Three years

On February 11, 2006, my parents threw a really big party. About a half hour into the festivities, Josh and I put rings on each others' fingers and promised to be true.
Everything was perfect, truly. Our friend Gloria married us on a sunny afternoon in Islamorada, Florida, on a dock jutting out into the bay. My mother and her friends decorated their friend Doe's yard with paper lanterns, palm fronds, hurricane lanterns, and bougainvillea blossoms pilfered from condos in the area. Dave Feder provided acoustic guitar for the ceremony, and a rock band for the reception. Even the cake was perfect - locally and masterfully made layers of yellow and key lime cake, raspberry buttercream, and key lime buttercream around the outside. The topper was an Eiffel Tower statue that I bought when Josh and I met eight years before, and spent a day lost in Paris.
Even the Port-a-Potty was beautiful - no, really!

What an incredible day. I still look over the pictures every couple of months and remember a million little details.

Three years into this marriage, I think it's safe to say that I am not where I thought I would be. Neither is my husband, who is currently zipping around the Pacific somewhere, trying to keep his sea legs under him. And yet here we are, in love with each other and trying to hang on to our crazy Japanese life. We have faced a lot of challenges we never expected to see, from awful apartments and broken bones to a struggle with miscarriage and an attacker in New York City. And then there's the moving to Japan. Now here I am, sitting in my parents' living room in South Carolina while Josh is a real sailor on a real ship, heading to an undisclosed location.
Strange that all of this began in Germany, isn't it? Josh and I met in July 1998 on the Sound of America European tour. Over the few weeks we spent together that summer, we fell in sixteen-year-old love. There was hand holding, there were kisses, there were letters and emails and long-distance calls back when those cost money.

Seven years later Josh joined the Navy and Inez Tenenbaum lost her bid for the Senate, so the two of us ended up in New England (obviously). On February 11, 2005 (and I'll pause so you can scroll up and confirm that that is one year to the day before our wedding) I drove to the Navy base in Newport to visit Josh, and then called my parents to tell them I was in love.


And I still am, and so is he. I hate spending this day so far apart from my husband, the other half of my heart. He is the provider, the stabilizing force, and often the comic relief in our relationship. Somehow this mouthy middle child from Maine and that headstrong only child from Sequim are a perfect match.

Except for all that mileage. I suppose there's poetry in the fact that ten years after our first unwanted separation, we're thousands of miles apart and madly in love yet again. But you know what I think about it?

Fuck the poetry. I can't wait to be in my husband's arms again.

Happy anniversary, babe.