together {right through the messy middle}

“How did he ask you?” She leans forward, a piece of cantaloupe dangling on the end of her fork.  I watch the fruit drip honeyed juice on her plate, anointing terra cotta flowers. Her eyes are full moons.  She waits, as though caught on the cusp of a good story.

I follow her eyes, glancing from me to the doorway, and I realize that he means her dad, who has just reluctantly left us on the porch to get ready for work.  I can hear the water from the tap, the snap of his fork against his plate as he stows his breakfast dishes in the dishwasher.

“How did he ask me what?”

“You know, if you would marry him.”  Her voice is almost a whisper, her eyes glittering.

“Oh,” I smile, suddenly recognizing the thread of conversation, one she never really lays down.  We pause for days, sometimes weeks, but she always returns to this tableau she’s creating, the twisted, mystical roots of her own history, the foundation for a future.

“Was it after, you know, he moved the tree so you could walk by?”

I giggle into the mouth of my coffee mug, suddenly seeing a younger version of my husband, standing on the sidewalk, heaving a tree right up out of the ground for me, roots and all.  And so heroes are made.

“Well, he didn’t move the tree.  Just a branch that would have hit me in the face.  And I thought, ‘Wow.  Some men still are gentlemen.'”  I can still see him there, walking beside me.  I still remember feeling surprised that he stayed with me, that he walked me back after the football game when he could’ve gone his own way. Even then, I gasped at the seed of a promise, something lasting. “We were friends then, just the best of friends.  So no, not then,” I smile at her again, remembering.  “…But it was the beginning of something.”

“So, how?”  She’s still leaning forward, chewing the cantaloupe, acting like it’s all a secret carefully held between the two of us.

I weave the story again for her, slow, drawing out the colors. It’s good to remember the beginning, to rest a finger on the simple, solid foundation of a marriage–the strong need, the passionate wish, the determined resolve just to breathe together.

“He took me to this beautiful bridge, to this place where we could stand and look.  It was breathtaking.  Then he got down on one knee in front of me.  People who were there started watching us, taking our picture.  They knew what he was doing because of the way he looked up at me, holding my hand, talking softly.”

I pause, letting it marinate.

She stabs another cube of cantaloupe with her fork. “Well, what did he say?”

“He said he wanted to spend his life with me, that he loved me with his whole heart, that he’d do everything he possibly could to take care of me, that he would never leave my side.  The wind was blowing so hard.  I remember that.  I had on this shirt with a big collar, and the edges kept hitting me in the chin.”

“And you said…”

“I said yes, of course,” I say it laughing, “and your dad put this ring on my finger.  And some people clapped.”  I move my engagement ring back and forth with my thumb, watching it catch and split the morning light.

I can still see that bridge, the beautiful lines, all elegant strength rising over a blanket of trees.  I remember that Kevin had my ring hidden in the camera bag, that I had noticed him clutching it a little too tightly as we stood there looking.  It was the perfect place for our promise, looking over at this commitment of iron and sweat and hard work, standing before such an artful witness to the weight that can be held by the decision to forever join two into one.

“Did you know?”  She waits, eyes wide, barely chewing.

“Well, I knew we would get married, but I didn’t know he would ask me that day.”

“Were you happy?”

“Oh, I was so happy.  See, I knew with your dad.  I knew from our first date, from the first moment it felt like more than friendship.  I wrote it in my journal, because your Grandma had always said I’d know.  I never knew what that meant–you’ll know—but I knew.  I just knew.  So I wrote, this is the man I’m going to marry, right at the bottom of the page, in ink.”

“I can show you pictures,” I offer this last, watching her sweet face, all rosy with anticipation, all wrapped with love.

She puts down her fork quickly. “Would you?  Please?”

I can’t help but laugh, pushing back my chair.  Her enthusiasm touches me, the way she feels the fairy tale.  “We hardly recognize ourselves in the pictures, though,” I tell her, thinking of all the living and laughing and running and birthing and breathing and crying we’ve done together since the day that wind blew my hair all over my head and that collar smacked me in the chin, and I held up my hand, ringed with promises.

I lift the photo album in my hands, flipping though glossy pages, noticing the places at the edges where the adhesive turns golden brown.  I want her to know that romance can live forever, that life is hard but commitment means that together lasts. I want her to see that years later, it still feels like a fairy tale to love him.

He’s always been my number two, right after God, and I’ve been his. We have lived clinging to us, carving out our space.  The longer I live, the less I feel worthy to give advice.  I love awkward and stumbling and wishing to do better.  But this one thing I have, this thing our parents showed us about loving till death:

Love madly, love wholly, and live and love in this order—God, then husband and wife, these three woven together, intentionally choosing together.  And all else after.  The children came after together, so they come after together.  We try so hard to keep it in the order it began, in the order in which it will finish.

I sit the book on the table in front of her, watch her gather up the images like treasure, her fingers resting, pausing on top of us and our young love.

And I tell her another story.  This one:

You know, yesterday Dad and I went running together.

She nods, glancing up from the album.

We walked down this beautiful path, through this place where the leaves were brilliant green and the tree trunks twisted and knotted and reached in unusual directions.  And your dad said, “I love this, through here.  It looks like something right out of a fairy tale.”  And it did.  And for a minute or two, Dad and I just walked and looked and breathed.  Then we ran ten miles.  It was an easy run for Dad, but not so much for me.  I had rested my legs all week last week, and it was hot, and I was just having a hard time, especially in the last half of the run.  I felt bad because I knew I was slowing your dad down, that I was keeping him from running as fast as he could have.  I told him to go ahead, that it was okay, that I knew I wasn’t pacing as fast as we wanted to.  And do you know what he said?

“What?”  She smiles, knowing the way her father loves.

He said, “I haven’t done that in seventeen years.  Why would I start now?”

“I knew Daddy wouldn’t do it,” she says.  And so heroes are made.

See, in the beginning, love looks just like a fairy tale.  It’s beautiful, the stuff of dreams and happy stories.  But in the middle, living is messy.  It’s sweaty and long and sometimes it’s harder for one than the other.  Sometimes it’s painful and tiring and everything feels impossible.  And it can feel like loving just means burdening each other, holding each other back from something.  But forever love insists on together.  Together, even through the messy parts.  Your dad has always said that.

“What?”

“Whatever we face, we face it together.”

That’s why it’s still the fairy tale, your dad and me.  He stays beside me, no matter what.  He walks me home.

She smiles, a grin wide enough to stretch across the telling, and settles her twinkling eyes on the picture of us together, when we were just a seed.