Five years. One baby. Four cars. Seven addresses. One mortgage. Four surgeries. Two life-changing diagnoses. Two hideous couches. One paid student loan.
These are the numbers of our marriage.
Daniel and I celebrate five years this week and frankly, it’s astonishing. Five years ago, I was a college senior, flying home to make sure the dress still fit and the cake was still chocolate. It was a beautiful, perfect wedding, and just what we wanted. We spent a few days at the beach and then began our life together.
Now, our life together is nothing like I expected. I never thought we’d have a son who would be born with a cleft lip or that I’d be diagnosed with a brain tumor. I never thought there would be medical bills that made my head hurt. I never thought there would be unemployment.
I also never thought I’d have a son with red curls. Oh, those curls.
We got married young and there’s been a lot of immaturity along the way. Five years later, I have seen some progress. Arguments, still ugly, tend to be shorter and smoother. In a sense, we’ve grown up together. It’s more than paying bills and buying a house together, it’s being there while the doctor says one of you has cancer. It’s looking at a scary future and saying “I couldn’t do this without you.”
I wonder sometimes what I would have done differently if I knew what life was like now, but I think the future hides itself wisely. There’s much grace in the living and changing together that my newlywed self couldn’t fathom.
Today, I came down the stairs and told Daniel that it was the year and a half mark of my brain surgery. A year and a half of steady MRIs: a moment worth marking, even if with a simple comment. It was a good moment, a happy moment. I don’t know that I could have said that five years ago.
Marriage isn’t a dream existence of candlelit dinners and Pottery Barn living rooms, but having a witness to your life, and bearing witness to his. It’s knowing you wouldn’t choose anyone else to be there when you have a free night or when you hear bad news. It’s growing a life together, a life of jobs, dreams, and realities. We have that, and we’ll be celebrating it this weekend.
So happy anniversary, Daniel. Thank you for putting away my towels and putting up with my ugly days. And most of all, thanks for being here. I wouldn’t do it with anyone else.