One Year

I have been married to Corey for one year. I love that. Every time I talk to my Gommy, when she isn't forgetting my birthday or confusing me with one of my aunts, she says, "The first year is always the hardest you know." I think this saying is probably true of people who didn't co-habitate before getting married, but I also find it hard to believe any other year will be more trying than this one.

Our marriage started out sort of scary--his mom was so very sick that she missed our wedding. He and I spent the next eight months not seeing one another as our schedules refused to align. We yelled at each other a lot when we did catch a glimpse of our spouse awake. It was a really, really hard year. But the causes all seemed external to our relationship.

His mom is a picture of health now, and we're going to wander around Tuscany to celebrate this fact. I'm finished with graduate school and, since commencement, we've cooked dinner together and actually sat on our deck to eat. And the other day, when Corey climbed out of bed to rustle of a late night snack, he brought along a piece of extra-dark chocolate for me...without needing to be asked. He also stayed up all night last night washing dishes so I wouldn't complain about moldy food when we returned. Who wouldn't love to be married to such a man??

I went to Target to look for an anniversary card to give him while we're on vacation. This was challenging because all the cards at Target include long poems about love and heaven and many incorporate Bible verses. But then I found the perfect one, the one that captures the primary image which stands out from our first married year: a card with people talking to one another in farts. Because above all other things that are wonderful about marriage to Corey, our ability to laugh at each other's gas makes me the very happiest. I remember a year of expulsions: farting along the route to Ohiopyle and giggling in the woods. Burping at the Pirate Parrot. Farts echoing through the empty rooms of our brand new home.

Corey, here's to another sixty years of you opening then locking the car windows when I stink up the front seat.