June! It's wedding season. How does the song go? Another bride, another groom...and for us older folks, it's also wedding anniversary season. And I'm proud to say I'm celebrating seventeen years of wedded bliss this week myself. That's like fifty years in Hollywood marriage time. I'm one of the lucky ones: I married my best friend. But don't get me wrong. The Hubs and I haven't made it this far on just luck. Oh, no. Staying married involves skill, creativity, and talent. A wiliness, if you will.
Oh, yes. There's a collection of marriage best practices Hubs performs for me to demonstrate his fidelity. And on this, the anniversary of my throwing my lot in with his, I thought I'd share with you some of the best of the bag of tricks that makes him so good at it. And as a bit of a anniversary gift to him, that guy from the altar. He'd like this better than my spending money anyway. He didn't step on my eight foot wedding gown train way back then, after all, or smoosh cake in my face at the reception, and on the whole he's been doing it right since.
Case in point: Hubs brings me coffee bedside every morning. If you lived with me, you would probably know he does it out of self-protection, but I'm telling you, I can barely form a complete thought for the first hour after I get up. To say I am not a morning person is to say Lindsay Lohan has a few legal stressors. I'm not proud of it. They told me I would like mornings when I got older. But I seem destined, nay, cursed to a circadian rhythm that has me just getting started at 10 p.m. and a corpse before 10 a.m.
Every morning, despite my getting more sleep than he does, Hubs comes and pokes that cup at me to help make me coherent. I never asked him. But he's kept my morning coffee needs met for over a decade. He makes it, he prepares it. He knows my creamer/coffee ratio perfectly. He's a prince, I say. A PRINCE. Or at least interested in not getting his eyebrows scorched off from my charming morning personality.
He sits through soap operas. He, and he deserves a Nobel for this alone, will accompany our children to other children's birthday parties. Because he knows that Chuck E. Cheese is a canto of hell for me. He, praise sweet baby Jesus, will clean up the bathroom of two boys aged eight and ten who, shall we say, are not exactly expert aims. It smells like the New York City Subway in there. But I digress. Hubs does it because he knows I prefer the considerably less noxious job of folding the laundry that's surely enough for a small city-state.
He kills the bugs. He gets rid of the religious door to door people. He opens, stereotypically I know, the stuck jars. He's the IT department. He drops the dogs off at the kennel when we travel because I cry every time. He holds his tongue about how much he hates me and the golden retriever spooning on the couch. And although he clearly could not be more baffled about why in the world I require the number of shoes and skin products I do, you'll never hear him complain about it or require an explanation.
What does it all mean? What do all these small and yet significant practices have in common? It's all Hubs having my best interest at heart. I know if there's one pork chop left, he's going to offer it to me. And that's what it's all about. No, no, not getting the last serving at dinner. It's how in good marriages, partners work together as helpmates. That in the end, you better be good friends. And a good friend has your best interest at heart.
So happy anniversary, Hubs. Thanks for the greatest anniversary gift: being my best friend and attempting to always put me first. And happy anniversary to you too if you were married in June. I hope you're with your best friend. May you have a spouse or partner who loves you enough to keep you from killing anyone before you're fully awake as well. Because preventing me from committing a splattery crime before eight in the morning? Now, that's true love.
