Buy that Marriage a Beer

On Saturday, a woman in my Buy Nothing group offered several coin plants and I noted my interest. She said I could have one and that she’d leave it on her porch, but when I drove over to get it, it wasn’t there, and her 13-year-old son had no idea what I was talking about when I knocked on the door (surprise surprise). She texted me last night to say it was out on the porch still/again, so I rode my bike over to get it this morning. Lacking the forethought to consider how I would transport a cutting in water for two miles, I just put it in my basket and rode slowly and carefully home. About half the water spilled out, but it’s no worse for the wear and I’ve replanted it already.

It’s a metaphor, right? It could be a metaphor for anything but because tomorrow is my wedding anniversary, today it’s a metaphor for marriage. You want it, you’re unprepared for it, and as long as you go slow and are careful, plant it, feed it, and put it in the sun, it will eventually take root and grow.

My husband and I met in September 1992, started dating in February 2001, and got married on September 7, 2002. Our marriage is old enough to buy itself a drink, although I’m sure it’s had enough alcohol that it doesn’t need to. 21 years feels like a long time but on Sunday, I read an obituary of a woman who had been married for 81 years, so in a sense, we’re rookies.

I’ve written about our anniversary before. In 2006 (4 years! How cute!), I wrote, “2002 was the year we got married. Brook joked today that we should take our coffee maker on an anniversary vacation with us next year. What other wedding gifts could I bring with us? Maybe I could try to fit in my wedding dress and then wear it every day of the vacation, like Ms. Haversham on holiday.”

In 2009, “After an evening of basically begging my kids to go to sleep, it's hard to imagine that 24 hours ago, I was having a lovely anniversary dinner with Mr. Scobie, seven years after the Attack of Nerves we affectionately call Our Wedding. We went to A16, where my brother-in-law is cooking. Very good dinner.”

In January 2010, I wrote the following, which is not about our anniversary, but is still pertinent:

Actual dialogue in my life:

Mr. Scobie: What are you blogging about?

Me: The Hangover.

Mr. Scobie: You mean the one you had Christmas morning?

Me: No, the movie we watched last night.

Mr. Scobie: You should also blog about the one from Christmas.

After 2010, I stopped blogging for a while, which means I need to switch this post over to a reflection on the best marriage advice I’ve gotten over the years.

In my junior year of high school, we translated The Aeneid in our Latin class. We spent a considerable amount of time on Book 4, which concerns the love affair between Aeneas and Dido, the queen of Carthage. Aeneas is torn between his duty to found Italy and his love for Dido, but after their marriage, Jupiter reminds Aeneas of his destiny, and our hero leaves in the night to resume his journey. Heartbroken, Dido dies by stabbing herself with Aeneas’s sword and vows everlasting strife between their people. Our class of 17- and 18-year-old girls were torn between outrage that Aeneas would leave his true love for what seemed like a fool’s errand and outrage that Dido didn’t follow him. Our Latin teacher Mrs. Griffin, however, noted that they both had duties to their people that exceeded in value the love they had for each other.

But, she noted, marriage is also a duty. In fact, “Some days in marriage are love, but some days, marriage is duty. Some years of marriage are duty, and other years of marriage are love,” she said.

Heavy stuff for teenage girls, but ohmigod, I’m glad she warned me. There have definitely been times when our marriage was more difficult than others, and duty to the marriage was a governing principle. Take a remodel: We often reminded ourselves that a remodel was no reason to get a divorce, so yes we can get the . . .

I don’t even remember what the fights were about. And that’s another good piece of advice: forget stuff.

My Gram also had these nuggets: 1. Keep laughing with each other; and 2. It’s okay to go to bed angry: you’ll have a better idea of what the problem really is after a good night’s sleep. My aunt Shelagh added to that: Read the same books (or watch the same movies or see the same art), but not always at the same time, so you always have something new to talk about.

Since I think 21 years is actually a short time to be married in the scheme of things, I don’t have anything new to add to what I’ve already said. When I am handing out marriage advice to people, I think I’ll stick with my little coin plant metaphor: as long as you go slow and are careful, plant it, feed it, and put it in the sun, it will eventually take root and grow.

Happy Anniversary, B!