14 years ago today, May 3, I got married.
It seems like such a long time ago and also like no time at all. I don't feel settled into married life, not in that resigned way so often portrayed in the media anyway. I still really look forward to when he comes home and we call each other during the day just to check in.
I met Matt when I was 16. We wrote to each other for a few months-via a teacher who thought she saw kindred spirits in what we wrote for class. I finally got up the nerve to introduce myself on Valentine's Day, which I chose not for the romantic value, but because it seemed a valid excuse to wear a skirt and therefore heighten the chances that he would think I was a 'nice girl'.We continued writing after he graduated, through that summer between my junior and senior year and all through my senior year, he was in love with some bimbo in my drama class and would often pop in-it was final period and security was non-existent-to talk to her. So, we saw each other pretty often. He was in college and working, I would pop in where he-and several other friends-worked and say hi once a month or so. We kept in touch, even after I got engaged and that ended, through various moves and job changes for both of us. In my whole life, he was the only boy who came to my house and picked me up and took me out to dinner.
I can't say I lay awake dreaming of my wedding day when I was younger, I had no desire for marriage or kids, thought I would get my degree in forestry and live in a cabin somewhere remote and measure trees all day or something like that. I had plans to hike the AT, the CDT, the PCT, traipsing up and down the spines of our country every chance I got. I knew of people who worked 6 months and hiked 6 months, I had the cost of living reports for all the grungy little backpacker towns, knew after 2 years at Calhoun, I would transfer to Missoula in Montana and finish my degree. Or maybe Thunder Bay in Ontario. They had a wildlife biology program and I could major in that with a focus on wolves. Or there was always Mobile right here in Alabama and a degree in marine biology.
By 19, I was so far off my own track, I could not even see a station, not even a blinking light indicating which direction I was headed. I am pretty sure gender sequestering for the first 30 years of life would serve the workforce and academia MUCH better than all this co-ed crap.
I had already bailed on college, temporarily I told myself the day I just stopped going to class, feeling exhausted by the fact I have been in school full time since I was 3. By 20, I was living alone in a tiny apartment working part time in a town I did not even like, not doing a thing to get myself beyond anything more than the next few hours. Matt would come hang out sometimes. He read The Hobbit while I was at work.
When I found out I was pregnant, at the time I thought it was the worst possible thing, a grinding halt to all my plans and dreams. I was decided on getting an abortion and then using the guilt as a catalyst and hoping my parents would fund my flight cross-country to lessen their shame of having a child turn out as poorly as I had.
What I did not realize was how fiercely my bi-polar brain would fight itself to protect that child and how much internal yelling was involved with every decision I made. I started immediately eating only fresh fruit and veggies, after 10 years as a vegetarian I wanted meat, I ate fish at least once a week and drank milk by the quart. I got up early and walked before my shift and sometimes after my shift. As I progressed, I was pretty sure I was in control of things and I still had time to get the abortion, but in reality, Mama Bear was managing and she's not totally left me yet!
Needless to say, I had the baby. Far from grinding to a halt, my life started over on a new path. Hindsight is more clear than what is going on around you at any given moment and I see very clearly all the decisions made for a series of several years that led to Jake being born, Matt and I getting married, Chan popping into our lives just 9 months and 7 days after the rings were exchanged. Daddy performed the ceremony and knew full well not to do any vows for us that involved the words 'obey'. Ben came close on her heels. By our 3rd anniversary, we had 3 children.
It was not bliss, I was not a content and happy young wife and mother, I can't say I gave up totally on all I had envisioned for my future, though really-I had already done that before Jake came to be. It was a long struggle made mostly alone as Matt worked hard to provide for us. There were days when he left for work at 4 in the morning and did not come back in until 3 the next morning-working a 10 hour shift and then playing drums until 2 in the morning for the $60 to cover groceries and diapers a few more days. I did not have any friends for several years-no internet and of our 2 cars, one was nearly always not running and awaiting a repair, leaving me with no way to leave the house unless I walked and carried or pulled all 3 kids.
He has always, always taken care of us. I quit working once Chan was on the way, I was so sick, I rarely made it a full shift anyway. Paying for child care and gas took most of my income, there seemed no point and it ensured I could get more rest and in theory take care of hearth and home and children, but that was not always the case.
I am not intuitively a mother. I don't have a strong sense of nurturing, I don't really enjoy children and I don't like playing games or reading out loud. I don't like to cook. I seem to be set up to be the most horrific parent, but we do okay, somehow. I did love my kids, marveled in their brilliance, sat in amazement as our 3rd child yawned the first time-how do they know how to DO that?-it was a perfect little O with a blink afterward! And sneezing! It was astonishing how they just...could. The little fists waving and the way they all loved to be naked, out of that diaper! They grew, sturdy and strong, no tan lines on their round bottoms from playing in the sprinkler and napping in the dappled shade on blankets.
Years of home haircuts and birthday cakes made from mixes and so much macaroni and cheese that I am surprised we have not gotten some kind of customer appreciation award from Kraft. Failings and a steep learning curve-with everything it seems like. Money and discipline and dealing with salesmen, our emergence from debt and our unbelievable luck in so many things from being able to live here to narrowly missing stepping on snakes and nails to the recent tornadoes that did not even knock over our potted plants while blowing away thousands of other homes and coming close enough to send us scrambling to the hall closet more than once that terrible day.
14 years, I can't think of our marriage without it being tangled in our children; as fat babies, curious toddlers, chatty preschoolers, little gangly 7 year old versions getting taller, stronger, smarter, faster. Jake, who walked me down the aisle-until he defected from the event and spent the rest of the ceremony squeaking a balloon he spied and grabbed-will be 16 this year. I am proud of the young man he is becoming, how kind he is, how he works, his gentle nature and effortless ability with other people that I never did possess. I burn with shame when I think of how easily it occurred to me to remove him from me as if he were nothing more than a tumor or a mole. My precious boy.
Our girl, so beautiful and smart it makes me marvel how we produced that. Her talent and sweet nature, how quiet she is, how careful and yet SO creative. How her friends often gather around with her in the middle for group hugs, as if they know she needs just a little more protection. Music, art, movie making, writing, she's the embodiment of grace.
The baby, now 11. When did that happen? HOW? He will still sit in my lap for snuggles, but he dangles off in every direction now, we don't fit like we did even a year ago. His mind is forever working. He questions everything, how it works, ways to make it more efficient, ideas to change or improve so many different things. A wireless recharger that would beam electricity across a room so you don't have to plug things in anymore, solar powered houses and cars, better driving routes for routines like trash and mail that would save gas. Ending war, curing disease, poverty, better ways to grow food, wasted spaces in towns and cities, the lack of bike paths, the need for better animal protection laws. Nothing escapes his wide range of ideas. We have a whole shelf of how things work type books and are online almost daily to look up more of the same.
Our marriage has produced these people, Matt's willingness to provide for us has allowed the kids the freedom to grow up without school to interfere, command and direct their attentions. It has allowed me to stay home with them and find ways to meet their various needs, to find ways to express myself, to find some kind of footing after years of seeing the steps behind me crumble and fall into the valley below. To finish growing up.
I know it's popular to say you married your best friend, but I really managed to do just that. I tell him everything, even when he does not really listen. We plot and scheme and dream together, we can't wait for weekends to run outside and hike and take pictures and camp out. His vacations are planned well in advance to make the most of every day he can be with us. We wonder often what we will do when we are not mom and dad, but just married to each other. We have not spent even a week of nights all added up away from the kids in 14 years.
But I do know this much, I want to find out. I want to see what comes next, what we do next month and next year and to get old and crabby together, to share another 14 years, and another, and another and another and another. As best friends, parents, grandparents, great grandparents, burying dogs and swearing off pets forever, only to come home with yet another stray a week or a year later. To watch our kids grow older, see what they become, hold wiggly grandbabies and throw rocks into the Pacific Ocean, so many little simple hopes and dreams. I don't need fame or fortune, just health and luck and Matt.
