One Year Later

One year ago today, an entire day completely saturated with love, support, family, community, laughter (no seriously, the laughter), the very best music, amazing food, no-holds-barred dancing frenzy and plenty of happy tears as well, I married the best man I know. I'd say the best man in the world, but people tend to want to debate this point, and that's not what I'm saying. I know what I know. I know he is the best, my best, and makes me better as well.

It's been a year of limited drama since the madness of May 2010. We went to Ireland, it was glorious. We spent Thanksgiving in Los Alamos with my family, it was an (exhausting) delight. We journeyed to a cabin in East TN for New Years Eve. I got a new position at Emma; Austin has won some impressive awards for his work. Our pets have kept us busy and laughing and occasionally baffled. We've discovered The Wire and powered through the first three seasons in the last month. Today, we're cozied up in a condo directly on the beach in Navarre, FL. It is perfect. Tonight we'll grill pizzas and drink Pimm's cups on our balcony.

Everyone keeps commenting, "I can't believe it's been a year! It doesn't seem like that long ago." I was sharing this discussion with a friend whose wedding was a few weeks before ours. He says, "I sure wasn't expecting this first year to be so hard." I nodded and didn't argue, but I couldn't feel less in agreement. For one thing, he's really referring to how hard the first year of cohabitation is, and we got that out of the way many moons ago. And I'm always glad that we did. In the weeks after the wedding, we were often asked, "Does it feel any different?," and I'm sure if we hadn't already lived together, no one would have asked that. But my answer was always, "Sure, it does, a bit. We just feel like more of a team now." When I think back to May 22, 2010, and all the beauty I described in the first paragraph here, the truest memory of that entire day for me is just the peace. The peace in my heart and in my mind and in my hands when he was holding them, saying "I do." This peace wrapped me up and has not departed. Every day, our marriage is my peace.

We were standing in the front entranceway of Houston Station, sometime late in the evening in a break between photos and dancing and catching up with wedding guests. Austin's cousin Jason had brought his whole family, and his little daughter Sophie grabbed my hand and wanted to talk to me. I knelt down and she asked, "When you were up there, why were you crying?" She was referring to when I nearly sobbed my way through my vows. I said, "I was crying because I love him so much." She considered this, head tilted, then put both her hands on either side of my face and said, "I know you do."