ten years lucky

I'm not a gambling woman. In fact, I'm somewhat the opposite, and would prefer not to act until I have either complete assurance of a positive outcome, or have sufficiently prepared myself for the inevitable failure. Despite this fact, one day I got married. That was one day ten years ago; a beautiful day by the lake—perfect—even though the ceremony started an hour late because his father's car broke down on the way to get the cake, and everyone forgot all about the dancing, and we fell asleep exhausted by the end, too tired to consummate the thing. Wedding night consummation or no, we are still here.

Ten years. That's nothing to sneeze at, especially considering that neither of our parents' marriages lasted that long. We have commitment issues in our genes. However, we have somehow managed to not only stay together but build a life together. In those ten years we made babies and lost family. We moved out, moved back, moved up, and moved away. We've grown our own food and grown ourselves up. We've changed, and changed, and changed.

I look back on our wedding photos and fail to fully recognize those people. I am amazed at their audacity to promise each other they'd always stay together, always love one another that way. How could they promise to love, so specifically, people they did not yet know? How could they know enough to trust the people they were to become?

My brother-in-law said that when he reported the news of our marriage to our favorite high school teacher, she said something to the effect of, "Oh no." This was a woman who knew my husband and I fairly well, before we ever dated. I often wondered what she knew about each of us that could elicit such a response. Was it possible that we were even more screwed up than we knew? Or maybe it was the prospect of our combined dysfunction that worried her. I can see that.

Still, somehow, here we are, ten years happily married. So what's the trick? It isn't even until I stop to be impressed by the accomplishment of getting here that I think there might be some X-factor that makes it all possible. Maybe it is a predetermined, destiny type thing. Maybe we are soul-mates playing this thing out in variations across countless lifetimes. Maybe we just love each other enough.

Seriously? All you need is love? Sure... and respect, good communication, good sex, shared interests, good communication, laughter, and more that I haven't figured out yet. Maybe we recognize how good we are for one another, and our staying power has more to do with our deeply selfish nature than anything else. Would that be any better or worse than the other possibilities?

Last night, while we walked home in the dark, holding hands, Adam said, "We're lucky. We really are lucky." I hadn't thought of it that way before. I enjoyed imagining that our "successful" marriage was the result of our hard-work or a small piece to some larger plan. But maybe he's right. Maybe it all comes down to luck.

Comments

[Mike Janssen]

You guys ARE lucky -- you're both such great people. What a touching post. Happy anniversary.

[Arjuna Rice]

Whoa, I forgot all about that. And I don't think I've ever heard you refer to me as your "brother-in-law" before. It makes me feel more adult, somehow. Congratulations, that's really fantastic.

[mama-rishi]

an Anniversary gift for my favorite author, woman, daughter, ....and (her) husband!

An Afternoon in the Stacks
By William Stafford

Closing the book, I find I have left my head
inside. It is dark in here, but the chapters open
their beautiful spaces and give a rustling sound,
words adjusting themselves to their meaning.
Long passages open at successive pages. An echo,
continuous from the title onward, hums
behind me. From in here the world looms,
a jungle redeemed by these linked sentences
carved out when an author traveled and a reader
kept the way open. When this book ends
I will pull it inside-out like a sock
and throw it back in the library. But the rumor
of it will haunt all that follows in my life.
A candleflame in Tibet leans when I move.

love always, mom

[Mark]

funny, i always think of your happy marriage as a given... "yes, some people clearly should be together - you know, like adam and lorraine." honestly, you are the only people i know that fall into that category.