I often tell Walter that I find marriage to be one of the weirdest things I've encountered. I don't know about you, but when you really think about it...choose one person to spend the rest of your life with, the whole thing sounds pretty crazy. I don't consider myself a risk taker, but marriage, that's the risk of a lifetime. I witnessed over twenty weddings last summer, and each one I was thinking, Are you sure about this? Because chances are, things are going to get tough--I mean, really freakin' tough, and I just hope you both make it. I'm super romantic, by the way.
Walter and I celebrated our eighth wedding anniversary last week. We aren't really celebratory people:
"I have a Mother's Day card for you, I just haven't finished writing in it."
"That's okay. I have a Valentine's card for you that I didn't write anything in, and then it was supposed to be your birthday card, but I didn't manage to write in it for that either."
We could probably try a little harder. We used to write long letters to each other--swooning over how amazing one thought the other was. Believe it or not, Walter is quite the poet.
We've been through some of those "really freakin' tough" times--namely, Isaac, the human hurricane who took over our lives three years ago. Do you know the divorce statistic for special needs parents? It's high (75-80%)--considerably higher than the already saddening divorce statistic for a marriage with typically developing children.
My dad is a psychologist, and has witnessed many marriages go down the drain. I don't remember the entirety of the conversation, but he has mentioned couples who basically become roommates. I don't want a roommate. If I'd wanted a roommate, I would have stayed in college and spared myself the emotional ups and downs of love--of connecting myself and committing myself to one person for the rest of my days. When we start passing each other in the hallway without a word, or haven't made eye contact in what feels like days, it's time to reconnect. We've been there and I'm sure you have too, in your own marriage. There have been months when it felt like we had nothing left to give to the other; months when we didn't really care, but we know that marriage is work, and it isn't always fun, and it isn't always full of liking one another, but we get through it, and we've always managed to get back on track.
Insert song: Jason Mraz - I Won't Give Up, because it's true, "we got a lot at stake" and my favorite, "We had to learn how to bend without the world caving in/ I had to learn what I've got, and what I'm not, and who I am". Listen if you want to.
I don't know about you, but I'd like to retain even that small statistic of marriages with children who have special needs, who stay together.
Here's to eight more years (more than that, unless one of us dies before then, which, I'm not really counting on happening) of Walter telling me I "should really clean out my car" (if I wait long enough he does it--I think, at this moment, he's on the brink of doing it for me), of him collecting my coffee cups abandoned in random locations throughout the house, leaving me alone when I want to be left alone, walking alongside me as I embark on various hobbies that seem crazy yet somehow he puts up with them, and putting away the milk for me because I have some sort of aversion to putting the milk back in the fridge.
Before we got married I said:
-There's no way on EARTH I'm doing your laundry...I do his laundry.
-We can eat cereal for dinner...I cook dinner every single night.
-We might have kids...we have two.
-I'll never live in a single-story home...we live in a single story-home, and actually, if we ever move, I'll be happy to live without a second story.
-I'll never be a homemaker (I shudder at the word)...well, let's face it, I've made a home, and Walter says it's peaceful, and that makes me happy, so I'll call myself a peacemaker instead.
This crazy, beautiful life. I wouldn't trade it.
Beautiful :)
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