Don't Forget to Water The Grass...

The evolution of a marriage is infinitely interesting to me. I think about how my views on it have changed...and changed again. As a young girl I didn't think about it almost at all. I had a single mother who was doing a phenomenal job. I mean, I obviously noticed that my friends had married parents...I just never paid the idea of their marriage any mind.

As a teenager, the idea of romance began to bloom in my suddenly one-track, hormone-riddled brain. I looked at married people differently again. I saw myself marrying Dinks who were sitting next to me in Science class...logically. Proximity is key when you don't have a car. I sucked face with cute neighbor boys and wrote their last name next to mine in my Trapper Keeper. How our names looked together on graphing paper was obviously a tremendous indicator of compatibility.

In college, I started to look at every boy who asked me out as a potential mate. Frat parties are a killer place to find someone interested in monogamy, let me tell you! I watched a few friends get engaged. I got caught up in the excitement of their weddings. I think my college self was far more interested in the details of the wedding than the marriage. I don't think this, I know this.

After I graduated, my dating pool looked completely different again. These were men. They had their own homes. Big dreams. Real jobs. Some had ex-wives...some had children...all of them knew more about marriage than I did.

I met my husband when I was 26. I remember that seemed really old to me at the time. I'd like to go back and slap my face off my face for thinking that. But, I digress. We were an unlikely match, honestly. However, we had mutual friends who assured me a "vouch" on his behalf. Said "vouch" and half a dozen lemon-drop shots into our first date and I was smitten. He was funny and charming. When he kissed me, a million fireworks exploded in my heart, and everywhere else in and around me. Our first months together were absolutely electric. The months after those months were too. I pitied everyone else within a country mile of us.

I moved in with him when we could no longer stand the heinous and completely inconvenient commute that was standing in the way of our waking up together everyday. Reality opened its first can of whoop ass on me and my beliefs about marriage at that point. It said, "Jen! Look at how this man LIVES! He may have NEVER changed that shower curtain liner...EVER! Is this really something you can deal with?" Ummm...okay, I guess, I told myself at the time...

The merging of our homes and lives was definitely a rocky transition. In fact, I distinctly remember him taking an already scheduled, two-week backpacking trip through Europe a few DAYS after a moved into The Bachelor Pad from Hell. So, I had some time to think about the decision that I had just made. I realized that more compromise would be involved than I'd ever previously imagined. How cute that this had only now just occurred to me...

It's been seven years since our journey together began. It has been a mixed bag of joy and grief...laughter and sorrow...anger, forgiveness, life and death. The way that I see him, myself, and us is constantly changing. We pick each other up some days, and others we knock each other over. We rarely agree. We don't look the same any more. We want different things than we wanted seven years ago. We are, for all intensive purposes, completely different people. We're going to be different again a year from now. I finally understand this.

What I never actually understood, is that, much like parenthood, you have to be up to your shoulders "in it",  to even begin to understand it at all. It isn't this "one thing". It never will be. A marriage is so much more than making a commitment to another person. It's this living, breathing organism. It has a pulse. It changes with the weather and seasons as we do. It grows, it learns, it occasionally forgets. It's not something that can be comfortably settled into. It has to bravely be tended to like a wild garden...full of both fragrant flowers and swirling thorny vines.

Today I look at this guy that I picked and I still manage a smile. We've been to war together a few times. There are definitely battle scars. I know that we're still in for more. I'm sort of proud of them. They were among the most important lessons that we've learned about each other. Those are always the days that the biggest guns come out. To have survived them, while still holding hands, is Purple Heart material, my friends.

He's like this puzzle that I'll likely never figure out. But, it's still my favorite one...even if there may be some pieces missing... 

There is nothing profound in my saying that marriage isn't easy. But, there is something really profound in knowing that even though it feels so hard sometimes, I still don't want to be anywhere else. I want to stay on my side of the bed, with his big warm arm draped over my hip, until our beautiful child inevitably interrupts our slumber. 

I still love the way my name looks next to his. 

I still really love the way that he kisses me.

I still know that I've got so much more to learn...and so much more work to put in.

My relationship is a real one. It's not diamond rings and date nights. I never thought that I would, but I actually love this idea now...I finally understand it. It's never easy to let your friends and neighbors see you through the hole in the fence, but regardless of whatever glimpse folks decide to take away, I want the record to show that we were always trying. And if our grass is really green, its only because we're watering the crap out of it.

My marriage...my family...remains under construction as it continues to move through the phases of its life. It is imperfect, but it is beautiful. I didn't know it that whirlwind day at the bar so many years ago, but life and love still had so much to teach me, if I was willing to learn. I will be grateful for that, and for my beloved husband, for the rest of our days. I just probably need a few more lemon-drops for the spaces in between...