anniversary

 August 18, 2020

Today is our eighteenth anniversary.  I am at the beach for the week with the kids, and Daniel has asked to come down to see me and the kids, to deliver a gift, to make and eat dinner as a family.  I say yes.  He's supposed to arrive at 1pm, revised to 2:30pm, revised to 4pm.

A girlfriend with the day off sits by the ocean with me and we chat about various ted talks we like and the surf and my kids in the water.  I ask her the question that I have been holding in for weeks.

"How do I know if I am doing the right thing with this separation?"

Looking a little shocked, she asks why I am wondering this now.  And I tell her, "Because there were a lot of good times, because we have these four kids, because we've been together for eighteen years, and it's easier to imagine us together than apart."

I get teary.  Cry a little.

She asks a variation of her question again.

I say, "I have no regrets about separating in June.  It felt like the only thing left to do.  Even now I feel like it was the only thing I could do."

She says, "Well, you just answered your question."

Then she reminds me that I had told her a month before Daniel moved out that I would never split with him, that I would have to consider how to make our marriage work, maybe have an open marriage for the long haul.  And then, a month later, I was certain that I wanted him to move out.  

I tell her the other question that has been gnawing at me, "Have I worked hard enough at this marriage?  And I know that I'm the only one who can really answer that question, but I need to ask anyway."

I've known Tara for forty-three years.  She sits beside me on this beach and she nods her head yes.  Yes.

The tears come.  I tell her, "It's our eighteenth anniversary, and I didn't even know I was sad.  I've been having a good day and felt happy.  I don't know how all that just came out.  It just did."

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I fell in love with Daniel almost upon meeting him.  He opened the door of the house where a friend was living, and I felt instantly attracted to and intrigued by him.  I wanted to be near him.  My friend gave me a tour of the house, and my heart beat hard, and I wondered where in the house he had gone.  That afternoon, instead of sitting with tea and looking at my friend's Italy pictures from the summer, I agreed to go to a local pool with her and her housemates, Daniel included.  He lapped me, and I laughed.  That night we all made dinner and sat outside in the summer evening.  He served me eggplant that he had dyed with a fun color (orange?) just for me.  When we went dancing, he took my hand and led me over to the salad bar to teach me the steps to the dance.  Oh, he could dance.  Dance as in lead with actual steps of whichever dance was suitable for each song.  I was smitten.

But my friend was smitten, too.  They had dated for a month a while back, and she'd not yet gotten over him.  I knew this.  I knew this, and I still held on to my feelings for him.  

A month later when he was driving through California, we took a hike together, and the night after that we went for Ethiopian food and Ben and Jerry's and stayed up until 5am at my apartment.  A week later he told me that he loved me.  I said, "But you can't love me.  You don't even know me."

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We dated long-distance between New Mexico (him) and California (me) starting then, around Labor Day.  Flights back and forth, long phone calls, letters and letters, emails.  He met me in Boston to come to my family's for Thanksgiving.  I bought a ticket to visit him and his family in New Mexico right after Christmas.

By New Year's, we were engaged.

In the next eight months we argued about the number of invitations to be sent out, money, birth control, hobbies, love.  Once we were engaged, the bliss of those first four months was less bright; real life crept in as we planned a move East and I looked for a new job and he studied for the bar exam.  

He was romantic and funny and smart and clever.  We played with words and talked books and went to church and met each other's friends and kayaked and hiked and registered for china and kitchen dishes.  I took the GRE, but never completed an application for an MFA program.  I packed.  We planned our road trip across the country to Massachusetts.

I went to graduate school for the summer, and we saw each other every few weekends.  I graduated, went home to my parents, and got ready for the wedding the next weekend.

It was a fast, romantic, whirlwind courtship that ended in marriage within a year.  I loved his confidence and different way of looking at things and his letters and his expressiveness and smarts and reading and sureness in loving me and his adventurousness.  I loved that he could cook, that he cared about food, that he liked to do stuff like hike or play tennis.  I liked that he had direction, having just finished law school and preparing for bar exams in New Mexico and now Massachusetts.

We got married.

So now it's eighteen years ago today.  What do I remember from that wedding day?  I remember my aunt Margo looking directly at me when she read a passage from Philippians that I had chosen because I loved its saying something like, "Whatever is good, whatever is true....celebrate these things..."  I remember the priest's talking about our meeting at the Sheraton Commander Hotel and his mentioning a shared appreciation of Cicero.  I remember Daniel's telling me to "give [him] some lip" when I gave him my cheek after our vows.  I remember Daniel's locking his arm into mine rather than mine into his as we walked out.  I remember one of my parents looking really relieved after the ceremony and before the reception, saying, "That was really nice."

I remember looking around the reception for him whenever he wasn't with me, wanting him to be with me.

These are not the fondest memories.  I may have had a better time at my sister's wedding, when Daniel and I danced and laughed for hours.  But they are our wedding and the beginnings of our relationship.

Our anniversary is still something to acknowledge, even if celebrate may be too strong a word.  We have enjoyed a lot about each other and worked together on projects and enjoyed our kids tremendously.  We have had romantic days and silly days and fun days and hard talks and good talks and meaningful talks.

And now we're separated.

It's okay.

Eighteen years ago we made one decision, and this year we made another.  And we made so many small decisions over the years that got us to where we are now.  It's okay.