xtcian

inchworm, measuring the marigold

8/9/05

Two years ago this second, Tessa and I were trying to eat creamed corn out of a plastic vat while sitting in a hot tub. We had just gotten married a few hours before, had the reception of a lifetime, and now we were at our B&B eating the dinner that was packed by the catering staff.

Bizarrely, the caterers didn't really know what we meant by "pack us a late-night picnic for after the party," so they sent us tubs of food without any silverware, and no drinks. The B&B was shut down for the night, so we were on our own: we filled thirty tiny Dixie cups full of water, got in the hot tub, and just plunged our hands into the food, getting it everywhere. When I think of my wedding, I'll think of many incredible things, but one of them will be the swirls of corn cascading through the hot tub jets.

Now we've been in California a while, and I'm acutely missing all the friends and family we had in our barn two years ago tonight, but Tessa and I have each other, and she takes the pangs out of any longing. She has only gotten more beautiful, more funny, and more interesting with age.

Brain-dead American comic strips like They'll Do It Every Time and The Lockhorns have made 125 years of jokes about forgetting your anniversary, and, I guess, having a wife that runs after you with a rolling pin, but I'm a big fan of anniversaries. The first year was apparently "paper," and this year is "cotton," and I've had things worked out for both.

Before we had Lucy, we were worried that our entire lives would be eaten up by talking about... um, y'know, Lucy. We made an agreement sometime in March that when the baby was born, we would reserve an hour at night for brat-free discussion (we already had the rule "no talking about work-related shit during the half-hour before sleep" anyway). It turns out that life is much more fluid than our best intentions, and we either obsess over Lucy or we don't.

We have two elements to our marriage that keep us really happy: we don't let anything fester into resentment, and we have remained extremely pliable. In other words, never go to bed mad, and don't get too caught up on where your bed happens to be that night.

I love being married to this chick, man. She's stunning in so many ways. Two years have sped by in some respects, but they've also felt like warm oceans of time. And even though it may seem a little self-involved, I picked some random pictures of us to put on the blog today. After all, this will someday be little more than a public scrapbook for my daughter, and because my parents never really loved each other, I know how important it is to show her two people who do. Quite terribly, in fact.

Posted by Ian Williams at August 9, 2005 11:53 PM