anniversary

In the early months of our relationship, I used to whisper "I love you" into his deaf ear while he slept. He never stirred. Then one night, I said it before he slept, because I had gotten so used to saying it to him after he fell asleep. We dreamed a life together. Sitting around a campfire seven years ago, drinking beer and talking about children we haven't birthed yet, campers we haven't designed, houses we never bought, travels we hadn't packed for. We talked about religion and lack thereof. We talked about the whys and hows of our traumas and our loves, and our friends and family. He's a big white guy from the South, and I am a short brown girl from the East Coast, and yet we seemed so alike. I get him and he gets me. We didn't talk about how we would weather our relationship if our daughter dies three weeks after one of our parents. Or if one of us drinks too much. Or if our children end up in bed every night for five years. We just promised that we would weather it.

The dew covers my toes, and I walk in the grass with the babies, looking for grapes under the huge umbrella of leaves. The fruit flies scatter. The girl tells me that she misses her Daddy, and I tell her I miss her Daddy too. We spent the first five years of her life with oodles of time as a family. Sam working three days a week most weeks, an overnight and a few ten hour shifts that ended around five. When he was working, I savored those times with the kids. Little pockets of alone. When he was home, I used that time to paint and write and be alone in meditation and, also be together as a family hiking on a random Tuesday morning. When I write or art, he takes the children to the park, or swimming, or they just watch European football together while I work in the studio. Compared to other families, I knew those minutes were luxuries, and yet it never felt enough. Suddenly all that time, which felt so pinched and precious then, seems like huge open swaths of land with wildflowers and the women running like they are in douche commercials. My husband took a second job, and now, there is nothing left but waving in the evening as I leave and he enters, and the children clinging to legs and wailing Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

We left last weekend in spite of the fingernail sliver of time we have been around the kids as a family. It felt like a big deal to leave. We left for our anniversary, which is today, and stayed in a hotel and watched adult shows like Antique Roadshow and 48 Hours, and kissed and drank coffee at 6pm. We dressed up and went to see Dead Can Dance, and laughed about how everyone but us were dressed like gypsies or pirates, or gypsy pirates. There was a girl wearing antlers and a fur vest, and I whispered, "Hey, Puck, your deer horns are blocking the show."

And he whispered, You are the love of my life.

It was like the first time I heard it. And I teared up. "Even after all this time?" I ask. But what I am really asking is, "Even after our daughter died, and I got sober and behaved badly and cried and friends disliked me and I yelled about stupid things, and got fat? Even after all of that?"

Yes, even after all this time.

I have friends divorcing. I am at that age, I suppose, where friends have spent decades together and grow apart. And I think that it is natural to grow apart. I am amazed when people are together for decades and years and diamond anniversaries. Not because I don't strive for that, but I think people are hard to live with. I snap at him about his socks in the middle of the floor and why must he be so grumpy at me when I take a phone call from someone in need. I am a drunk and he abides the demands of recovery. And we had such terrible times of disconnect after Lucia died, when my friends seemed so distant, and I couldn't bear the heartbreak anymore. I couldn't bear to be close and disappointed so I didn't even let him close either. I just wanted to die then. I felt so alone, so alien, so diseased and wrong and wronged. I wouldn't make eye contact with him because I was so angry. I couldn't. He didn't grieve her the way I grieved her. He didn't have to grow babies inside him and have his bladder leak and gain weight and have people ask him if he is pregnant when he is not. And I hated how I grieved, so visceral, so emotive, so feminine, so drunk and angry and none of it felt like the life we were supposed to live. I hated who I had become. Our baby died, and I couldn't get over it. Not only that, I never wanted to get over it. It seemed the differences between us were suddenly monumental, even though we used to seem so alike. How could that be? It seemed impossible to be able to keep a marriage going after her death. How would we, really? How does anyone stay married? This grieving business is a solitary affair. No roses. No space within us that radiates love. It is just dark and endlessly solitary. It is the abyss and you never quite come back. It feels a little bit like hell.

And then, it changed again, our marriage. Counseling changed it. Sobriety changed it. I changed. And joy crept in, and so did he again. And now it feels new again with that ancient knowledge of each other and the darkness we now share. He claims he never felt helpless about our marriage, or scared for it, but I did. I feared everything. My first sponsor used to say that what we fear we become. And I feared becoming a monster.

For years now it is better. I don't take it for granted because of the years when our marriage was so hard. I don't say it much, because it is easy now. He is the easiest part of my life, even when it is hard. He is the person that strengthens me and makes me laugh and asks me to look at how I am integrating my philosophies into my real daily living. Really living. Not the explanation of living that I do here.

We have been married six years now, and we have three children and a hope that we miss all the same. We lost a parent, two grandparents and we built a sanctuary here. Our house smells like incense and campfires. We fill every pocket of it with sacred objects--fossils and found objects from our life together. In the morning, we wake and he says, "Good morning, my gorgeous wife." And I say, "Hello, handsome." And we change a diaper, kiss and boo boo, and thank God for each other.