Tag: Marriage

20Jan

Fish Pâté

Q: “Can you describe the exact sensation of being a dying and/or delirious fish?”
Normal, respectable, sane human being: “No.”
Me: “OF COURSE!”

So what, you ask, led me to my proud moment of gasping and flopping on a blue plush train seat, watching the air spin giddy circles around my head, feebly moaning with my rubbery fish lips for water?

That would be my husband. See, Dan knows some things that I did not use to know, like money is not essential for a European tour. Neither is common sense. And forty-five minutes is PLENTY of time to disembark from our international flight (provided it lands on time), gather our luggage, go through customs, buy Underground tickets, cross London, and get on the Chunnel train to France which, if missed, would leave us stranded in England with neither money nor common sense (which I did not yet realize were unessential).

Dan assured me we’d make it, and I wondered if “make it” was some European phrase meaning “die penniless, delusional, and certifiably insane when we get lost somewhere in East Upton Worcestershire and fail to mind the gap.” I, you see, am a realist. But wouldn’t you know it, the stars aligned. Our plane landed early. Our luggage came out first. The customs officer waved us through. We caught the Underground just before it left. We successfully minded the gap and donned our brick-laden backpacks and ran, and ran, and died briefly, and ran some more, and flopped onto our train with EIGHT WHOLE MINUTES TO SPARE. Even though I was delirious and a fish and all, gasping for breath on that blue plush seat was one of the most ridiculously exhilarating experiences of my life.

We made it, just like Dan said, and catching the train was just the first of many marvelous European adventures, including but not limited to getting lost in Paris, ordering pâté thinking it was potatoes, getting pregnant, getting lost in Venice, hiking in the Alps, getting lost in Zurich, antagonizing cows, getting lost in Paris again, climbing 16,300 steps (I counted), getting lost in London, and being interrogated in Iceland in Icelandic about the terrorist nature of our bottled water. Also getting lost in Iceland.

Blissfully unaware of our doom

In case your head has not yet exploded from the vulgar number of lists in this post, here’s what I learned from that particular trip:
Money really isn’t all that important in the grand scheme of funness.
Neither is common sense.
My husband, in addition to being right, is a fabulous person to get lost in foreign cities with.
And most important of all, “pâté” does not mean potatoes.

13Jan

Mastercard’s Got Nothin’ On Us

We sit nose-to-nose in the tiny stone room that some say is the highest point in the city. We share a completely fantastic pizza made from ingredients that should never be put on pizza, like salad. (Daring, no?) We drink imported beer out of thick glass goblets–wine glasses on testosterone, basically–and laugh. We talk about the past and the future and mostly all the bits in between, and when dessert comes, we shut up. (Chocolate soufflé. You understand.) We wind our way through the cobblestone maze of Centro in the rain, holding hands and flirting shamelessly, and when we find ourselves back home, we smile.

This is date night, post-children edition. It is exactly like fine wine–rare and luxuriant, complex and lingering, inhibition-loosening and too expensive to indulge often. Yet as most indulgences are, date night is worth every penny… and then some. (Babysitter: €25.50. Dinner: €40. Half a liter of gasoline: €580.18. A whole evening to feel sexy and pretend to discuss things in an intelligent manner and remember why we like us: Priceless.)

Dating before kids was fun too, though usually less… sophisticated. We used to go to the wondrously horrifying dollar theater about once a week to watch movies we only cared $1 about and contract interesting diseases through the ripped plush upholstery. Afterward, we’d make out in the parking lot and grin when passers-by yelled at us to get a room, because hey, we’re married, even though we don’t look married because married people don’t make out in parking lots, and we already have a room, and ha!

Now that we’re parents two times around and legally Responsible Adults (to elaborate on a previous point, ha!), we tend to do more date-ish things on our evenings out. Dress up, eat at restaurants with real tablecloths, that sort of thing. But we still make out in the parking lot afterward, and I’m reminded every time why I wouldn’t trade our relationship–with its sparks and sand pits, its whimsicality and profundity, its ins and outs and especially the whirling in-betweens–for anything in the world.

24Sep

Love’s Interest

I encountered my first personal miracle on a crystalline December afternoon nearly five years ago. It snuck like whispered lightning into the suitcase-sized booth at Coney Island Hot Dogs where I was sitting with my boyfriend of one month, our knees kissing quietly under the table. We had reached the silent place in conversations where eyes start filling in the unsaid words, and I was thinking despite my best intentions…

Dating was not new territory for me, even though only one of my previous boyfriends could stomach the meager commitment of being called such, and then I was the one saying, “Oh, let’s not use labels.” In fact, the dating mantra was simple: Girlfriends are to be touched and not heard. I eventually clued into the fact that the guys in my life so far had been… well, something impolite to say (hint: starts with “jack” and ends with “asses”), and decided to become a nun.

Then I met Dan. Technically, we met the first day of Stupid English when he started whispering to me without realizing I was the tutor… and I oh-so-graciously shushed him. But I blocked don’t remember that particular incident. I do remember him coming over to see my roommate, me telling him she wasn’t in, and us suddenly realizing we had been talking for three hours. And then realizing we still had more to say.

I suppose that a relationship between two people who are preemptively opposed to the idea can only start as a series of small accidents, like falling deep into a conversation without realizing how. Like ending up on a movie date after all your other friends back out. Like listening to your own thoughts grown from a different soul. Oh, we convinced ourselves that we weren’t attracted, that our conversations were like Scotch tape that could be pulled off in an instant. Even after the awkwardness of knowing set in, we played it off as the stress of school.

After our third date (thought I was kidding about the denial factor?) and two solid hours of whispering, Dan finally admitted–as much to himself as to me–that he was falling for me. You would think after three dates, I would have come to the same conclusion, but my ego was clinging tenaciously to the idea that I. did. not. like. him. Even though it was already 3 a.m., I stayed up with my journal, trying to untangle a barrage of sticky emotions from the crevices in my brain. However, all I could come up with were two words: “It’s him.” I wrote them on a sticky-note and then threw the sticky-note away.

A week later, after I decided from a purely-intellectual standpoint to “officialize” our relationship, I very intellectually started freaking out. Nothing in my entire life has ever scared me as profoundly as holding Dan’s hand for the first time. I still don’t know why. After all, I adored our times together–how he challenged me, how he encouraged me, how he made me laugh. He emanated the kind of unassuming strength that I could lay the fragile bits of my heart open on. Plus, he had the cutest butt I’d ever ogled seen.

I guess I fell squarely within the cliché of women scared senseless by the prospect of true love. I wanted to keep emotion out of the picture. I wanted the safety of distance. I wanted desperately to break up before our hearts had a chance to intertwine. I knew I was hinging each day on irrationality, and I’m sure that Dan knew it too, but his endless patience provided just enough of a tether to keep my irrational, confused, terrified heart from tearing away.

So, despite my efforts to remain unattached, I wound up in a tiny Maryland town for Christmas break, meeting The Parents, putting up Christmas decorations, and walking through the snow with my fingers contentedly tangled in Dan’s. And, of course, sitting in a tiny restaurant booth trying to process the short history of our relationship. I looked up from my thoughts, straight into Dan’s smiling eyes…

…and in that instant, I fell in love.

Old Couply Pictures

One month later, I was dizzy from the sparkling significance of a new diamond ring. Six months after that, I was falling asleep curled in my new husband’s arms. And 4-1/2 years after that, I’m missing him ridiculously after only a few days apart. Of course we don’t always feel romantic–sometimes, we don’t even feel much like friends–and it’s easy to let familiarity dull our appreciation for each other. But love has a knack for expanding the treasures of memory, like money temporarily forgotten in a bank, and every time I revisit them, I realize I am richer than I ever thought.

5Sep

Just Call Me Peter Pan

How to feel like an adult:
1. Promise your husband an authentic Italian cappuccino, even though you yourself have never made one before.
2. Ask husband how to make one.
3. Spoon coffee grounds into tiny filter of espresso pot. Spill less than 50%. Not bad!
4. Pour milk into frother.
5. Place coffee pot and frother on stove. Light stove valiantly, even though you are still afraid of the invisible killer gas lying in wait to erase the few brain cells that pregnancy hasn’t already devoured. Think, “This isn’t so hard!”
6. Observe steam blasting madly from sides of espresso pot. Smell the coffee burning. Listen to the hiss of milk spilling over the frother and into the open flame.
7. Call husband to help.
8. Once husband gets all under control, repeat steps 3-6. Success at last!
9. Serve husband lovely, authentic, frothy, non-burnt, self-made cappuccino. Feel grown-up, etc.

How to feel much less like an adult later the same evening:
1. Put seizure-inducing, radioactively bright tie-dye sheets on bed.
2. Lie awake on tie-dye sheets much too late with husband, giggling and whispering in the dark as if someone were about to come in and tell you to GO TO SLEEP NOW… which someone should have.

Hey, wouldn’t want to grow up too quickly now…

23Aug

Husbands Are Nice To Have

Snapshots Of A Husband After Four Years, One Month, And Eighteen Days Of Marriage

He makes me fabulous cappuccinos almost every day and sits down to enjoy each soul-warming sip with me. Looking back at my distress when we started dating and I discovered he did NOT LIKE COFFEE, I’m rather glad I married him anyway. ::Wink::

He can figure out in 2.5 seconds why I’m grumpy (the reason usually boils down to lack of food, lack of sleep, or lack of creative outlet) and prescribe a cure, all the while patiently disregarding my rampant snarliness. (And believe me, I can get ferocious when hungry…)

He draws pictures on my stomach of the baby (in a dress, of course, to distinguish that she’s a girl) saying “I LOVE MOMMY!”

Even after lying down for a nap, he somehow senses when I’m crying in the bathroom because I feel like a terrible mother. Within a few minutes, he can find my sense of value and my smile and gently put them back in place.

Just before we fall asleep at night, he smiles at me the same way he did when the church doors opened and I floated down the aisle in a shimmering white dress to promise the rest of my life to him.

He was more than worth that promise.

11Jul

Epic Paperback Life

Some weeks are just weeks, published with simple words, full-color illustrations, and cardboard pages for easy turning. Then there are weeks — the epic paperback kind with size 8.5 font, no chapter titles, and frequent lapses into ancient Latin. Guess which category last week fell into?

My hormone-riddled mind is having a hard time adjusting to our second summer move into a place that is neither our house here in Delaware nor the house waiting for us in Italy. I feel like I’ve earned the right to be impatient after SIX MONTHS of being strung along by foreign bureaucracy. Or, at the very least, I’ve earned the right to buy an exorbitant amount of orange sherbet to ward off uncontrollable weeping. (And you think I’m kidding…)

I haven’t felt this intensely frustrated about life since I was 14, and yet I’ve never had so many reasons to be grateful —

For Game Night Till 3 AM Friends; for Barbecue At The Beach Friends; for brilliant, scientific friends who know more Dora the Explorer trivia than we do; for friends who share their homes with us and teach us about generosity —

For a Walk Laughing In The Rain On Our Anniversary Husband; for a Secret Dishwasher Husband; for a husband who knows how to bring out my tears and my joy and my hidden imaginations; for a husband who loves me —

Happy us at Amada

For my Drama Queen Daughter; for my too-clever two-year-old; for my curly-haired bolt of energy who astonishes me daily; for my little girl who is delighted to be mine —

Giggly Mommy and Natalie

For Little Girl #2 twirling inside me; for the tiny life fast on her way to completing our family; for my unborn daughter who gives me far more to look forward to than an overseas move ever could —

For breath and food and working air conditioners and hope, however shaky, however absurd; for the knowledge we are neither alone nor forgotten; for the assurance that our lives will take a miraculous twist in the next few weeks because there simply is no other option.

“Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all.”
~Emily Dickinson

30Jun

High School Daydreams

Ever since high school, Dave Matthews Band has made me think of about a guy I once shared brainwaves and heart-rhythms with. When I was 15, my thoughts were dreamy and slightly intoxicated with the hope of intertwining lives. My junior year of college, my thoughts were reeling from the Other Girl, the beauty pageant winner who voided every effortless laugh I had shared with him.

We never dated, but he inspired me to write and to live music and to run in the rain. Friends thought I would never need another muse. Friends thought I got engaged on the rebound from a relational paradise lost.

But the truth is that my muse was never mine–a fact I didn’t fully accept until he chose blonde hair over red. Once sober, I realized some other facts too: that his passion for life did not connect to a solid purpose, that our similarities of thought and personality would have driven us into a hole of brilliant moodiness.

I am earnestly grateful that I ended up recognizing a blurry-eyed obsession for what it was and saying “yes” to the right man. Dan’s soul provides the solidarity I’ve always needed, and our purposes for life blend together flawlessly. He keeps me laughing, but even more, he provides the optimism to balance out what I glumly call “realism.” Our eyes sparkle simultaneously when we talk about traveling, when we walk into a concert, when we snuggle together in restaurant booths.

One year ago, for our anniversary, Dan took me to a Dave Matthews show under the Pennsylvania stars. I stood barefoot in the grass, pressed up against my husband of three years, and never once thought about the boy that got away. I was supremely happy to be with the man who loves the red glints in my hair and encourages me relentlessly to be the Me I want most to be.

Now, with our second daughter on the way and an impending move to Italy to chase our dreams, I know more deeply than ever that I can’t wait to spend the rest of my life with my husband. You could probably call that a high school daydream all grown up.

© Copyright 2019, all rights reserved.
Site powered by Training Lot.