Two years ago, Scott and I boarded a plane for New Hampshire, where we’d land, rent a tiny little car and head to Vermont to get married.
It remains the best trip of my life, ever, and that includes last year’s Mediterranean trip with my old boss.
This morning on the way to work, on the train, I was listening to some affirmations that are a part of our hypnobirthing training. Scott jokingly asked me if the affirmations included such phrases as, “You have a beautiful vagina…” and I laughed because, well, kind of. I mean, not totally. There’s no actual vagina worshiping here, but all of the phrases are very body-positive and respectful of the machinations that have to happen in one’s head to be properly ready for a natural childbirth. I’m pretty clear you can’t just do natural childbirth without some preparation. Some of that preparation is, truly, is having a little faith in one’s ladyparts.
So anyway. We’re laughing about this and, as he grabs my hand to help me off of the train, he starts changing the lyrics to Neil Diamond songs, incorporating birthing and pregnancy terminology into them, all the while actually imitating Neil Diamond. I have already tried once this morning to run away from his particular brand of crazy, and I am too tired to try again. But he’s funny, so I stop, and as he steps in front of me on the escalator heading down, I kiss the top of his head, as I do almost every morning as we make this trip downtown.
I often find myself really missing that trip to Vermont, if for no other reason than uninterrupted time together is a rare commodity. And yes, I know how rare it’s really going to get. For as much as I think my husband is knee-knockingly handsome, and smart in a way that is relatively unassuming, not to mention how thoughtful he is, it’s his ability to make me laugh that has changed my life completely.
I think about the home our daughter will be born into, and it is a home filled with laughter. What a gift that is that he gives her in this.
I’ve said before that Scott has been my very best friend since the moment I met him. I could have never known then, though, what that would look like almost six years later, and just what it meant to have him as my friend, let alone my husband.
Our lives back then were peppered with more whiskey and debauchery than even possible now. There were a lot more dive bars and rock clubs. A lot more late nights and navel gazing. Nowadays, the predominate conversations in our home revolve around something funny that the dog is doing, paint colors for the nursery and whether it’s trash day. This is what happens, and it’s the sort of intimacy a good number of us fight tooth and desperate nail for as younger people, and it happens before you knew what you were signing up for.
To have someone witness your life in all of its ordinary, extraordinary minutia is such a blessed gift.
So while he has been my best friend since I met him, he is the confidante and partner that I’d always dreamed of having, the reason that I have faith that everything, no matter what, will always be OK. I’m gobsmacked by how lucky I am that I married someone who helped me realize this, especially after a lifetime of being scared of pretty much every last thing in the world.
It isn’t a perfect marriage, but it’s a good marriage, and it’s ours, and I’m grateful for it.
