Today marks 12 years of marriage for me and the Husband.
If I can say one thing about marriage is that it’s not an event. It’s not even a state of being. It’s an evolution.
Okay, that was three things, but they’re all connected. This is because marriage is a union of two people – two imperfect people – and therefore marriage, by default, is an imperfect union. A happy, fulfilled marriage doesn’t just “happen” to you. Instead, you happen to your marriage.
What I mean by this is that, as a person, I grow and change throughout my life. So does my husband. While intrinsically we’re the same people who said “I Do” a dozen years ago, we’re also different people. (Older and wiser, I hope, but you never know haha). As we evolve, our marriage does, too. But as long as we find the things we can laugh about, and cry about, the things we can rejoice for and lament over, if we can put our love for eachother before our differences, our marriage will evolve with us.
I guess this is just a fancy way of saying that “It’s about the journey, not the destination.”
And we celebrate it with cake. So, it’s a journey cake.
Speaking more literally of journeys, the Husband and I recently took a short road trip. I’d found this incredible, three-story toy store and just had to take the kids to see it. There is something magical about a toy store – shelves overflowing with every kind of toy you could imagine, and some that are even more amazing than your imagination can create.
Usually on road trips, The Husband drives. This trip was no exception.
I quietly let him navigate these trips, partly because I don’t have the best innate sense of direction and partly because he prefers to figure it out himself. So here I was, sitting in the passenger seat, minding my own business as we approached our freeway interchange. We needed to take the exit ramp heading north, which was just past the ramp heading south.
The husband was in the far right lane, as if he was about to exit too soon, and head south.
I waited.
He didn’t move over.
I waited. The exit was closer now.
He didn’t move over.
I waited, but now it was becoming abundantly clear that he was NOT going to get over. We were already starting to veer off the exit and all I could do was blurt out –
Just like that. One word, loud and abrupt. NO.
That’s all I said. And to his credit, or maybe it’s 12 years of marriage helping him to read my mind, he instantly moved over left and corrected himself out of the exit lane.
“Really?” he asked me, “No warning? That’s all you could say is NO?”
And then he re-enacted my NO in exactly the same voice and we both started laughing hysterically.
Because that’s what 12 years of marriage will do to you folks. You get a little loopy but if you can’t laugh about it, what’s the point?
Now, anytime he wants to disagree with me he just looks at me, seriously, and says, “NO” and we both find it hilarious.
So here we are, still laughing. Cheers to 12 years, husband.
