the first year.

they say a lot about your first year of marriage.

you know who.

“THEY”.  the ubiquitous “they”, the experts all around you chiming in.

how tough it is.

how great it is.

how much you struggle to communicate (or, more simply, fight).

how easy it is because you are still in that “honeymoon phase” (side note: phrases talking about phases make me…hurl.  and wish that i could find a word that rhymes with “phases” that means “vomit”.)

the challenges unique to the first year of marriage: adjusting homes, habits, expectations, disappointments.

how important communication is.

how important communication is.

how important communication is.

are you sensing a pattern of advice here?

i’d have to say, after a year of this marriage thing, that on this multiple choice question about what marriage is like, i’d select answer (E).   All of the Above.

it’s all of these things, and then none of these things, because things feel palpably different with us now than it did a year ago and we feel as though it’s been a fairly unsteady year externally (choosing entirely diverging career paths from what one has intended for years can throw you (and the person tasked with unfurrowing your brow and peeling you off the bathroom floor) for a little loop.)

things are different.

and good.

and challenging.

and still exciting at times.

mundane at times.

all of the above.

and i do still like him on idle tuesdays, when it’s hot and i’m bored around 3pm and the dished have piled up and we can’t think of anything good to do.

that was important to me.

liking him on idle tuesdays.

but, i think the really REAL things in life, the priceless things, the sure things that become really just a part of our identity…they are the most difficult to describe in words.

we just don’t have the language to contain it.

(it’s partly how i know i’m so amazed by something; the word amazement doesn’t even cross my mind — i’m quite speechless.)

this is how it is with the boy, on our first anniversary.

so, there’ll be more wedding anniversary-related fun this week for you to read about, but i leave you with this for now:

this is an email i wrote to the boy exactly 3 years to the day before our wedding.  it’s as relevant now as it’s ever been, a wonderment about the exciting adventure before us:

What’ll we do with ourselves this afternoon?  And the day after that, and the next thirty years?”

— F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

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we still don’t know the answer to that, but i am quite certain of the person who’ll be beside me.

(images from our wonderful photographers: 1, 2, 3)