8 Year Anniversary

Each year I relate the past year of marriage to a movie.

To view the last 7 years, click HERE.
This last year of marriage has, like all the other years before it, been unlike any other. In truth, I’ve told my husband “I love you” probably a million or so times. As a lover of the written word, and words in general, it’s a little unsettling that I can say the same thing time and time again and have it mean something entirely different as the days go by.

Last year, I set a quote from Oklahoma! as our 7 year anniversary quote. It was about toughing out the hard times. Our 7th year was the hardest thus far. Our eighth year was a year of rebuilding, of learning, of leaning more on the Lord on less on each other. After the dust settled, we found ourselves -surprisingly -closer together than we had been when we were LEANING on each other. Ironic, isn’t it?
In the last few months, I’ve been able to rediscover certain characteristics that my husband has -certain things I LOVE about him. Do you know how fiercely loyal he is to me? Have you seen the fight in his eye when someone scarcely HINTS in the vicinity of a criticism about me? Have you been present when someone cuts me off in traffic? Would you care to trade places with the doctor who ignored my completely validated complaints about an infection I was sure I had?

Last week, my husband dreamed that I died. He woke up sick.
“I’ve had dreams where you’ve died before,” he said (it felt like a big hug, I’m tellin’ ya), “But I could actually FEEL it this time. It was awful. I was completely alone.”
I sort of laughed it off, “Oh, my dying wouldn’t be so bad… at least you’d get some peace and silence.”
He didn’t think it was funny.
“I don’t want peace and silence. What would I do without you?” He said, and I couldn’t laugh it off anymore because the emotion in his voice was too… tangible.
He loves me.
He loves what makes me me. He likes how much I talk, he loves my jokes and my laughter and he bursts out laughing when I eek in a swear word when he least expects it. He loves to take me to places that make my eyes light up. He loves how happy I am -how I cry in movies that don’t deserve a hint of tears. He loves taking me by surprise with a dirty remark and seeing the shock factor take effect.
You know what he loved most about our weekend together?
“Hanging out with you,” he said.
After EIGHT years, he still prefers hanging out with me to anyone else in the whole wide world. And why? I would be so sick of myself by now. In truth, I DO get sick of myself at least once a week.
I have a theory: it’s an angel theory. I have some idea that there’s a guardian angel up above that flies down periodically and saves my marriage by way of blinders. She flutters down and places the FATTEST blinders heaven has to offer on my husband’s eyes, and then we go flitting along, side by side, ignorantly happy. Or maybe just happy. Either way, we’re still together.
And there’s no one else I’d rather be blinding than him.
I love what’s inside his body, and if you’ll momentarily take the blinders and put them on your own eyes while I say…
I love his soul.
Not that he isn’t easily the best looking thing I ever did date.

But today as I woke up, I was reminded of a scene in The Philadelphia Story. CK Dexter Haven and Tracy Samantha Lord are ex-spouses. They spend the movie having little tiffs as Tracy prepares to remarry. In the end, she throws off her fiance and is trying to figure out what to do with the wedding party waiting in the chapel… naturally CK proposes. He wants to marry her again. Of course they should be married again -we’ve all known it since the beginning of the movie when she busts his golf club over her knee.
And he “slugs” her.

[Dexter has just proposed]
Tracy Lord: Oh Dexter you’re not doing it just to soften the blow?
C. K. Dexter Haven: No.
Tracy Lord: Nor to save my face?
C. K. Dexter Haven: Oh, it’s a nice little face.
Tracy Lord: Oh Dexter, I’ll be yar now, I promise to be yar.
C. K. Dexter Haven: Be whatever you like, you’re my redhead.

After eight years, we can honestly look each other in the face and say, “Be whatever you like.”
Be whatever you like, darling. And I’ll be whatever I like. And we’ll both like each other best that way.
We might even love each other best.

Let’s not make each other promises to make the other happy.  Let’s not promise to be yar now.  Let’s just be.  And let’s just leave each other to be.  You be whatever you like.  I’ll be whatever I like.

I’m fatter. You’ve got a little less hair.
I’m getting to be a pretty good cook. You’re getting to be a pretty good gardener.
We’re both learning that the more we say “I’m sorry” the easier it is, and the quicker we say it… the better everything is.
Let’s keep laughing, love.
Let’s laugh ourselves into the grave and beyond.
I said it once 8 1/2 years ago, and I’ll say it again, “I think I’m jonesin’ you.”