Week 3: Love Story

Write about a most adorable and happily married couple. Just that. No twist. No dark secrets. Just a couple still in love with each other after more than ten years together.

Ten years? It's a blink and a marathon at the same time. I forget things now. The first kiss (no clue), the first date (somewhere in Downtown Minneapolis), the first fight (I'm sure about his snoring). The firsts get muddled in with the seconds and the thirds, and suddenly you've experienced infinite kisses and dates and fights, and you're still together. Somehow. 

It's impossible and crazy easy at the same time. The whole "you have to work at it everyday" phrase is no joke. You've chosen this person, and they've chosen you, and you need to figure it out together or else everything will fall apart. 

I look over at him as he's sleeping, the stripes of light cutting through the blinds creating a jail  of sunlight on the bed. His thin lashes sit on his cheeks, longer than any girl's I've ever met, and tiny cracks spider out from the corners of his eyes: laugh lines. His once thick head of hair is thinning; a definite part of life that I don't blink twice at. His left arm is hanging from the bed and if I were like our daughter, I would be afraid a monster would slither out from under the bed and nibble on his fingertips, but I'm not her and there is nothing but dust under this bed. 

Our daughter. She lays in between us now, almost too old to snuggle with her parents on a Sunday morning. But late last night she had a tummy ache, and so I let her climb in here after drinking a glass of water and cuddle with me. She's face down, her hair a rat's nest, arms wrapped around her father's right arm, hugging it to her as she drools on it. 

I realized I had made the best decision in my life by marrying him on her first birthday. I had broken my foot the month prior, and was really hurting. Taking care of a hyper infant while being unable to walk easily and quickly made me irritable with my husband for almost three weeks. Her first birthday was coming up, and I wanted to do something special. 

"She's one," he replied, huffing out a breath. "She won't remember anything." 

My foot was throbbing, a slow bump-bump as it swelled in my cast, irritated from being used. I narrowed my eyes. 

"Just because she won't remember it doesn't mean we shouldn't celebrate it. She's not a dog!" 

"That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying we shouldn't have a party and make people drive across town for it."

"Oh, asking our family to come for our only daughter's first birthday would be too much?" I said through gritted teeth. I could feel my face grow red as the anger built. 

"You're twisting my words, I can't talk to you right now," he growled, and turned around and walked out of the room. I tried to get up to hobble after him, but I sighed and sat back down. Fine, let him storm off with his two able feet. See if I care. 

I feel asleep on the couch, sitting up, arms crossed. A soft shake woke me up. The living room was dark, the light from the street lamps slightly illuminating my husband in front of me. He sighed. 

"Come to bed."

"No," I replied stubbornly, still half asleep. 

"Come on, stop it. You can't be mad at me."

"Yes I can."

He sighed, and sat down next to me, reaching over and rubbed my leg. "No you can't. Because reasons."

I laughed, one short bark. "Because reasons?"

"Yeah," he sighed again, his pre-morning breath wafting over to me. "The reason why I don't want you to have a party. . ." He paused again. He always had to collect his thoughts before saying something, even now. I imagine words tumbling up in his head, fast as a tornado, and he's down by his medulla trying to jump up and grab them, one by one, stuffing them in a messenger bag at his side, ready to transport to his mouth. He started again. "Because I want to spend the day with you and our daughter alone. I want to recreate her birthday. Remember? When she came out and it was just you me, and her in the hospital? It was so quiet and peaceful. I want that again." 

I opened my mouth, then closed it again. I couldn't argue with that. Because that day? That moment? Was everything to me, the clearest memory of my adult life. 

And that was the day I realized he was the right one for me. The partner that I needed to help raise my children, the stone foundation to my castle, the woodpecker to my oak tree. Loving someone more than yourself never gets easy, but it gets easier with time. It's a habit, like folding your jeans a certain way or parking your car in the same spot. Worn in and comfortable, you know the boundaries and expectations. 

I still remember the soft morning light, just like now, streaming into the windows through the thin metal crosses in the hospital window. I remember the soft baby skin and smell, the way her hair felt beneath my lips as I kissed her head, again and again. I remember the way he smiled at me, like we had climbed Mount Everest together, wind blown and tired at the peak, adrenaline coursing through our oxygen deprived veins and wanting to howl, yell, scream, in happiness. He was it. He was the one. 

Ten years? It's a blink and a marathon at the same time.