Warts and All

It is actually coming up on being with my husband for TWENTY years!  Seriously!  You know that scene in Groundhog Day where the insurance guy says "Ten Years!"  Now double that and the pitch just goes up even more. 

We haven't been married quite that long, but together, yes.  Just about twenty years.  And we're pretty darn happy, too.  I remember about six years ago, before we had our kids, someone was bitching about my biological clock (as if that was any of their business in the first place) and one of our family members said "Leave them alone.  They still LIKE each other."  YEAH.  Leave them alone!  

I'm not saying that there aren't bumps in the road now and then, days when I am furious at something stupid he has done, or vice versa.  I'm a perfect angel, though, so he never gets mad at me.  blink.  blink.  blink.  innocence and rainbows. 

So.  What makes this work?  What makes our relationship work, when so many others do not?  Especially after you have kids, when the tensions are ratcheted up a million times by waning hormones because of sleepless nights, whatever it is that makes those days after kiddos are born harder. 

What it mostly takes, for us, is accepting the warts as best as you can.  I always give this advice to people who are just getting married.  Figure out what you hate most about the person you're marrying and learn to love it because you're NOT going to change it.  (People do not "change if you love me."  Don't even ask).  A post by a blogger I don't read often enough, Stephanie Klein, reminded me of this because she said "what deadly sin are you willing to go to bed with?"  That's good advice, but my hubby's "sin" isn't as big as one of the Big 7. 

He's a flatulent man, honestly. Most of the time, it's not very smelly, but it's LOUD. I do not love this trait about him other than the fact that he is just so un-self-conscious about it. That unselfconsciousness I kind of do love because that makes him a sort of fearless person, and that's awesome. And it's not like he surprised me-- on our first date he snuck one out, and I thought he must be mortified (he was a little embarrassed, but not as much as most people would be).

So I laugh.  Even when it's kinda gross, and I need to spray him down with Lysol.  And guess what?  My kids do it a little bit too (Sean more than Maia).  And I actually DO kind of love that in the crazy way that mothers have of loving those little traits because they are little reflections of yourself. 

And laughing when it's kinda gross and yelling at each other HONESTLY without bringing up every fight you've ever had, forgiving each other sometimes, trying to forget, even, and not expecting the sun AND the moon.  And just dealing with the warts and all, every single day.  Some days are easier than others. 

All of that makes almost twenty years feel like just a start, and look forward to the next twenty. 

His Eyes

One of the things I remember most about the early days of my marriage to Andrew was how he would look at me with his intensely blue eyes, wide, serious.  Like he was memorizing me, and wanted to get it right.  There are more permanent crinkles around the corners of those eyes now, and his eyebrows get so bushy sometimes I have to trim them or he ends up looking like Lloyd Briges in Airplane!.  The photo is us, about five years ago, New Year's eve, and his eyes are the violet-y color of a man who has had a lot to drink.  ;)

I've seen those eyes pensive and scanning the wreckage of The USS Arizona in Hawaii, squinting in the almost too bright to stand sunlight of Alaska near the glacier.  I've seen them smiling at me as we kissed under that kissing bridge in Paris.  When we were having the kiddos and I was wide-open cesearean while he looked on, I could tell he was sort of woozy because his eyes were waaaay bluer than normal in his pale, about-to-pass out face. 

His eyes have always been a barometer to the things he doesn't say.

When we met, and he was a student aviator in Pensacola, he wore the ugly wire-rimmed aviator glasses he wears now.  I liked him because he was a little nerdy and didn't care about those uncool glasses, glasses they used to call "Birth control" glasses.  Weirdly enough, his and my eye prescription are almost exactly the same, and in the last few years, his eyes have not tolerated contacts, so I've mostly seen those ugly glasses.  He hasn't been vain enough to care to buy more stylish ones and I haven't really minded but...

However.  This week (tomorrow) we are going to Texas, where he will get LASIK to fix those pretty blue eyes so that he will see as well as I do now. (He has to have it done by a military doctor or lose his flight status). It will be a long week, and I worry way more about him getting the procedure than I worried about myself. 

But it will be nice to see those deeply blue eyes without anything in the way again.  Waking up in the morning, crinkles at the edges, eyes that speak to me of memory today and tomorrow and today again.   

This weekend, Andrew has "drill" so he's supposed to work. But he's still feeling terrible. He's in charge of getting together the breakfast we've been feeding the folks who have drill, though, and we went & bought it all yesterday. So this morning it was either me getting up at the crack of dawn and taking it to the workplace or him. When Andrew got up at 6, then, Sean got woken up. He wanted his dad. And he's been up since then.

I don't fancy waking up at 6 am on my last "free" Saturday, but we're up. Sean's watching Peter Pan & Maia is still asleep & I am here, reading news headlines & drinking coffee. I'm gonna be tired later. :)

Anyway. I'm having fun on Facebook lately. When I first did it last year, it was totally because students kept asking me for a contact there. And I didn't really use it much. I played the "Heroes" app for a while, and then I actually unchecked my membership for several months. But I've expanded it to include real friends (not just students) and I've also posted my Women Writers website there (if you're on Facebook, go "fan" us if you haven't already.) Spending too much time there, really. But I've always been prone to procrastinating on the Internet.

So now, I'm off to see if I've been poked.