Briefcase on the Kitchen Table

You would think that a one-year-married post on a blog called The Married Lady would be easy. You know, reminisce about the highlights of the year, the ups and downs, all I’ve learned, yah-de-yah-de-yah. Don’t get me wrong, there has been plenty of that. But to be honest, I am not sure how much any of that would mean. First, while I acknowledge I have learned a lot about both myself and my husband in one year’s time, I very much doubt it will compare to all I will learn in the future. Additionally, other than the normal growing pains of combining holidays, figuring out toilet paper preferences, and dealing with a stolen car, I am sure that at some point in our married life Ave and I will have to see each other through some real downs, like the loss of a loved one, as we had to in our dating lives. And most of all, while the highlights were fun, I truly hope we haven’t even begun to feel the true peak moments of our life together.

As Avery and I spend this anniversary sitting on the beach, eating cake, dancing, and all of the other good anniversary things, I think the thing we will be marveling at the most is how quickly a year goes. We will be trying to grab a few days of just focusing on one another before we get thrust back into real life.

I was thinking the other day about all of my favorite Disney movies growing up. I realized that all of them show the romance, then the wedding, and then end with the prince and princess riding off into the sunset on what us spectators assumed was some endless lifelong honeymoon. My lesson after one year? The thing that makes marriage so great, that makes finding a partner I love and trust so important, is not the honeymoon or the anniversary vacations, it is the day-in-and-day-out of life. The movies may not show what happens when Cinderella and her Prince pull back into the castle driveway with honeymoon souvenirs and jobs to show up to on Monday, but those things do exist and are in fact what most of life is made of. While that stuff is not nearly as exciting or glamorous, it is most certainly the best.