Best. Gift. Ever.

It's Rachel's 32nd birthday today. I'll always remember how old she was when we first started dating cause of this exchange I had with my banker. I don't know how, but my 'new' girlfriend came up. And the guy asked how old she was. And I said, "27". To which he replied, "niii-iiiice". And gave me a fist bump. It was kind of strange and inappropriate but greatly amusing.

We went to "Up In The Air" last week. Even though it opens most places Christmas Day, for some reason Vancouver got it a couple weeks early. And it's really quite good. But anyway, there's a scene where one character tells another that all life's best moments are shared, that you don't really have any favorite memories where you're alone. So I tried to think of my favorite moments and I realized that not only are they all shared, they are all shared with Rachel. Not just the Henry-centric ones, all kinds of 'em from pretty much every stage of our still relatively brief life together.

Not to overstate it, but it does feel like my days started when I met her. Or at the very least, started anew. When I try to think of favorite memories from before we met (most of which are centered around the band -- particularly great gigs, signing the record deal, making a big budget video) they feel more like scenes from a movie. Whereas when I think of time shared with Rachel, I can still feel the moments, I can relive them as opposed to just reviewing them.

Like this one time. Rachel, who has no music training, started surreptitiously taking guitar lessons. And, simultaneously, surreptitiously taking voice lessons. So that one day, while we were just sitting around she picked up my guitar, and with no preamble, without so much as a throat-clearing, sang and played for me the most beautiful song I ever heard, before or since.

At the time I was just stunned. I mean, partly because I knew she didn't play guitar or sing and yet here she was doing both exceedingly well (that's a WTF? moment if ever there was one). But mainly because this impossibly perfect moment had just arrived unannounced in my life.

Best gift I ever got, by far. There's nobody else who could have given it to me. There's no other woman that could have impacted me the way she did (and does). There's no other woman on God's green earth for me.

Oh, and this year, for her birthday, I got her a coat.