I got married this past weekend. It was a last-minute decision after driving home from dinner downtown. The only guests were our children, who were in the car with Mike and me. We pulled over to a vacant lot for our ad hoc ceremony. Mike didn’t turn off the car; instead, he switched on his hazard lights and left the driver’s door open (maybe for a quick pre-wedding jitters escape?). It may have been the shortest wedding ever, except for one technicality: we were already married.
Which is why we decided to do it all over again.
This month marks our 25th year of marriage, a milestone that reassures and confounds me. There is beauty in longevity and shared history and I’m a big fan of both. I have always liked the knowing part of life. Confession: I sometimes read a movie spoiler before seeing a film. If you saw “Interstellar,” you’d understand. Being married is like a movie – full of drama, romance, comedy and an occasional cliffhanger. Except there are no spoilers revealing what will happen in advance.
In marriage there is also beauty in what you don’t know. If, many years ago, I’d have seen the Mangan Marriage Spoiler Trailer of challenges Mike and I would face, I would have put down my large bag of buttered popcorn, sprinted back to the ticket booth and demanded a showing of the Norah Ephron version of us. Not the one Francis Ford Coppola would have directed all dark and ominous with sad violin music playing in the background. Give me light and happy. With an upbeat soundtrack. And Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan.
But that’s not the real world or a real marriage. And here is the part that confounds me still after 25 years – the real parts of being together have become the very heart of what makes us, well, us. When we’ve been scared and worried and stressed. When reality hits us square in the eyes. We find a way. Goodness knows, I’m thankful for the happy times. Yet, when the weight of our world is sitting on top of my chest I find comfort in knowing that Mike is beside me to lighten the load.
We’ve had our share of hard. But we wake up every day doing what we have done from day one in our marriage. We find a way to get through the difficult and inhale the easy when it comes along. And we never, ever forget all that we have: two amazing children with a network of family and friends in a community of love like nothing I’ve ever seen anywhere else.
And we have each other.
For the past three months, our family has been in a required hibernation. We’ve either been at home or in a hospital. So dinner downtown was a rare treat, a perfect time for an anniversary celebration. On the drive home, Mike turned down a street to show the children the church where we were married.
A fire claimed First Baptist Church decades ago. All that is left is the vacant property. It took about a second for us to decide a wedding was in order. We hopped out of the car laughing like school kids. Griffin walked me down the grassy aisle as Gilly and Mike waited in the middle of the lot. Holding hands, Mike and I shared what it meant to be married to each other. As we kissed, I looked up and saw a shooting star in the chilly, star-lit sky. But it was actually an airplane.
Just like a Norah Ephron movie. Almost.