I’ve been married sixteen years this week. We’d been together for four years before we got married, and there hadn’t really been any question in our minds that it would be a permanent sort of thing from the beginning. The wedding was more an opportunity to let everyone else in on the secret.
But, also being kind of into the fun of things, we decided to get engaged first. That piece would only last for three months–I had a very ill grandfather who I really wanted to have present at the wedding–but it felt like the sort of thing we’d only get to do once in our lifetime.
This is how the becoming engaged bit went down for us. On a fine Wednesday night, at roughly 9:30, as we got ready for bed, Jon asked if I wanted my surprise now or at dinner on Friday. (Did I mention Jon has a bit of an impulse control problem when it comes to surprises?) Me being me, I shrugged and said “whenever.” Jon, in underwear and a t-shirt, hurried off to the dresser and pulled out the ring and asked me to marry him. I, perhaps lacking a bit in the girlish excitement department, said “are you kidding?”
Somewhere after that we managed to get everything straightened out.
That’s sort of been how things go for us. A first attempt at a romantic dinner ending with Jon accidentally dumping an entire pot of spaghetti down the drain. A wedding in which we forced one of my brothers to sing a song written for a soprano, and the other to read an poem that was perhaps a bit more of a challenge than we had thought. A ceremony of passing our rings to everyone present so they could bless them that ended with my fairly deaf grandfather shouting “What the h*** am I supposed to do with these?” A sort of endless tumbling chaos that we somehow manage to sort our way through together.
It’s been an adventure so far, Jonathan. I wouldn’t trade a single step of it.
January 11, 2013 at 10:32 am
and don’t forget the dung beetles. congratulations!!!!
January 11, 2013 at 10:40 am
You know, I do forget the dung beetles sometimes, but I really shouldn’t, should I? 🙂
January 11, 2013 at 10:50 am
Congratulations! Life, while rarely ‘a dream’ while happening, is always grand in hindsight. And those strange moments are usually the things we love and remember best.
January 11, 2013 at 12:02 pm
Thanks!
I would like to reach the end of my life with more laugh line than frown ones, so I hope these goofy little things will be the last ones I remember.
January 11, 2013 at 11:16 am
Happy anniversary!
What has been the most surprising thing you’ve learned about marriage so far?
January 11, 2013 at 9:26 pm
Happy Anniversary. May the next 16 be as full of wonderful stories as the last 16 appear to have been!
January 11, 2013 at 11:22 pm
Thank you kindly. 🙂