Dear Mack,
I was watching
Top Chef on
Tivo today and the challenge was to create a dish using the hotels of
Las Vegas as inspiration. The
Bellagio and Mandalay Bay were among the featured hotels, and the whole subject took me back three years ago when we spent the weekend at the now-demolished Frontier hotel, to that fateful night when you and I went to the courthouse and promised to be best friends for the rest of our lives in front of three complete strangers.
I remember wearing cowboy boots and picking the most ridiculous bouquet in the little chapel. I remember the minister pushing the play button on his tape player and
cuing me to walk down the 6-foot-long aisle. I remember thinking how silly this whole show was and how tragic that some of the other couples there were actually taking this seriously. Our wedding, the one that legally bound us, was a joke.
But then, standing up at that ridiculous alter wrapped up with silk roses, something happened. Since no one else in the entire room mattered, I became fixed on you. I
robotically uttered familiar phrases about sickness or health, richer or poorer, and looked into your eyes without being distracted. When I was told to say that I would be your best friend forever, I was jolted. That was a serious commitment, one I naively hadn't considered before that moment, and I had to make a decision right then and there. Staring at you in your grandpa sweater with your big smile and dangerous eyes, I agreed. I promised to be your best friend.
I know that there have been days, weeks, maybe even months in the last three years that I haven't been your best friend. In fact, it's possible and likely that at times I've been your worst enemy. But even in that darkness, in that indifference and carelessness, I'm still glad that I made the promise of friendship. It's created a bridge that keeps our marriage from going under, that gets us over the bad times and back to the good ones, that binds you to me and me to you.
This past year has been full of ups and downs, just like the
roller coaster ride we went on at the New York hotel moments after we got married. You graduated from college and I got laid off from my job. You started med school, I started nursing school, and we both stopped doing dishes. We moved away from your family and came closer to mine. We traded endless sun, weekends at the beach and a constant state of poverty for rainy days,
mosquitoes and feeling like millionaires. You lost judo the way you liked it and I lost fire dance as I was just falling in love with it, but you gained a judo friend who loves it as much as you do and I reconnected with the arts activism that gives me a sense of purpose. We got my older sister back, we left your baby sister behind. You had your issue with
ProstaStrong and I had mine with Metamucil. We drove across the country in a state of
delirium, shared the discovery of shadow people, almost died trying to move in and then sat on the porch swing swilling cold beer and getting bored of unemployment. I built a dollhouse, you dissected a human body.
I guess you could safely say this year has been unlike any we've ever had.
A few weeks ago when you were about to burst from resentment for a state narrowed by its dominant whiteness, we escaped to the
cemetery to sit by the pond and preserve your sanity. In that small afternoon, while you held my hand so I could hang over the pond and get garbage out of the water, while we watched the fish have a feeding frenzy on bread, while that super fat ugly bird waddled over to our bench to get some attention, I felt like we were best friends, like we are appropriately balanced between helpful and hurtful, between together and apart, between supportive and disruptive. I felt like I did that day at
Shakertown, when the whole world fell away and it was just me and you and cartwheel practice.
Of course I love you. Of course I care about you. Of course I think you are deliciously handsome and sexy and smart and funny. But as we spend more and more time together, the thing I value most about you is your friendship.
Thank you for the last three years and for the one we're starting today. Happy anniversary, Mr. T.
Labels: dulywed, lovey stuff, wifing