When we married in 2000, my husband
whisked me off on a surprise honeymoon to Paris. Everyone always wants to know
if I was really surprised. As proof, I produce photos of me in front of every
Parisian landmark wearing the hiking shorts and T-shirts I had packed for the
week I thought we were spending in the Smoky Mountains. But let’s face it – I
would have stood out as a tourist regardless. Planning the surprise also
involved my soon-to-be-spouse contacting my brand new boss ahead of time to ask
for a few extra days off, which I had no knowledge of until afterwards. The
grins on all of my coworkers’ faces when I returned were something! For all
practical purposes, I had never left the country before. Exploring all of the
sights, tastes, and smells of France with my new husband made for a fairy tale
start to our marriage.
As an encore, in 2001 my husband surprised
me with a weekend trip to Washington, D.C. for our first anniversary. We
trekked all over the town in 80+ degree weather and sweltering humidity (did I
mention we were married in August?), not wanting to miss a single sight. This
time my boss was surprised when I called on a Monday morning to tell her the
flight that I hadn’t known about the week before had been delayed, and
therefore I would miss a day of work. Luckily I had a very understanding boss;
she didn’t begrudge me the memories we made.
On our fifth anniversary we loaded up our
four-month-old daughter and took off on one of our first trips as a threesome
to see friends a few hours away. We had dinner in the family-friendly Spaghetti
Factory on the way up, enjoying the rare dinner out together while still
constantly cautious and attentive to our new baby’s every need.
For our tenth anniversary we dropped our
five- and three-year-old children with my parents and spent the weekend at the
coast with our still-nursing baby. We were less overly-concerned about finding
just the right spot to change a diaper with our third child. It was almost
romantic.
For our thirteenth anniversary we did the
same, this time dropping three older kids and taking along another baby for a
weekend away. This particular baby didn’t sleep for more than an hour at a time
at night for his first seven months, so the whole weekend was spent in a big of
a haze. I still have pictures of us smiling to prove we at least attempted to
enjoy each other’s company.
Last year was our fifteenth anniversary. Quite
the milestone, really. 15 years, seven (?) jobs between us (not counting
various titles tried on as my husband worked out the fits and starts of
starting a business), four children, three cats, and three addresses later. To
be honest we didn’t really do anything to mark the occasion last year. We
talked about planning something big, but as it turned out we already had a year
filled with wonderful and surprising travel opportunities that simply didn’t
leave room for a trip of our own. And that was okay. We were quite happy to
have our adventures handed to us, even if we had to take on some of them separately.
Today marks our sixteenth wedding
anniversary. Like most summer days, I am spending it at home with all four
children. It’s supposed to be 97 degrees today, so we headed out early to pick
blackberries around the neighborhood. After about 5 minutes we had to quickly
dash home, as the littlest guy developed what I will politely refer to as
“digestive issues.” This led to a rather fun morning of urgent bathroom trips
and outfit changes. It also made the older children mad at me for cutting the
blackberry picking short. My daughter is getting braces next week, and is
adjusting to the discomfort of the spacers that are preparing her teeth. (Let’s
just say she is not one to embrace discomfort.) My oldest son contributed to
the day by falling out of a tree (don’t worry – low branch,) and shortly after
tripped over his own feet, resulting in multiple scrapes and bruises today. (Can
we say “growth spurt”?) The children resorted to arts and crafts, and now my
middle son is mad at me for letting his little brother use too much tape. (All
of this may have led me to hide out and start typing. You can’t pick what
prompts the creative process.)
Tonight my husband and I will feed the
kids something terribly uninspired for dinner, like chicken nuggets or mac and
cheese. After we get them tucked into bed we will order take out and eat it on
the couch. (The dining room table that we used to share candlelight meals over
is now associated with the tiring dance of getting everyone to sit together and
eat neatly and interact politely day in and day out). Then perhaps we will
watch a movie, or maybe sit out on the porch swing and listen to the hum of our
surroundings as evening sets. Perhaps we will talk about our day. Perhaps not. There
is never a way to do so without discussing other people’s bodily functions, but
we are used to that.
The rhythm of life is different these
days. It’s different from when we were on our own, young and carefree to too
immature to know that we were either. It’s different from when we had our first
baby, elated and exhausted and concentrated on learning the ropes of our new
reality. It’s different from when we had a house full of preschoolers,
toddlers, and babies, an intensely loud, crazy, and all-encompassing world with
survival as the only goal. Now we have a preschooler and a preteen and
everything in-between. It’s a world I never imagined, where I bounce back and
forth between addressing small child frustrations and big kid emotions, unsure
if I’ve really mastered either myself. It’s a world where big kids’ activities
have infringed on the autonomy of our own schedules, once again revealing the
loss of a freedom I never truly recognized we had. For every gain in a child’s
abilities that moves him closer to independence, there appears to be a new
crossroad that arises, one that I know requires my full attention to navigate
but that I feel ill-equipped to address while still chasing a 3-year-old across
a parking lot. In a word, it’s complicated.
And so sharing a pizza laden with grown-up
toppings (please let it be anything but pepperoni or Hawaiian!) on the couch at
8pm on our anniversary doesn’t feel like a cop-out or a letdown in this phase
of life. It feels like a comfort, a constant, something that is still within our
control as nearly everything else spirals out of it. It’s not a big trip or a
feeling of young romance. But while the daily rhythms change, the undercurrent
stays the same. The joy (and relief) I feel when my husband walks in at the end
of the day, once again mine to share life with for the next few hours. Once
again mine. A theme that repeats itself through the years, but never
becomes any less. The excitement I still feel looking forward to the moment
when all of the children are settled upstairs and we can rest in each other’s
company alone, uninterrupted aside from the vague sounds of thunking above. The
peace of sharing a meal with someone who demands nothing from you in that
moment except quiet companionship. The understanding that 16 years of marriage
has built between us.
If to some of you
this seems like I have given up on having adventures as a couple, don’t worry,
I haven’t. Even as I embrace pizza on the couch, I continue to dream and plan
for the future. The places we will go, the things we will do. Some of them are
years off, some decades even, but some of them will just require a little
planning.
