Twenty Years

On this day, 20 years ago, a 22-year-old me and a 23-year-old James, vowed "to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, until death do us part."

What an insanely naive and optimistic thing to do at those ages, and yet, here we are, having done - and still doing - exactly all those things.

(Side note: I realized one second before this moment that James and I had never talked about the kiss. I assumed he'd keep in mind we were in my childhood church, mere feet away from my pastor, and with all of our family looking on. He did not.)

I don't know why twenty years seems like such a milestone this year, but it does. Twenty seems so solid. It's almost longer than we were alive before we got married. We started dating at 18 and 19 so we've been together longer than we ever existed apart.

I've watched marriages of friends and colleageus survive, thrive, wither, and fail, and sometimes interesting combinations of all four. I don't know what the through line is, but I know a good part of it is luck. Luck that the man I met when he was 19 has evolved into the man he is today at 43. That he is truly my partner, that we compromise, that we have always split home and child duties based on the understanding that for this to work we both have to be giving 100% all the time. That when one has more to give, they give it, because it usually means the other has less. We're partners, in every single sense of the word, and I still jump him in the pantry when the door is closed and the kids are busy.

Decades ago I read a line in a romance book that marriage is "an adventure and a comfort" and that feels as true as anything else I've read about it. It's an adventure- I love how much I still love spending time with James, how much we are still learning together, how I can be brave and bold in my life knowing he's behind me, and it's a comfort- coming home is my favorite thing in the world and home is him on the couch beside me or snuggled under the covers in bed. Marriage is choice and work and patience and faith and actively finding reasons to be in love, to feel lucky, as much as possible.

Even in our hardest years of grad school and young children and job stress and no sleeping, I always maintained that it was life that was hard, marriage was easy. Twenty years later I still think that's true, though I'll note that it's only been in the quiet moments of our lives that our marriage has ever felt shaky or less secure. Maybe because there's time to see the cracks, to either dwell on them or fix them. I'm glad we've always managed the latter.

My sister got married jsut before our 10th anniversary and I remember thinking that I should probably include some kind of advice in my maid of honor speech. But as I said then, and I think is even more true now, every marriage is as unique as the two individuals who create it. I have a lot of advice and thoughts on being married to James Fike. I know nothing- and I think would be quite bad at- being married to anyone else. My only general advice was "going to bed mad is sometimes the very best thing you can do- very little will be made better when you're both exhausted and little things seem so much bigger after 10 pm. If it's truly something that needs to be dealt with, it will still exist in the morning and you'll both be better able to discuss it" and "remember how lucky you feel today to have each other; feeling deeply and truly lucky to have the husband I do--and knowing and seeing James feel the same about me--is sometimes the perspective we both need when we're focusing small."

In a fit of nostalgia, I found my wedding box and binder and dug through them over the weekend. We were officially engaged for a very short amount of time (2 months? and I spent 6 weeks of it gallivanting through Europe with a group of UT graduates) and I planned the entirety of the wedding before James actually proposed (I knew he was going to and I was not going to be planning a wedding from Chicago during my 1L year) on a very tight budget, but our wedding day was the happiest, most fun, seriously best day of my whole life. We didn't do personal vows, so we decided we'd give each other personal toasts at the reception. James wing'd his (to great success) but of course mine was written, edited, and printed out on paper long beforehand. I found that paper in my wedding binder and copied the text below. Other than laughing at my 22-year-old self making grand statements like "my whole life," it remains so very true.

"My whole life I have watched the joy my parents have shared together in their marriage; and for as long as I can remember I had this fear that I wouldn't find that someone who made my life complete- the one I would look forward to coming home to, the one who would put a smile on my face just by thinking of him twenty and fifty years later. And then my first weekend in Austin my freshman year, I found him. I didn't know it immediately when I met you- you had drunk about 5 too many Jack & Cokes and one of the first things you did for me was hand me a drink 5 seconds before a cop came by and kicked us both out of the club for underage drinking. I think I started to fall for you when, even in your state of total intoxication, you insisted on holding the door open for me to leave the club. In the end, it was the Jack Daniels in you that asked for my number, and I'll always owe the whiskey for that one.

I fell in love with you without knowing it at first- you were so polite, so talkative, and so fun to be with... when I found out later that you had driven the 45 minutes out to the restaurant where we had our first date earlier that day just to make sure you knew the right way, I fell in love with you a little more. That night, when I had to ask you to kiss me, I fell a little more. I knew I was marrying you by the time I went home for Thanksgiving 3 months after meeting you. Over the past 4 years and 4 days, I have fallen more in love with you than I ever imagined possible. I love that you make me laugh when all I want to do is be mad at you; I love that you are the first person I want to call when something good happens; and I love that you are the first person I want to call when something bad has happened.

It's been an amazing four years - we are so different from the people we were the night we met, but we have evolved together, loving each other through it all. You are my best friend, greatest challenge, and the love of my life. I love you James."

Our South Africa trip was part of our big gift to one another, and the family we've built, to honor the occasion, but we couldn't resist a little something just for us closer to the actual date. We realized that we now have an 18-year-old who can drive and take care of the house and girls for a night (and who is such an introvert the thought of throwing a party makes him want to bar our doors to all outsiders, plus his sisters would tattle immediately), and I have a million hotel points from work travel that we never use because we rarely stay in hotels for family travel. One quick search later and I found I could get us a night at the Dallas Ritz for free! We booked it immediately, James added a couples' massage, and we made dinner reservations for our favorite restaurant within the zone of the hotel's courtesy car.

It was so, so great.

I wore a dress I bought with my sister at the Farm Rio sample sale in Dallas and did my makeup from a Youtube video.

The massages were great. The meal was wonderful. The hotel room was better.

We realized Sunday morning that Cora had texted us goodnight at 10:01 pm and we were both already fast asleep.

We walked to brunch Sunday morning, enjoyed a little more time in our room, and were home by noon.

Here's to twenty years. To film photography and a small selection of pictures I had to scan individually at Walgreens when I received them in 2005. To the our wedding being best dang party I've ever been to. To a love that is passion and comfort and ever-evolving.

And to so many more.