a year and three quarters

If you read this blog then you know I am married. But I wasn't always. In fact, my marriage is no bigger than a toddler, mildly mobile and barely communicative. Before I was married I was a full-blown adult of singleness, with a job and bills, an education and a credit score. Sometimes it's funny to me when I think that Nathan and I moved to this mountain town and people just automatically knew us as married, with no concept of our prior three decades on earth. The other day someone asked how long we had been married and when I said "about a year and three-quarters," he seemed very surprised. And not just because "a year and three-quarters" is a funny way to quantify something like that. Two years ago at this time Nathan was my boyfriend and three years ago I didn't know who he was. Three years is how old I was when my mom died, and I don't even remember her. Three years is a blink of an eye.

My husband and I really are fortunate-- one of the lucky ones, if you will. Not a day goes by that we don't thank God for one another and I know this because we say it out loud. I know we're not just off in la la land, either. Because although a year and three-quarters is nothing, it is a significant time in marriage. They say (whoever they are) that the first year of marriage is the hardest. I don't know if that's true, but I know they don't say that because it's the easiest. There is a lot of adjustment that goes into modifying everything you knew in three decades to fit another person into the mix.

As I was saying, Nate and I have the kind of love and marriage that people dream of having and I don't know who we are that we got something this good when so many people are going the hard road. Still, I think it is important that people know that the kind of love you dream of having is not perfect. You don't put two imperfect people together and somehow get something perfect. Anyone who is married gets this to some degree. And probably everyone knows this in theory, in the head, but so often the heart expects love to be all sunshine and lollypops.

When I started writing this post I was just getting out of a fight with my husband. I left it for a while because it seems like since I got married it is harder and harder to find the hours it takes for me to sit down and write something like this, something I used to do a few times a week. I am told that will change; that as you are married for longer and longer you make more and more time to do the things that are uniquely you again. Anyway, I don't even remember that fight anymore. But I know that Nathan and I always end a fight with the words I love you. Even if we are still seeing red with anger, we finagle the words out of our mouths because that really is the bottom line. Because if it's not our habit to say those three words in the thick of things, then the anger or hurt or frustration, those will become the most important things to us. And they are not the most important because, as I said, I don't even remember the fight that started this post but I know that I love my husband.