going to the chapel....10 years later

We picked August 19th for our wedding day because fell before college football season began.  I'd heard stories, read them on "The Knot," about wedding guests crowded around televisions and not participating in the Electric Slide or bouquet toss because of a football game nobody wanted to miss seeing.  We decided to stay with tradition and get married in my hometown, Virginia Beach, and knew getting married at the beach in the summer meant heat and humidity.  We made the reception venue put it in the contract that the thermostat wouldn't be set below 72 degrees.  Those are the kinds of details you focus on when you're getting married, you know?

You don't think about "the future" - it's too far away.  It's why twenty-somethings don't fret about 401(k)s.  There's abstract talk of houses and kids and jobs, some sickness and health and death do you part, and you're on your own (together) to navigate this life you've chosen to lead with someone else. Autonomy and me-first gone, it's now "us."

We didn't know that 10 years down the road, we'd have made it through:

5 states

6 houses (we owned, the least amount of time being 4 months in our first house and longest for 4 years in Pittsburgh)

2 kids

1 dog

1 cat

3 fish

too many cars to count

I still love our wedding cake.  And those toppers sit on my bookcase to this day.

 There's no magic equation for making a marriage work.  Of the marriages I've seen work and those that didn't, it seems that you've got the best bet if you tackle life as a joint project.  When one person stops investing in this life you have together, how can the marriage be sustained?  If there's any work to be had, it's staying on the same page.  In 10 years, we've learned how to talk, how to listen (probably more important than talking!), and when to just shut up.  Of course, when your husband has seen you give birth, it's easy to be honest!  What's there to hide at that point?

I read a story years back that stuck with me.  When your spouse tells a joke and it bombs, nobody's laughing, worse yet maybe someone coughs and averts eye contact, be the one who laughs.  Even if the joke wasn't funny, or the delivery failed, or it doesn't really make sense.  Laugh.  Because it's not hard to do, you're doing what you'd want your spouse to do for you, and you're in this together.  

We're finally coming up from air from the daunting years of rearing young kids, and we're learning to be adventurous again.  There's a certain drudgery to the never-ending chores of life - job, grocery store, paying bills, rinse and repeat.  The hubs and I will never stop taking the kids to Disney World, but we've tried to do trips just us too, lest we forget how to be "us."  And we're doing it together.  

What a lovely 10 years it has been.  Like the blur of a roller coaster, I can't remember every detail, every day, and while there were certainly days it was hard, those aren't the times that stick in my mind when I look back.  We are better together, and there's a beautiful comfort in having each other.