Dear Daughters,

A dozen times or more I’ve sat down at my keyboard and decided to write a small primer on what makes a happy marriage.  It is my hope that each one of you will find your own prince or princess charming to complete your life.  It’s my hope that you’ll walk down the aisle (any aisle, really) toward your beloved as a bride full of hope and happiness for your own golden future.  Just as I did as a bride almost 13 years ago.

How perfect, I thought, to write a little how-to to my girls while I sat “in the trenches”. Big Daddy and I are navigating through what are, statistically, the hardest parts of marriage.  We’re raising young children, but I’m pretty sure Big Daddy still hangs the moon and I want so much to be able to tell my girls how to have just this.  Because this is so worth it.

But now matter how hard I’ve tried to encapsulate our marriage into a few cute talking points, I’ve found I can’t do it.  The words fail.  I find that I don’t have any advice to give.  A few weeks ago, I admitted to Big Daddy that maybe I’m not good at marriage.  I’m just good at marriage to him.  Big Daddy isn’t given to hysterics or histrionics. He doesn’t need to need to prattle on endlessly, in detail, about small things.  Make no mistake, he’s not a man of few words, but his words are measured and logical and rational.

My foil.  My perfect, perfect foil.

During this conversation, Big Daddy suggested that, perhaps, our marriage is so successful because it is not only exactly what we wanted by something we choose every day.

And so, my girls, in a few short sentences, Big Daddy summed up everything I’d been trying to say forever.

A happy marriage is about choice.  Choosing the right partner?  Yes, of course. But it’s so much more than that.  A happy marriage is about choosing that partner with every sunrise and sunset.  With your thoughts and your words and your actions.

It’s about wanting that kiss every morning.  Not just accepting it.  Or tolerating it.  Wanting it.  Choosing it. Not feeling complete until you’ve had it.  It’s about needing that time with your head on their chest at night.  Not accepting it.  Or tolerating it. Wanting it. Choosing it. Missing it when they’re away for the night on business or out late with friends.

It’s about forgiving.  Not to a fault, but human mistakes.  It’s about choosing to not hold a grudge and choosing to be careful with someone who has entrusted their heart into your hands for good keeping. It’s about choosing to be vulnerable, and girls, I know this can be so hard depending on the path you walked to find your person.  Choose not to hide your softness or your weakness.  Choose to let them love you for yours and you love them for theirs.  Choose to believe them when they say you’re pretty.  Choose to believe them when they say love you.  Choose to believe them when they treat you like you hang them moon.  Choose to treat them the same way.

Choose them in the quiet moments. Choose them in the big ones and the loud ones and the crazy ones and the sad ones.  Get up every morning and say to the sun and to the world and to yourself that you’re choosing them today.  It’s simple advice, really.  Just keep choosing each other.  When it’s easy and most importantly, when it isn’t.  It’s the best advice I can give, girls.  Even if it did come from your Dad.

Love,

Mom

So, I might not be cut out for home renovations.  The two days the floor installers were here totally messed up my flow.  I didn’t even post a menu plan this week!

However, I am in LOVE with how pretty the house looks.  As soon as we install the baseboards, I’ll be sharing pictures.  Can’t wait.

Usually, October is a sad month for me.  I know that seems strange, considering my love for Fall and how much I’m into Christmas, but it was in October all those years ago that Cancer knocked on our door and decided it was my Mom’s turn to fight.

And she’d lose the battle.

But usually, October would ring in with me feeling unsettled.  That’s actually a nice way to describe the fact that my anxiety would skyrocket and my depression would flare up.  Usually, by mid-October, I’d be back to taking my meds and trying to figure WTH happened and then I’d put it all together.  October.  Tumor. Surgery. Beginning.

For some reason, this year, October and the twin spectors of Cancer and Anxiety aren’t plauging me.  I have no explanation other than the fact that I told the anxiety to eff off and I told Cancer that it was going to have to pay me rent if it wanted to spend more time living in my head.

In any case, the heaviness has been absent from this month and it gave me the opportunity, the first in years, to remember that October didn’t used to be sucha  dark, dreary sad month for me.

In October 1998, Big Daddy flew from Chicago to Detroit to have lunch with me.  Although we’d been talking on the Internet for months (since May) it was our first face to face meeting and I was, well, anxious(surprise!).

A week later, Big Daddy and I met halfway, in Kalamazoo.  On Sweetest Day weekend.  He took me out for dinner (Olive Garden.  He thought he was slumming it).  I remember watching Big Daddy in my rear view mirror as I drove away on Sunday.  I knew that I’d move heaven and earth to be with him.

We were married nine months later.

We celebrated our 12 year Anniversary this past July.

When I wake up in the morning, I can’t wait to roll over and find him there.  All warm and drowsy from sleep.  When I go to bed at night, I can’t  waitto curl up next to him with my head on his shoulder and my arm flung across his chest.  My dearest hope is that I always feel that way.  Every morning and every night.

When i was a little girl I wanted a fairy tale.  I wanted Prince Charming on a white horse.  I wanted happily ever after.  I wanted something perfect and beautiful, like the fairy tales I’d had read to me (and read myself  and hoped against hope that even some small shred of them would be true).

And then, there was you.  You are more than I ever believed was possible.  You are better than anything I could have ever imagined. You are better than any Prince Charming and even better?  You’re mine.

I couldn’t have chosen a better person or a better partner to share my life.

I couldn’t have found someone who knows me so well.  And it isn’t just the time.  It isn’t the dozen years we’ve spent together, happily.  Compatibly.  You understand me on a cellular level and in a way that no one else has.  You seen things in me that I cannot see nor believe in myself.

You are what I wish for when I think about the future of our girls.  That they find someone just like you.  Someone who isn’t afraid to love them.  Someone who isn’t afraid to roll up their sleeves and pitch in.  Someone who is proud of the person they are and believes them capable of every thing.  Just like you do for me.

No fairy tale is this good.  No happily ever after this happy.  Thankful is too small of  a word.  So is grateful.  I can say it no better than to say I Love You.  Because it’s true and I do.

Happy Anniversary, sweet heart.

There’s more to this story.  Check out part 1, part 2 and part 3

Big Daddy and I sat next to each other at lunch. My hand inside his big, warm one.  He smelled wonderful.  Like leather and my favorite cologne and something else that is just how Big Daddy smells (does that sound werid?  I think Big Daddy and the kids all have a unique smell.  It’s not body odor or anything.)  We conversed with our friends.  We smiled a lot.  I tried to eat.

My heart felt like it was trying to escape my chest.  Every time Big Daddy squeezed my hand under the table, I felt my insecurities flitting farther and farther away.    All of the millions of tiny concerns that had plagued me for so long and that had kept Big Daddy and me apart flew away like fluff off a dandelion.  All of them just ceased to exist.

After lunch, we decided to drive about a half an hour up the river.  It was a beautiful fall day and there’s a lovely boardwalk.  Big Daddy and I walked off from our friends where we were…uh…inseparable.  ;) (Which basically means we made out until the last possible minute when we had to jump into the cars and drop me off at work.).  Big Daddy and I didn’t talk a lot.  We had done the talking.  We’d talked for hours and hours for days and weeks and months.  We didn’t need to talk.

We still don’t.  The best thing about Big Daddy is that I can be silent with him.  That we can sit for hours and never have to say a thing.  That’s the idea that launched this series.  The day Big Daddy and I were laying on the couch together, in complete and yet companionable silence and how I think our entire story brings us to this place.  How we can talk about everything and nothing with the exact same success.

After Big Daddy dropped me off at work, we had a plan made.  The next weekend I was getting into a car and I was driving half way to Big Daddy.  We were meeting in the college town where one of my best friends was going to University.  We were spending the weekend together.

I couldn’t wait!

I expect my Mom wanted to vomit.

But I was 22 and what could anyone do?  And honestly, had they pushed me or tried to prevent me (I was still living at home.  They were paying for school), I was prepared to do something rash, which is really out of character.  And so, on the Thursday afternoon before Sweetest Day in 1998 I got into my car and drove the 3ish hours to Kalamazoo.  That night I got dolled up.  I went out to the bar.  I danced.  I drank.  I refused slow dances.

Big Daddy was coming.  After work on Friday and I wanted no complication.  I was loyal.  I was head over heels in love.