Since we’ve been back
from our honeymoon, I’ve enjoyed catching up with friends and colleagues, and
the question is frequently posed, “How does it feel to be married?” The honest answer is, it doesn’t feel much
different than engaged life. There
was a part of me that was hoping to feel something magic and transcendent, but
I have the same love and affinity for this kind, patient man than I did before.
Maybe they didn’t
occur on the wedding day, but there were moments of transformation, situations
that boosted us onto the next echelon of intimacy and understanding. Helping him drink his juice as he came
out of anesthetic, how he sat with me on the worst night of my life and swore
he would be there for me and my inside-out heart, and all the nights that
followed where grief made me do and think and say things I didn’t mean, but he
kept his word.
I loved our wedding,
every minute of it, and by the time it came, it was easy. It was easy to put on a dress and say,
I do, I will, I take you as you are.
The sacred and difficult work came before, the work of existing together
in a studio apartment, the rhythm of meals, bills, and laundry, of mending
childhood scars, turning anger into grace and learning.
And there is so much
to learn. I often have an achy
back and shoulders from my desk job, and he is often willing to work out the
knots. One time he said he could
tell they were feeling worse, and I asked him how he knew.
“Sarah,” he said, “I
know every inch of your back.”
We map each other over
time; the safe paths, the weak planks in the bridge, and the rivers prone to
overflowing. Learning the
topography of these secret valleys is more binding than any certificate or gold
band, more intimate than sharing a name.
I was expecting our
wedding to be a revelation, and I suppose in some ways it was. It was a chance to share my love with a
person who has my back in the most literal way possible, a chance look into the
eyes of our family and show them the map we’ve drawn, the work
we’ve done, not one flesh but two people standing so close there is no space
between them.
