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“Guess what today is!” I asked the kids this morning as they waited for waffles.
“A holiday! No school!” Ryley wrongly, but enthusiatically, guessed.
“It’s our anniversary!”
This news was greeted with yawns and demands the toaster step up its toasting because everyone is starving and may we have juice, too? It means nothing to them in their naive youth.
There is no Anniversary Squirrel who leaves gifts for the children of the celebrating couple. They would be disappointed anyway, since tradition dictates the ninth anniversary as Pottery. Here, Sam, a Thomas the Tank Engine soup urn.
It means nothing to them, yet it means everything.
Hubby and I have a lot in common, including growing up in families with the original married parents. My parents will celebrate their 37th anniversary next month, hubby’s parents will celebrate their 37th in January. We saw the good times and the not-so-good. We witnessed the mortifying spectacle of our parents kissing and hugging, dancing around kitchens, and laughing. We saw them deal with the deaths of parents, family moves, family changes, empty nests, and retirement. Together. It means everything, even as adults, to see them persist on and on.
It is inspiring. I have a very deep and serious sense of responsibility to show our kids marriage is serious business, a commitment made unequaled and unmatched, except for their commitment to God. It is also a best-friendship, a source of support, the soft place to land, and the launching pad.
Marriages die. I know that. Some of the dearest people to me are divorced or from families of divorce. My mother once told me, when I asked her about divorce, that it was never a word in their vocabulary.
When two people wed, saying their vows to be persistent, forgiving, patient, and loving through everything life launches their way, the future is listening and keeping everything crossed. I knew we wanted children. I thought about them as I said my vows to God. I thought about a lot of things to the point I don’t remember much of the ceremony:
The trivial: is my hair holding up under my veil? The profound: this is a model of Christ’s love for the Church. The silly: that soccer ball groom’s cake is going to turn everyone’s lips black.
Yes, it did. Yes, it is. Yes, Grandma looked like a Goth chick.
Tomorrow: The honeymoon
Nine years ago I was serene. I was going to be married the next day. 
We had a lot of last-minute details to address—white twinkly lights to deliberately hang so they looked effortless, centerpieces to fuss over, the rehearsal to attend. I welcomed the busy work because it would bring me closer to my silken, heirloomed, jeweled, glowing glory and the look I anticipated on my boyfriend’s face when he saw the woman who would husbandize him, big time.
I didn’t think about how I was going to be a wife the next day. I thought of wives as glorified girlfriends with greater responsibilities and nicer perks. I was going from Miss to Mrs., from fraulein to frau, from single to settled. I loved my boyfriend and was excited about taking such a huge step after our whirlwind romance. I believed then and now marriage is meant to be forever and had no jitters or doubts about our decision to unite.
I was so naive.
It is tradition to rehearse the ceremony the night before the wedding (we complied with all the instructions shouted at us by “Modern Bride” under the impression if we didn’t have handmade satin roses to hold bird seed all our guests would storm out in disgust). We gathered our wedding party and immediate families together to laugh through a faux ceremony before the obligitory dinner. We rehearsed the wedding. Nothing, however, can help you rehearse the marriage.
Imagine pretending to move, find out a baby is on the way, start a new job, end another job, have fights over silly things, have fights over major things, split holiday time with in-laws, worry about bills and money, travel, decorate, fight some more, make up, have a child, develop amnesia for several months after, work, struggle, pay bills, go back to work, find out another baby is coming, search for a different job, move, laugh, work, lose job, another baby, find a better job, work, bills, work, fight, make-up, play, work, illness, bills, baby, cry, illness, baby, baby, work, loss, move, illness, laugh, fight, make-up, grow, grow, grow.
As the pastor launches various spousal scenarios, bombshells, bills, and blowouts (of the diaper and news variety) most brides and grooms would run screaming for the door. Marriage is hard. It isn’t all romance and making each other deliriously happy with moonlight and roses. Those moments happen when we make them happen. It is hard work, but worthwhile and rewarding work.
Today is the anniversary of our rehearsal and I am still striving to get it right.
Tomorrow: The Wedding
Several days ago I received a letter in the mail from my mother-in-law. It was three pages. Two pages were the recipe for her potato salad, which I recently paid tribute.
I folded it and put it my recipe box, waiting for the perfect day to devote to dicing.
When do I have more time to wash, rewash, rewash, rewash, and rewash a cutting board than on a holiday weekend? And what better time to consume massive amounts of potato salad? I made my first attempt at making the best potato salad, ever, Sunday.
When my mother-in-law made her last batch, during a visit to Colorado nearly a month ago, she used 10 pounds of potatoes, an entire jar of mayonaisse, an entire jar of pickles, and a dozen eggs (and plus-sized amounts of the other ingredients). Thankfully she trimmed down the written recipe to a quarter of the size, so I only had to wrangle 2.5 pounds of potatoes. It didn’t seem like a lot, until it was time to dice them into cubes. The first couple of potatoes were proud to become perfectly symmetrical cubes. The kids could have used them to build a scale-model of a sugar cube factory. By the end of the 2. 5 pounds the chunks of potatoes looked like the brand new addition to the Denver Art Museum.
My rendition turned out quite well. Not only can I thank my mother-in-law for raising such an awesome, sweet guy, I can thank her for equiping me with another way to show my love for my family. Boiling, dicing, whipping, stirring, cutting, washing, measuring, sampling, adding, oopsing, and finally presenting…a true labor of love.
I have to admit I have always approached cooking as an unpleasant chore. With many disasters under my belt, my cooking confidence has fizzled into doubting my abilities to even let my Hamburger be Helped. All the domestic arts have eluded me, but I find myself becoming more attracted to and interesting in learning them. They take time to learn. I think it is worth it, though.
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