never been with anyone else. We both wondered if the grass was greener. Then we had a fight over me taking a bite of an unripe pear and putting it back in the fruitbowl… so we called it quits.

At first it was exciting to be free. It felt like a big adventure being single and flirting with other men. I went on dozens of crazy dates. You lost your mind to begin with.. You smashed the Indonesian wedding statues on the verandah with the fire-twirling sticks and wrote “get out of my house”. You returned the next day to clean the mess, do the tax, and leave flowers. Then one day you calmed down and told me with a glint in your eye that you had met someone…

OMG! I REALISED I WAS LOSING YOU!!

Suddenly I knew that this social experiment was a dismal failure. The grass was not greener, it was brown and patchy with grubs in it. I looked back over the fence that was our marriage and saw the lush long grass, unmown and untendered for years, full of weeds, but still with fertile promise.

WTF had I done??? How could I have taken you for granted and risked what we had? I spent a night howling, watching “Love Actually” with Hugh Grant on telly, and reading all our old love letters… I knew that I had to fight to get you back… So I hatched a crazy plot to woo you, I broke into your car and filled it with flowers, old photos and those love letters. I sent you on a treasure hunt to every one of our sentimental spots around Brisbane with cryptic notes and a rose marking each spot.

I waited at the end by the river in the purple elopement dress and a stick to propose to you. I waited for what seemed like forever. I felt like a lunatic. I wondered if you would show. Eventually you did. You hugged me and thanked me and said you had to think about my proposal. You hung the roses on the door of your apartment. You rang the next day to say “Yes”… we started dating again and you moved back home.

These days we joke about our “10 years long service leave”. I am glad we both had the chance to meet other people and that we have chosen each other again, this time as adults. Every day I am so grateful to share my life with you. Another 6 years have passed and we now have 2 children. They are both so handsome, just like you. You have made the most wonderful Father. I love overhearing you making them laugh, teaching them things, hearing you call our daughter “sweet-heart”. You change their nappies and get up at all hours of the night.

You still crack me up. You do thoughtful things like surprising me with cleaning my car while I am at work. And booking a surprise overnight stay in a hotel. We love going to the theatre together, we enjoy reruns of the Sopranos. After all these years you tolerate my silly escapades, and provide the pragmatics to make my crazy dreams come true.

Every night I am blessed to close my eyes with you lying beside me, and each morning I am glad that you are still there – sharing the coffee-making and child-wrangling duties. We may be quite different in so many ways, but my life is so much richer for sharing it with you!

I LOVE YOU ROSSCO!! And I want the world to know it xxx

P.S. I am hoping this love letter in a bottle inspires whoever finds it to share the love

1)   visit www.lovefloats4eva.net (you’re already here!)

2)   Leave a message on the website telling us where you found the bottle and when.

3)   Put this loveletter back in the bottle with your own letter of appreciation to someone you love… be it a lover, parent, child, friend, mentor, the check-out chick at Coles… whoever!

4)   Post the details of your note on the website and send a link to the recipient of your note to let them know that your love for them still floats!! Seal the bottle and release it in the ocean…

Where to next is anyone’s guess!!!