A Custom Song for Your 10th Wedding Anniversary

Ten years is the first anniversary with enough on the record to name things out loud. At one year you are still describing how you feel. At ten you can list what actually happened, in order, and it lands harder than any adjective.

So send the list. The street the first apartment was on and what was wrong with that place. The car you both drove until it quit for good. The move, and which of you sat down in the empty living room. The year that was hard and the way you two talk about it now. The joke that is a decade old and still gets used about once a month. The nickname nobody else is allowed to say out loud.

Those are the lyrics. A song about a decade of love could be about anyone in your zip code. A song about the third-floor walk-up and the couch that would not fit up the stairs is about the two of you and nobody else.

You do not need to write any of it well. Bullet points in an email are fine. Half sentences are fine. If something is too private to play in a room full of family, tell us and it stays out.

The usual worry is timing. You get an original studio-quality song written from your details, $19.99, delivered by email within 24 hours, so an anniversary on Saturday is still doable on Friday.

Start the list with the address of the first place you lived together. Everything else comes back to you once that one is written down.