22 Years and Counting...

I don't know what bearing a wedding has on how long you stay married. Today is our 22nd anniversary so it seems worth a trip down memory lane regardless.

Our wedding day was pretty wonderful considering we loved each other and mainly just wanted to get married. Other things went well too such as our clothes and the photos and food and flowers. It was a low-budget wedding and we made it look as good as we could and most of the people we loved were there.

There were the usual disasters. The hairdresser decided that even though the up-do hairstyle we’d practiced the week before was quite sublime, she fancied I’d look better on my wedding day with a nice 50’s beehive. I cried from the hair salon to the church where my bridesmaids immediately went into action with curling irons, gels, bobby pins and hairspray. I think they enjoyed it actually, being urgently called into action to avert a crisis, all on deadline.

Things were a blur from there: the ceremony, the reception line, cake and drinks, a short limo ride, dinner, and then just like that, we were a married couple.

And then just like that, while driving out to my relative's condo, we had a fight.

I wasn’t a normal teenage girl, I guess, in that I didn’t spend much time thinking or dreaming about weddings or dresses or anything really to do with getting married. I mainly just thought about guys. About the only thing that had ever crossed my mind was how cool it would be to have your getaway car be completely decked out.

Being that we were married during the holiday season, our bridal party decided to wrap our car in Christmas paper. They also wrote on the windows with soap and lipstick, tied things to the bumper, and as a macabre and utterly bizarre finishing touch, they impaled a fish on the car antennae. It was quite spectacular.

As we drove off, the fish started a very slow, very wobbly arc across the front windshield as the antennae bowed and then slowly bounced back into position. Then it did it again. Sloooow arc, nice bounce then boing! Back to the other side again. For some reason, my new husband and the one driving the car, found this distracting. He was also concerned about our car overheating being that it was wrapped in Christmas paper.

I was thrilled with the spectacle of our car, the noise we were making with cans from the bumper and the honks and waves we got. The fish was kind of a wild card but it added a unique touch. All in all, the experience was meeting my expectations and I was quite thrilled.

About a mile down the road, JJ turned over to the side of the road and got out. He didn’t say anything, just stepped outside and proceeded to rip paper off the car and remove our fish from the antennae. It was very cold outside so he was working very quickly.

The rest isn’t even really worth retelling in much detail. There was a lot of shouting and disbelief and waving of hands and threats and an attempt to re-impale the fish on the antennae. For the most part, the person representing the Left Brain side of the argument won with sound points about actually getting to the place we were going, not just driving the car to be seen. There were some compromise pieces of paper left hanging on and of course, everything else that didn’t impede our journey.

After a stop at a grocery store to buy cold medicine, we drove the distance into North Idaho and managed to get into my aunt and uncle’s condo without triggering the alarm and disturbing the neighbors. We collapsed, exhausted and worn-out, but happy and married.

Thinking back, I’m not really sure what a perfect wedding would look like or how ours might have been different. I imagine how much you spend probably has some bearing on perfection.

In reality, I think the perception of a perfect wedding has much more to do with expectations or what a wedding is even supposed to represent. Our wedding was simple and meaningful and pretty much how we wanted, right down to all the mistakes that end up being what we tell the stories about.

We keep making mistakes and we kept making mistakes, even that night. We learned that spermicidal foam can and does explode when not opened properly. It will also stain beautiful linen lampshades, even if they don’t belong to you.

Twenty-two years later, I’m pretty happy that’s how things started out. We haven’t really stopped arguing or loving each other like crazy or doing things the wrong way and then, having it all turn out to be a beautiful after all.

Happy, zany, amazing anniversary, JRJ.

You still rock my world.

Fly, Fly Away

The kids are back in Seattle. They are currently in a car driven by some random person who saw the post on K’s dorm’s FB page: “$20 to pick us up at the airport.” The flight went fine. Butter and vanilla and eggs somehow made it through security so K could make cookies for her friends at Christmas. How all of that is less lethal than the hair gel TSA confiscated last summer is a mystery, but whatever.

We have all done decently being apart. This is not easy for a close family. There are interesting emotions to navigate. We all need to be doing our own thing and growing and there is a limit to what we can do together. But we all just sort of shamelessly like to hang out together.

A good deal of time now as it always was is spent just doing life. We run a lot of errands together and spend money on things for college and trips and just growing up stuff. It’s appropriate.

After dropping them at the airport, we headed to Europa, the place to be with the other twenty lucky people in Spokane who remember the awesomeness that happens at Europa on Sundays. You get to sit in this amazingly cozy lounge in soft chairs and listen to Michael and Keleren make their music.

If that wasn’t enough, while sipping our drinks a very kind older gentleman came over and stood by our table. He just stood there a bit, smiling, which didn’t make me feel all that uncomfortable. We waited, smiling at each other. Finally he reached out and took John’s hand and told us a story.

He said he and his wife of 58 years started coming to Europa when it opened over 30 years ago. He loved all his memories with her there and he saw us sitting together, looking happy and he wanted to come over. “Enjoy each other,” is what he wanted to say. His wife has been gone seven years and he said he still misses her deeply.

I could see it on his face and I could feel how painful that would be, to have someone and then lose them. He told us again, to enjoy each other and not forget what you have. He turned and moved slowly back to his table with his son and his wife.

We miss our kids but we are still a family. We don’t have endless money but we spend it recklessly on people and experiences and food and art and beauty. The timing was beautiful and a reminder of what has been good has been good for a reason and we can’t forget that or ever get too caught up in the stresses of life.

Another week starts tomorrow. Corporate America is not a place for the faint at heart. I might be rested up enough to dive back in but probably, not really. I could use another week or two. But that is what we got and it must have been enough.

During the week ahead, I will remember Eurpoa-man and his wise words from the years that are still ahead of me, calling to me from my future to not stray from our priorities, which are often assaulted by the responsibilities of life. I’ll remember four days with our adult children and nephew and other family as well as friends and our bigger community. I’ll remember Hazel chasing a deer out on my sister’s property and the wonderful food and games and movies and times together. I’ll remember that Advent always begins where Thanksgiving leaves off and I like that rhythm very much.

It is the ebb and flow of life and it’s beautiful.

It is Thanksgiving and it is beautiful.

A beautiful life.

#8 No Cavities

My next dentist visit is October 26th. It is a random Wednesday in October, nothing significant about it other than it is my first official Empty-Nest-Event.

The dental assistant was pleasant as I had a small crisis at the desk. "Do you want to reschedule?" Of course, thanks. "What day works?" Let me check my Daytimer.

I flipped out the October and started looking through the days, going through the list in my mind of kid's activities I still schedule around or am aware of: Voice lesson on Monday, Home Group on Tuesday, Youth Group on Wednesdays, Piano on Thursdays, random practices, earlier dinners...

Then, a small awareness. Most of these afternoons will now be free. Both daughters, tucked away in Seattle and my afternoons, without prescheduled events for the first time in twenty years. I glanced up at her. "Well," I said slowly, "It appears really any late afternoon would work." I looked back down at the date, quite alone out there in Empty Nest Land.

The whole experience possessed a surreal, airy quality, like a door had just blown open and wind had rushed in. It seemed a bit chilly but not completely uninviting, with a hint of spring but a touch of fall too.

I stood there for a moment with this sensation, determined not to get overly analytical or emotional but also quite aware of what was happening. This was the first of hundreds and thousands of appointments and moments and events to come, where there would be an untethered quality to my days, my time, my life, like never before.

And then... what?

Last Saturday, our family stumbled around Moscow, Idaho for the better part of the day, blinking in the sunlight that had finally arrived after six months of relative hiding. We gloried in the Moscow Food Co-op, rolled around in the grass on the sidelines of the soccer field, wandered through the Student Union Building on the UI campus looking for restrooms.

Later, J and I had a moment where we both knew what the other was thinking, that this was one of the last soccer games we'd be going to with our own child, that we were having a wonderful day in this random town on a random Saturday because of it, and finally, what were we going to do to keep crazy, magic moments like this alive?

There is a quality to life that happens only when you have chosen to enter something where there isn't an element of control. Sitting down and planning to go for the perfect getaway weekend with friends... it isn't the same as getting up early, driving when you don't want to and then, ah-ha! Now you see why it is you're here. There are buttercups here. And the sun, it's here. And people, our crazy little family, together. I had only wanted to stay home, and even after all of these years of surprising glory, I would have stayed, if I could have.

We are consumed with this, having control and creating the perfect life. Creating a life with limited connections, limited commitments, controlled exchanges. What is the breath of life? Jesus: "Choose trust, choose people, choose God, choose Not-My-Way-Today, and in exchange, real life, passionate living."

So what will I do at 45 with an 'empty nest?' Determine that it is always full. That we never have complete control of that schedule. That people and events and places will always be there to mess it up and make it wonderful.

I snapped shut my Daytimer. Like most days, there are things to do. My dentist is next to Value Village so off to do some thrifting. I had a haircut scheduled and was off to that next, caught up in shampoo and clippings and my hair cutter guy slicing his finger open with his scissors. Super glue, band aids, then back to work, for both of us.

I can still see that writing in my Daytimer. Out there, alone, October 26th. I wonder... what will be around it, to keep it company.

I wonder what is coming. And that feels fine.