Twenty-One Years...An Anniversary Story

Twenty-one years ago today I took a leap. It was a giant leap. It was a crazy leap. It was a "is she out of her f**king mind" kind of leap...and twenty-one years later, twenty-one years wiser, I would probably do it again.

I married a man I had known less than 3 months (yes...months, not years, but months). I married a man who changed my life literally overnight. I married a man who did something no one else had ever done: he made me laugh. That caught me off guard, and it caught my attention: he caught my attention.

Ours was not a whirlwind, swept one another off our feet kind of thing, rather, from our first "date" (that started at midnight with both of us bringing a wingman/woman), we just worked. Everyone else I had been dating disappeared. In a weird, did not expect it kind of way, everything just made sense. 

Daring to pull from that "women remember everything that does not matter" bank of knowledge, we met on a Thursday night. We spoke for about 3 minutes. He stopped by to see me the next night at the bar where I worked during happy hour. We spoke for about 10 minutes. We kind of made plans for later that night, I flaked out. We kind of made plans for lunch the next day, I flaked out again. We kind of made plans to get together when he got off work later that night (hence the midnight thing), and I did not flake out. 

We went to a thing with his friends the next day (we're up to Sunday now). I went to dinner later that night with friends, including a guy I had gone out with a couple times. After dinner, I told said other guy I was also seeing other people. Said weird random guy I had only gone out with a couple times cried...I never saw or spoke to him again. On the way home from weird post-dinner conversation, I called Matt and told him where I had been, who I had been with, and what happened after (something completely uncharacteristic of me at this point in my dating life). We made plans for Tuesday.

Rushing forward to Tuesday, since we're all the way up to very late Sunday night, Matt came over for dinner. I cooked, we talked, I laughed and, frankly, he never left. That was it. By the time we finished dinner, we were talking about plans: big plans, small plans, life plans, kid plans...and without really realizing it, the conversation included one another. This was October 11th. By December 11th, we were working out how to get married New Year's Eve.

Why New Year's Eve? I read about it in a book and thought it sounded horribly romantic. I'm not a horribly romantic person, but this sounded fabulous. We would always have a reason to celebrate and the world would celebrate with us. Dumb, young, single me....it never occurred to me that such a fun night to celebrate is celebrated by people without kids - because finding a babysitter on New Year's Eve???? NEVER GONNA HAPPEN!!!! Our first anniversary? I had been home from the hospital for two days with Offspring #1. Talk about romantic - NOT...oh, wait! I married a man in the restaurant business...he worked! Did I forget to mention we got married in the morning because he worked on our wedding night? We started off non-traditionally...so what the hell, right?

Oh...so back to the whole planning the wedding thing...obviously we worked it out, with a slight medical thing dumped right in the middle of it. OK...not so slight - I swore I was going to die, I think he might have thought so too. I woke up in the middle of the night with a fever of 107 and couldn't move. He carried me to the tub and then carried me into the Urgent Care clinic at the crack of dawn. Urgent care sent me to an ENT - urgent care doped me up pretty well so I'm a little fuzzy on this part, but I'm pretty sure he carried me there too. Said ENT made soon to be husband look through a scope at a very nasty yukky abscess on the back of my throat. I was mortified...he married me anyway.

So...we took a leap. Over the last twenty-one years, we have challenged every single one of our vows over and over...but I guess that's what it is supposed to be about. For Better (we have definitely had periods of better) or Worse (oh...we've had some worse). For Richer (we are still working on this one from a monetary point of view, but we have been richly blessed so many times in ways we could never have imagined) or Poorer (yep....been there too...sometimes sort of, sometimes very...but we pushed through). In Sickness (almost all me here - and he still takes care of me) and in Health (pretty much all him). Yep...we've been there, done that...over and over and over. 

Twenty-one years is a long time. I have been married to him longer than I have ever done anything else in my life. I have lived with him longer than I lived with my mother. I have lived with him longer than I have lived in any one state (ok....that's just a weird random comparison, but it's my story, so I can add it in if I want). Second only to my marriage is the amount of time I spent in school...all schools...K-12, college, grad school....and it still doesn't total 21 years.

Twenty years was an accomplishment, but, for some reason, twenty-one years seems different: it feels different. It's "over twenty years"...that's a really freaking long time! I don't feel old enough to have been married for 21 years...then again, I can't possibly be old enough to have a 20 year old kid. I will stop here and mention, yes...all the math works. Offspring #1 was born 4 days before our first anniversary. Ours was not a shotgun wedding in the traditional sense...maybe more of a grenade wedding?

Speaking of the whole parenting thing...we do that pretty well as long as we remember to work as a team. In many ways, our most challenging times have always been when we forget to work together: when one or the other of us decides we should just do sh*t without putting our heads together first. I'm not talking about changing laundry detergent brands, although we have had so many mundane conversations about things like that we make toast look exciting. I'm talking about things that matter. 

We have both fallen into said trap - sometimes unknowingly...something that did not seem like a big deal became a big deal, sometimes because we just weren't in sync and our lines of communication were cluttered with whatever. Through all of this though, we always manage to come back to the home team. We are a great team....kind of Wonder Twin-esque....together we can accomplish pretty much anything - apart, we just kind of muddle through. 

It isn't always easy...it isn't always fun, but we are always always always better together. During one of our darkest periods, I realized that it is this synergy that keeps me grounded. At the end of the day, even when I don't really like him, there is no where I would rather be than sitting in the same room doing nothing with him than doing pretty much anything else with anyone else. As we lifted out of said dark period, I also realized that I took for granted how very very intelligent my husband is and not only how grounding that is for me, but how much of what makes us work is based around that. 

We bring very different things to the table. We always have. We problem solve completely differently, but it is what makes us work. We look at things from very different perspectives...but it makes us work. We're both pretty smart, but about completely different things - it makes us a pretty good Trivial Pursuit team to boot. We both know weird stuff...but not even close to the same weird stuff. I took this for granted for a long time, then I started working with the public again after being home with the kids for a lot of years...wow! I think I'll leave that right there.

Writing all of this down isn't characteristic of me. I write...sometimes a lot, sometimes randomly, but rarely about my marriage in isolation, it almost always involves parenting, kid stuff, work stuff... As I mentioned earlier, something about "over twenty years" is hitting me in an odd way. Perhaps I am writing this because I don't write about my marriage much...I don't know. In my current position, I am surrounded by a lot of younger adults...people who are just starting their journeys. I feel like the old lady who has been married forever...but in this day and age, there is something to that. 

We live in such a disposable world, that what we have done is an accomplishment. It is something to be proud of. It has been hard...really really really hard. There is a quote floating around that says, "I'm not saying it's going to be easy, I'm saying it's going to be worth it". That pretty much sums things up. Marriage isn't easy, but it is worth it. I'd love to say, "I wouldn't change a thing", but that's bullsh*t. I would change a million things, but that's what life is about...screwing up, looking at it, and adjusting accordingly. It is what makes you grow...and it is so very worth it. 

Where ever you  might be on your personal journey...I am going to throw out one smushy piece of advice - trust yourself. Twenty-one years ago, we did not really think...we just did. Would I probably want to strangle my kid if they did what we did, absolutely! Is that the reason we didn't tell 50% of our collective parents before said grenade wedding happened? Yep! Did we pay a mighty price for that? Absolutely. We got married quickly because we wanted to. We wanted it to be about us. We did it quickly and very quietly so if we changed our minds, life would march right along and only a handful of people would be the wiser for it. We hurt a lot of feelings. We paid a heavy price for those feelings. The downside to growing up, taking responsibility for your actions....good and bad. We were selfish, but if we had to be selfish about something, this was a pretty legitimate something. We were able to repair some of the damage, but it took time. Would I do it the same way again? Yep.

A couple months ago I stumbled upon a song that grabbed my complete attention and still runs through my head constantly. The lyrics (except the very end) sum up our life...our marriage...everything. The song is, "Wasn't Expecting That" by Jamie Lawson. I'm going to close this with the lyrics to the song. The link (because everything written about blogging - that in and of itself seems like a little bit of an oxymoron - says you should have links...and lots of them - I have one...my writing, my prerogative) is below. It is worth a listen after the read...

Lyrics

It was only a smile but my heart it went wild
And I wasn't expecting that
Just a delicate kiss, anyone could've missed
I wasn't expecting that
Did I misread the sign? Your hand slipped into mine
I wasn't expecting that
You spent the night in my bed, you woke up and you said
"Well, I wasn't expecting that"

I thought love wasn't meant to last,
I thought you were just passing through
If I ever get the nerve to ask
What did I get right to deserve somebody like you?

I wasn't expecting that
It was only a word, it was almost mis-heard
'Cause I wasn't expecting that
But it came without fear, a month turned into a year
And I wasn't expecting that

I thought love wasn't meant to last,
I thought you were just passing through
If I ever get the nerve to ask
What did I get right to deserve somebody like you?
I wasn't expecting that

Isn't it strange how a life can be changed
In the flicker of the sweetest smile
We were married in spring
You know I wouldn't change a thing
Without an innocent kiss, what a life I'd have missed,

If you'd not took a chance on a little romance
When I wasn't expecting that
Time doesn't take long, three kids up and gone
And I wasn't expecting that
And when the nurses they came, said its come back again
I wasn't expecting that
Then you closed your eyes, took my heart by surprise
And I wasn't expecting that!

https://play.google.com/music/preview/Tjnxsye4dtqs3zc523hrompu6zm?lyrics=1&utm_source=google&utm_medium=search&utm_campaign=lyrics&pcampaignid=kp-lyrics