Posts Tagged ‘marriage’
ordinary day (making much)
It was an ordinary day, a Tuesday. I was working. Jason was working. And it was also the day marking our second year of marriage. Normally, I make much of these occasions. I plot out gift purchases months in advance. I craft brilliant poems, homemade cards and sweet vignettes. I buy new outfits, cook the perfect dinner, bring out the good China.
But this year, this sacred occasion slipped up on me somehow. Not that I could ever forget April 8. It’s engraved on my wedding band and on my heart. It’s my most unforgettable day, when I joined forever my every molecule of breath & spirit with my soul’s mate. It’s just that so many pressing matters, really urgent and important things, have filled up my moments (and his moments, too), and I didn’t have time for my typical above-and-beyond-ness.
And I felt guilty. Ashamed. Like I had failed at all the unwritten rules of wife-dom. (At least the rules I’d conjured up.) I felt guilty for not making much.
But then, not long after Jason surprised me with a dozen roses at the office where I spent the afternoon working, I realized that we, Jason and I, make much everyday. We give flowers – verbal flowers, emotional flowers, hug-and-kiss flowers – to each other on quiet Mondays, rainy Saturdays, and weary Wednesdays. Not just one-day-a-year flowers. We surprise each other with the gifts of presence, laughter, singing, kindness, dancing, listening, hoping, believing, dreaming, loving. And we give these gifts consistently, passionately, selflessly.
Of course, we’ll keep marking April 8, our favorite day. But even if life catches up with us and we’re pulling a last minute Hallmark stop on the way to dinner at Zola’s, it’s okay. Because there are plenty of other days when a love note gets tucked in a pocket, when a favorite chocolate bar ends up in a backpack, when a deep soul cavern is excavated and understood. Plenty of days when some flower is left on a windshield and, with it, a card with a word only the two of us know.
3 Commentsstill hold hands
I watched an old couple hobble slowly through the café where I worked today. There wasn’t anything particularly notable about them. They were just an old couple, like so many old couples I see when I’m out and about.
But then he gave her his hand. Neither of them needed it. They hobbled. They were slow. But they were balanced. Her hand in his was not a substitute for a cane, a crutch or a walker.
He gave her his hand in love. They must have been in their very late seventies.
Jason and I still hold hands. Though it feels like we’ve known each other forever, like there never was a life before our life together, the fact is we have only been married one year and eleven months, give or take a few days. It’s normal that we would still hold hands on our way into the auto shop to get tires rotated. It’s natural that we would make out in the salsa-and-marinara aisle at the grocery store. It’s expected that we stop what we’re doing to dance in the kitchen. We’re newlyweds.
But in all this newly wedded bliss, I have often wondered, with some fear and sadness, what might happen when years and kids, sickness and circumstances take their toll on our bodies, our minds, our souls. Will we still hold hands, I have asked.
And this precious, wrinkled pair gave me the answer I think I have always known. An answer that spoke far louder than doubts and naysayers.
And he will still get the door for me, too, I thought, smiling as the old man opened the passenger door for his white-haired bride.
3 CommentsFollow
