The anniversary post

For the past few years, on September 24th, I have written a post reflecting on our wedding in particular and on marriage in general. This year, a week before our anniversary, our new friends and neighbors got separated. And then it seemed that everywhere I turned, the story was divorce. There were researchers on NPR talking about the contagion of divorce, and the greater likelihood that you will got divorced if people in your inner circle do. There was Christina, a character on Parenthood, being confronted so unexpectedly by the statistic that 80% of marriages with an autistic child end in divorce, that it felt like a slap, certainly to her, but also, somehow to me, a parent not faced, at the moment, with such challenging circumstances. And it left me feeling painfully aware of the fragility of marriage, and the wear and tear that our relationships withstand.

Last year, when I finished up my anniversary post, I decided that this year I would write about the honeymoon. I projected, as I have a bad habit of doing, that this year I would finally feel unburdened, that it might be time to take a vacation--mentally, if not physically. And of course, as always, when the time rolled around it turned out that my projection was way off. After all the changes we have gone through in the past few years, I feel further away from a honeymoon than ever. I feel weathered. Though I will say, I am thrilled that Dave and I have managed to weather it all together. We may be worse for the wear, but we are also still doing whatever it is that we must do to be married, to make it work, each and every day.

I've been struggling with this post because I did not want to go all doom and gloom on marriage, did not want to think about all these threads of divorce in our culture. Then, the other night, I was down in the basement watching the girls throw themselves at the chair swing and threaten to fling themselves off the slide platform, and I noticed on the bookshelf the big photo album that my aunt Missy put together from our wedding, and I picked it up to look at it for the first time in a long time. And I found myself confronted by page after page of celebration. Not just the celebration of the vows, but I'm talking a full on party. With just about everyone in the world that we love and who loves us there to participate. And I found myself smiling. And I kicked myself for not trusting this annual exercise, which started as an experience of looking, using these photographs as evidence of something and extrapolating new meaning each year with my changing perception.

This year, I feel grateful to witness that party, to remember being at the heart of it. In an earlier draft of my divorce post, I was focused on this idea of choice: that Dave and I are often at loose ends to make choices, yet we knew enough to choose each other. Today, instead, I am interested in the notion of celebration. Or maybe not instead. Maybe it is the celebration of choice. Dave has a great sense of humor and is often doing his best to make me smile, to banish the shadows I manage to create for myself, and too often, I refuse to let this be a balm. So today I remind myself to laugh at his jokes. To laugh at myself! I know that nothing is this simple, and that marriage will always be hard work and come down to any number of factors. But I think I can give us a head start if I can try to remember to have a party once in a while, even if we're the only ones invited. If I can remember, as often as possible, to choose joy.

It is, after all, my middle name.

































I am forever grateful to my friend Greg for shooting the wedding, for working his butt off to be, somehow, everywhere at once, and for giving me the gift of all these stories, and the right to share any and all of them with all of you.

Scenes from a Marriage: Object Lessons

Dave and I have been married 4 years today.

When we moved into this little house in Boulder, we packed our formal china, stemware, silver, platters, and other fine things off to storage; apart from cramming snacks onto regular plates for a neighborhood party last weekend, we haven't missed any of it. I find myself thinking about the antiquated tradition of the registry: these days, as people get married older, they tend to have all of the household basics (often his- and hers-sets, in fact), so the focus seems to be on higher-quality replacements (and we do love our all-clad pots and pans and our 400-thread count sheets) or the formal stuff; however, most couples I know either live away from family and/or live in small spaces where a second set of anything is not really practical. In the Mad Men era, couples actually used their china on a regular basis, or, at the very least, knew that their future held family events and other entertaining that called for both red and white wine glasses, not to mention champagne flutes and crystal water glasses. This is no longer the case: for many of us, we can't predict what kind of domestic future our lives hold; we are just as likely to stay on in tiny apartments or, quite the opposite, to travel the world or retreat to a rural setting and try our hand at artisenal cheese-making or organic farming. So why do we hold fast to the tradition of a formal registry?

Four years on, I have moments where I wonder why we did not ask our friends and families to contribute to college funds or pitch in on larger purchases, like a new couch. Oh, right: we didn't yet have children and our couch was not yet destroyed by their spills and spit up. Maybe, at the moment of anticipating our futures together, we aren't ready to be so practical, no matter what our views on marriage and commitment. Maybe we hope for some bygone era that represents a glamor we may attribute to our grandparents. Maybe we just don't know what we will truly need, or don't like the shape that conversation takes.

In this moment, as we are object-rich but cash-poor, I find myself thinking back on our wedding with this same questioning eye. Was it really necessary to scour the internet for the perfect 1940s porcelein cake topper? Was it so important to rent the more-expensive green-moire tablecloths just because the entry-level white ones felt a little stark in the space? Was it worth going over-budget on the favors in order to have the vintage-style bird ornaments with real tail feathers? In setting out to write this post, my answer to these, and similar questions, was: no. None of these things matter. A wedding is about the people, the vows, the committment two people make to each other and the people they choose to witness it.

But when I went back through photos from that day, I found myself changing my mind. A wedding IS, most importantly, about the vows. But it is also a celebration of two individuals, and the object choices we make represent us on the day that is, arguably, the most about us. I recently took one of those facebook personality quizzes that plots you on various continuums; on the one about form versus function, I was all "aesthete", literally 100%; I don't even know what the other choice was called. So it makes sense that these details mattered to me.






In looking at the pictures, I realize that many of my choices were also about that same sense of nostalgia that a formal registry might be: that cake topper literally comes from another era; the green moire tablecloths and the bird ornaments were chosen not just for aesthetic reasons, but because they reminded me of my grandmother, a woman who forever imprinted herself on my being not just by who she was and the glamor with which I associate her, but also for leaving the world when I was at the very impressionable age of 15, making her forever an unanswerable question. I was married in her pearl necklace, which now belongs to my aunt Molly: something old; something borrowed.


I realize, too, that some of my choices might have something to do with my parents' wedding: my mother was six month's pregnant with my brother Brian; the ceremony was very small, the party basically non-existent; the bride wore an orange maternity gown designed and sewn by a friend. Because I love the idea of the heirloom so much, and because there was no way I was wearing orange (it's my favorite color, but there are limits), I was married in a dress--something new--that both reflects an earlier era, as if my grandmother might have worn it, and eschewed the trends of the day, making it possible to translate, I hope, to a future era. I have two daughters, after all.


I will mention here that I spent as much time, if not more, thinking about the vows, the readings, the music, the dancing, and my future husband. But the funny thing about objects is that they do last; they become keepsakes. I kept all of the reply cards that people wrote notes on; if we ever have a Christmas tree again, it will bear these bird ornaments. But even better than that, those birds became a reason to play at the wedding: corsages, barettes, dance partners, and even better than having them on my own christmas tree is the idea that friends and family will have them on their own.

Dave's wedding tie is still my favorite, and every time he wears it I think of how nervous I was to look at him as I came down the aisle; how thrilled. I hope our dads and brothers wear theirs; like corsages, these cheerful polka-dot ties let people know that these men were important to us, members of our wedding party, but unlike corsages, they are gifts that last. Seeing any of them wear them again reminds me of my wedding day, and how glad I was to have them be an important part of it. I suppose this is the power of objects.


And the cake topper? It reminds me of one of our few truly private moments in the course of the night. Everyone had been seated for dinner and, before making our entrance into the ballroom, we stopped to cut the cake so it would be ready for dessert. The timing was awkward--I had wanted this to be a public moment--but in hindsight I can appreciate the privacy of the moment, the humor, the chance to catch our breaths, alone together, before re-entering the fray.


And I love, looking back, realizing something I didn't see at the time: that at our wedding, we ate dessert first.

Happy Anniversary to Us

Dave and I have been married three years today.

We recently ordered this print to fill a hole in our salon-style art wall in the dining room (I found it while pursuing a reproduction of a British Military poster, spotted in Domino, that said "Keep Calm and Carry On," if that tells you anything.)



There was, however, some debate over the truth of the statement and the corresponding logic or wisdom in displaying it in our home. In hindsight, I think this would be the case about any couple telling themselves the truth about their relationship: being committed to one person is hard. Marriage is work. So I take the print as aspirational.

This weekend, we had the pleasure of attending a wedding in the Berkshires; the timing turned out to be terrific, because I feel that I learned a few important things just in time for this anniversary. First off, there is one place that we are definitely, indisputably, already good together: on the dance floor at weddings. I love dancing at weddings. You get such a mix of people on the floor, the music is a totally spirited yet accessible mix of motown and oldies, and in the spirit of celebration (and specifically celebrating the love of two people committing their lives to one another- in that moment before it gets hard), no one cares what they look like. At this wedding, I dare say that Dave and I were fun, we were funny, and we really tore it up.

Second, observing someone else's wedding with this much distance from my own, I realize that Dave and I made some hard choices in our ceremony, but that we were completely together in the decisions. Lila and Matt had Lila's aunt, a Rabbi, perform the ceremony; it was lovely, traditional, and personal all at once. Being the daughter of an Irish Catholic from a very large family in Ireland, I happen to have 3 uncles who are priests (and 1 who left the priesthood to marry a former nun); to keep it all in the family, Dave and I invited my uncle Frank to perform the ceremony, and despite the fact that we are not practicing catholics, Father Frank agreed. When it came down to it though, it became clear that Frank's strong faith and belief in the sacrament of marriage was at odds with our more practical, less spiritual take on things, so we switched gears and changed to a judge, inviting Frank to instead say grace (and make a toast) at the rehearsal dinner, while Father Billy said grace at the main event. Compromise is good when everyone feels satisfied.

Similarly, a family member declined our invitation to do a reading at the ceremony because he did not agree with the content; I have the utmost respect for his decision, but I am equally glad that Dave and I both chose to keep the sentiment--and the reading--and invited another family member to stand up on the altar with us. At the time, I'm not sure these felt like significant testaments to Dave and I as a couple, but in hindsight the fact that our decisions were so seamless speaks volumes about how simpatico we might actually be.

Most importantly, despite having little time to discuss our views on parenthood before our honeymoon baby came along, we have rarely disagreed about how to raise our daughters. The biggest divergence I can think of is in the use of ketchup as a condiment to inspire Clio to eat new things (she calls it "saucy" and I am for it while Dave is against.) Seriously, that's it.

So we will hang this print in the dining room where it can be aspirational, encouragement to Dave and I that we have this potential; and confirmational, a constant reminder that as a family, we have already met it.

Vow renewal

Funny, I just re-read the readings we chose for our wedding, and the choices underscore what I was just writing- that Dave and I have a practical understanding of love and marriage. At the time, we wondered if this excerpt from A Gift From the Sea was too dark, but ultimately felt it best reflected our feelings on the subject, for better or for worse. Here it is, and here we are on the altar:

When you love someone, you do not love them all the time, in exactly the same way, from moment to moment. It is an impossibility. It is even a lie to pretend to. And yet this is exactly what most of us demand. We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships. We leap at the flow of the tide and resist in terror its ebb. We are afraid it will never return. We insist on permanency, on duration, on continuity; when the only continuity possible, in life as in love, is in growth, in fluidity - in freedom, in the sense that the dancers are free, barely touching as they pass, but partners in the same pattern.

The only real security is not in owning or possessing, not in demanding or expecting, not in hoping, even. Security in a relationship lies neither in looking back to what was in nostalgia, nor forward to what it might be in dread or anticipation, but living in the present relationship and accepting it as it is now. Relationships must be like islands, one must accept them for what they are here and now, within their limits - islands, surrounded and interrupted by the sea, and continually visited and abandoned by the tides.

On this day... in 2005

Today is the two-year anniversary of Dave and my wedding. This is the first time we've passed this milestone with a place to publicly celebrate, so I figured I'd remember the blessed event with a few photo highlights. Scrolling through the thousand or so pictures, it was fun to have a million different moments come back to me; I was just telling Marni that I made a list after the wedding called "Things I want to remember"; I wish I could remember where I put it, because the photos put me in the mood.

It's amazing how many different stories a group of photographs can tell- I'm aware of this every time I share an anecdote from Clio's world and choose the pictures that will illustrate it; surely I take liberties as the narrator, but this is not a fiction, it's a life. I worry, sometimes, about the changing nature of modern memory, and the fact that I am documenting enough of my daughter's life that some confusion between what she actually remembers and what she has seen and read on her blog is inevitable. It's funny to think how much meaning I am making just by the way I edit the pictures.

In terms of our wedding, perhaps each year on our anniversary I can go back to the photo archive and represent the day based on how I'm feeling at the time. The pictures above are two of the ones I already consider the "classic" or "signature" wedding pictures. I love these because they best represent what I remember feeling during the event: thrilled, giddy, a little bit out-of-body.

But looking at the lot of them two years later, and from this new position of wife and mother, I see something else: committing your life to someone is no small thing, and doing it in front of everyone you know ratchets up the pressure; it is nerve-wracking, it is stressful, and it is hugely anxiety-producing. Can you see it?




In a way, I'm glad to look back and realize that some part of me knew it was not all going to be a walk in the park. I'm glad we were scared and worried, but had enough belief in ourselves and our relationship to get into this thing anyway. It's worth it, every day. I think we knew that, too. Check us out: