In the intervening time, we've moved from Washington, DC to Minneapolis, Minnesota. We've had career changes. Upgraded cars. Bought a house. She went to law school and became a lawyer. I briefly ran a nonprofit. And the big change, we squeezed out two darling kids--the oldest now mere weeks from starting kindergarten.
Recent marriage surveys have looked at the "seven year itch," that moment in the marriage where things supposedly get stale and eyes begin to wander. Supposedly, it is more like the "sometime between 1 to 8 year s itch". A major factor identified in marriage failures during this time is the stress associated with having young children. (News alert! Having children is demanding and stressful!)
Last winter while grocery shopping with my one year old, I had the "pleasure" of having a random retired priest quiz me on my family situation so that he could give some unsolicited advice and make nonsensical marriage jokes. His view was that the five year mark was the real hill and it was smoother sailing after that.
Despite his expert views (not) rooted in personal experience and the media portrayal of all the social science research, I know that relationships are always work. Sure, there are ups and downs and periods of adjustment. But you're never going to maintain a healthy relationship by sitting on your ass and paying it no mind.
***
So, seven years ago today we were married. It was to be a beautiful outside ceremony on the banks of the Potomac, just outside of Washington, DC. We woke up that Saturday to a perfect day. Kid cousins went swimming mid-day at the nearby mini-water park. We took pictures before the ceremony. The sun was shining and it was about 80 degrees.
Then the dark clouds rolled in. Within 15 minutes, the wind began slapping trees around. The sky was dark. Instead of 4:00 PM, it looked like it was 9:00 PM. It didn't look good. We were not going to be married outside.
Fortunately, we had a Plan B: Get married at the reception site, which was conveniently located 100 feet away. As the last pictures were snapped, the rain came and we ran to the building.
This is what it looked like that evening in nearby DC. Several metro stations were flooded. A couple people were unable to come to the wedding due to flooded cars.
Picture borrowed from weatherbook.comAccording to some superstition, rain on your wedding day is good luck and not, as Alanis Morissette sings, ironic. One couple suggested that we should "buy lottery tickets NOW" under this logic. The downpour continued until about 10:00 PM, but we got married anyways.
On our one month anniversary, we found ourselves fleeing the center of DC on September 11th and returning that evening to our Capitol Hill apartment feeling we were now living in a military state. On our one year anniversary we were making an offer to buy a house in Longfellow neighborhood of friendly Minneapolis. On our second anniversary, the missus was 35 weeks pregnant.
And here we are now. Two kids. In the same house. I can only speak for myself, but no itching yet. We'll look at our wedding pictures this evening and remark how young we look. (We were 22 and 23 for chrissakes!) In many ways, in the seven years we've become an old married couple. We feel like we veterans who know it all. (We also thought we knew at all at the tender age of 23.)
At the same time, it feels like the wedding was just yesterday. It seems just a short time ago that we were getting our rings on a lunch break and the jewelry salesman was telling us in his North African accent about the "low comfort fit" of the ring in question. Whatever that means.
Now seven years wiser is there anything I would do differently? For one, I wouldn't have taken the ceremony so seriously. It's not that we didn't have a healthy perspective at the time. We had a relatively informal event. Family and friends stayed in cabins on site. We got married by a Unitarian minister. Our rehearsal dinner was an outside picnic featuring food from a Lebanese deli. (My grandmother in law had humus for the first time!) Our flower centerpieces were constructed by a couple of aunts who were given $120 and sent to the farmer's market. We served a vegan, lemon poppyseed cake that looked nothing like the traditional wedding cake. We were comfortable doing our own thing and not getting hung up on tradition or an unattainable ideal.
But we took the wedding ceremony so seriously. We weren't bothered by the rain too much. It was the words and the symbolism of the ceremony we put our stock in. In the weeks and months before the wedding, we debated extensively whether to have this reading or that reading and what every aspect said about us and our relationship. Really, who is going to remember whether we had a reading from Desmond Tutu or the Dalai Lama? (I barely recall.) I believe the whole ceremony was 40 minutes. If planning one the wedding today, I'd be focused on a ceremony ten minutes tops.
What matters most of all was not the detailed symbolism of every aspect of the ceremony, but the fact that we were committing ourselves to each other and were able to include so many people important to us. Indeed, our commitment to each other wasn't even made at the wedding, but when we got engaged ten months earlier at Lincoln Park on our way back from Blockbuster Video. Or maybe the commitment was made before the official engagement, when we first discussed the possibilities of marriage and children. Or maybe it was when we decided to move to DC together sans jobs two weeks after we graduated from college.
If you would have asked me just two years before August 11, 2001 where I'd be at my current age of 30, married seven years with two kids wouldn't have been my first, second, or even third prediction. I had pictured myself moving around the country, traveling abroad, and going to graduate school throughout my 20s. I'd save my 30s for settling down and having a family, preferably after I was on tenure track at some decent university. Instead, at 30, I've been happily married for seven years and enjoying being an at home dad for two wonderful girls. I wouldn't have it any other way.
On our one month anniversary, we found ourselves fleeing the center of DC on September 11th and returning that evening to our Capitol Hill apartment feeling we were now living in a military state. On our one year anniversary we were making an offer to buy a house in Longfellow neighborhood of friendly Minneapolis. On our second anniversary, the missus was 35 weeks pregnant.
And here we are now. Two kids. In the same house. I can only speak for myself, but no itching yet. We'll look at our wedding pictures this evening and remark how young we look. (We were 22 and 23 for chrissakes!) In many ways, in the seven years we've become an old married couple. We feel like we veterans who know it all. (We also thought we knew at all at the tender age of 23.)
At the same time, it feels like the wedding was just yesterday. It seems just a short time ago that we were getting our rings on a lunch break and the jewelry salesman was telling us in his North African accent about the "low comfort fit" of the ring in question. Whatever that means.
***
Now seven years wiser is there anything I would do differently? For one, I wouldn't have taken the ceremony so seriously. It's not that we didn't have a healthy perspective at the time. We had a relatively informal event. Family and friends stayed in cabins on site. We got married by a Unitarian minister. Our rehearsal dinner was an outside picnic featuring food from a Lebanese deli. (My grandmother in law had humus for the first time!) Our flower centerpieces were constructed by a couple of aunts who were given $120 and sent to the farmer's market. We served a vegan, lemon poppyseed cake that looked nothing like the traditional wedding cake. We were comfortable doing our own thing and not getting hung up on tradition or an unattainable ideal.
But we took the wedding ceremony so seriously. We weren't bothered by the rain too much. It was the words and the symbolism of the ceremony we put our stock in. In the weeks and months before the wedding, we debated extensively whether to have this reading or that reading and what every aspect said about us and our relationship. Really, who is going to remember whether we had a reading from Desmond Tutu or the Dalai Lama? (I barely recall.) I believe the whole ceremony was 40 minutes. If planning one the wedding today, I'd be focused on a ceremony ten minutes tops.
What matters most of all was not the detailed symbolism of every aspect of the ceremony, but the fact that we were committing ourselves to each other and were able to include so many people important to us. Indeed, our commitment to each other wasn't even made at the wedding, but when we got engaged ten months earlier at Lincoln Park on our way back from Blockbuster Video. Or maybe the commitment was made before the official engagement, when we first discussed the possibilities of marriage and children. Or maybe it was when we decided to move to DC together sans jobs two weeks after we graduated from college.
If you would have asked me just two years before August 11, 2001 where I'd be at my current age of 30, married seven years with two kids wouldn't have been my first, second, or even third prediction. I had pictured myself moving around the country, traveling abroad, and going to graduate school throughout my 20s. I'd save my 30s for settling down and having a family, preferably after I was on tenure track at some decent university. Instead, at 30, I've been happily married for seven years and enjoying being an at home dad for two wonderful girls. I wouldn't have it any other way.
2 comments:
Aww, Der, you two are so sweet, you made me tear up! Congratulations on 7 years! I remember that crazy weekend in DC. And, I've always remembered how much thought the two of you put into your ceremony - so much so that I dug out your program when we were planning ours. I agree from my own experience - it was a lot of planning for a short event. But, I also think the conversations you had then set the tone for the rest of your marriage - a marriage that takes time for each other and puts a lot of thought into it! I hope you have a wonderful week together!
Thanks Laura.
I remember picking you up at the airport. You brought our wedding gift as a carry-on--a bucket with a gunny sack. I guess that was before September 11.
I enjoyed your wedding too. We countered the nicest people around at your wedding.
Thanks again!
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