We walked around our college campus a couple weeks ago, kids and all. As expected, it brought back a lot of memories. But besides reminiscing about all of the late nights in the design building and the walks across campus and the Campaniling, all I could do was look around at the students as they passed and exclaim, “They don’t know ANYTHING! They don’t know ANYTHING about ANYTHING! WE didn’t know ANYTHING!”
Apologies college students. I know that’s not exactly true. But seven years later and it sort of feels like it.
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The kids were packed off this weekend, to give us peace and quiet and time to celebrate. We bumped into a groom (of course we did) as we walked around the Cathedral downtown, just a half-hour ahead of his own wedding. He was in the back as we were about to leave, all suited up, boutonniere in place, on a picture-perfect beautiful fall day just like our own. Tyson figured out who he was first, before I did. “You’re the groom?” I blurted out, “Congratulations!!!” (I know that three exclamation points are not editorially correct here, but had you been there, you would have heard those three exclamation points.) “We’ll be celebrating seven years in two days. Before you know it, it will be seven years later and you’ll have a mortgage and three kids!”
Yeesh. Fortunately, I didn’t scare the poor guy. He flashed a grin and said, “Great! That’s what I’m hoping for!” So he’ll be all right. Even though he looked about twelve.
I had the grace to not blurt out everything I wanted to say. Mostly I was thinking about how that handsome groom ALSO DIDN’T KNOW ANYTHING. Neither did his bride. Not a thing. They had absolutely no freaking idea, as they were minutes away from walking down the aisle, what on Earth they were getting themselves into.
Of course, it’s not their fault. We didn’t, either.
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Seven years in and we’re actually not sick of each other. No itch here. We still enjoy each other’s company, can have conversations that last for hours (or would if we didn't look at the clock and do the math to calculate how much sleep we have a chance of getting in before the kids wake up), and look forward to ditching the kids with Nana and Papa to grab 30+ uninterrupted hours of meals, sleep, and discussion to celebrate ourselves.
Seven years seems like both an impossibility and an eternity. In some ways that number doesn’t even seem possible - are we actually even old enough to have been married that long? Then again, so much has happened since October 2nd, 2010 that I must be doing the math wrong. Surely that many life events can't possibly have been packed into such a short amount of time.
We’ve spent the past seven years growing up together. Thinking of us as actual "grown-ups" still seems weird, though I suppose we've earned the title given all the kids and the minivan and the 30+ years we each possess and the fact that we spent a good chunk of our child-free time this weekend cleaning out the garage and enjoying it. (I’m still cool, I swear.) We spent the entirety of our 20s together, most of it married, as we went from living with roommates in college apartments to living in just-slightly nicer apartments together and then into a real, actual, bona fide house.
Speaking of moving up in the world: remember our first dining set? It was a folding table and chairs. We graduated to a "some assembly required" model of dubious construction from Target, and one of the most thrilling days of my life was last summer, when a truck from a real, live, actual furniture store delivered our current dining table to our house - chairs, bench, and all - fully put together, carried by other people that we could actually afford to pay to place it exactly where I wanted it set up, ready to go. Magic!
We've learned how to cook (me), how to precisely load the dishwasher (you), and how to raise babies (both still learning).
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Not only are we celebrating seven years of marriage today, but this May marked a decade since we met and (one hot second later) started dating. Ten years together. How on Earth?
(Oh, and I *could* have bought you a card but instead I just put together the 700+ words above AND saved us $4.99 and it's definitely not like I totally forgot or anything. Happy Anniversary!)
