Twelve years ago, at 2:00 in the afternoon, I walked down a long aisle in a church towards TJ. I had a veil on my head and flowers in my hands, and I giggled. A lot.
During the homily, like during all Catholic wedding homilies I believe, the priest spoke at length about marriage and about how real marriage isn’t like what we see from Hollywood. It’s not glitz and glamour and endless romance.
I looked at TJ, and with all the wisdom of our twenty-something years, we nodded knowingly at each other. “Yes,” we thought. “We are more wise than to believe the lies Hollywood tells us.”
I laugh thinking back to those moments. Those moments when we thought we knew it all. And I laugh at how I both believed and didn’t believe the priest. I understood that marriage wasn’t like the movies, but at that young, naive point in time, I thought that meant that marriage wasn’t as good as in the movies. And I thought we could overcome that.
Now I realize that I had it just as backwards as Hollywood did. No, it’s not like the movies. But yes, it is better.
Back then I didn’t exactly know what it meant to be married. I knew I loved that man. I knew I wanted to spend my life with him. I knew he was a part of me and I of him. But I hadn’t the slightest notion of what being married was.
Now I know a bit more.
I know that being married is waking up every morning to the same person and almost always being glad they are there.
It means knowing that no matter what happens to you or between you or because of you or for you that you will end the day besides that same person. And no matter the feelings, warm and cozy or annoyed or hostile, you will still pray that you will fall asleep in this manner for the rest of your life. In fact, it’s more on those annoyed and hostile days that you say those prayers because you see that even through anger or frustration, he’s still worth it. It’s easy to take the good days for granted. But the bad ones remind you of why it’s worth fighting for.
Marriage is about Sunday mornings with three little kids. It’s about trying to negotiate an arrangement whereby everyone can be showered and clothed in a somewhat appropriate manner and still make it to Mass before the priest starts the homily. It’s about wrangling kids. The kids you made together. It’s about getting frustrated when you think of what he could have done differently to make the morning easier. And then it’s about taking the next 45 minutes of Mass realizing that it’s much more important to focus on what you could have done differently rather than him.
It’s about being imperfect. Absolutely and irrevocably imperfect. And it’s about knowing that he will always love you despite and sometimes even for those flaws. It’s about not getting dressed up every time you see him because you have both realized that comfort and ease is more important than pretense and show. And it’s about looking at him and seeing underneath the stubble (or full on beard) and uncombed hair and seeing the face you fell in love with all those years ago.
I remember my grandma telling me a story once. She said that when she was first married to my grandfather, she would wake up a little bit before him and run into the bathroom to “put on her face” and comb her hair. She would work hard to cook him wonderful meals because her father had told her that a pilot needed a content stomach so he could properly do his job.
And then I think back to the grandparents I knew. I remember sleeping over at their house and the frozen pizza we ate for dinner. I remember the mornings when they would both come down in robes, and my grandma’s hair would be in curlers.
The two pictures are different. The one of the newlyweds and the couple seasoned by decades upon decades of marriage.
And I realize that over those years, they learned those lessons to.
Marriage isn’t what Hollywood portrays it. It’s exciting. But not always. It’s romantic. But more often it’s not. There are flowers and fancy dinners and the whispering of sweet nothings.
But those are the things I could do without.
The marriage that matters to me is the one that creates a home for us and our daughters. It’s the security and peace that comes from knowing that despite the storms and trials of life, I will always have him by my side until death whisks one of us away.
It’s the routines and the monotony and the everyday mundane that, for me at least, create the miracle of marriage.
Because marriage isn’t about the beginning. And it’s not about the grand days. It’s about all those other days. The days that require something of us. The days that stretch us. The days that teach us and mold us and remind us that through it all, no matter what the circumstance, life will always be better with him in it.
Even when he leaves his dirty socks on the floor.