Today’s the last day this button is true.*Tomorrow, the beloved and I will have been together for 15 years. Fifteen!
I’ve had a very low output here at LD while I’ve been licking my wounds and refocussing my vision after the death of an old friend. There’s much I might like to say about the past fourteen years with my beloved, which has included far more strum und drang than I expected (I was planning on rainbows and unicorns, like all of us poor schmucks). Seems like life is, at best, equal parts sturm and rainbow. Some might even say you don’t get the rainbows without the sturms, but of course if they said that mid-sturm, they’d probably get smacked upside the head with a fish by some malcontent sturm-weatherer.
But anyhow. I may not muster much more than these brief notes. So I will say that I have felt struck with a bolt of phenomenal good fortune for my beloved to have (a) crossed my path, (b) asked me out (some notes on our courtship and commitment ceremony here) and (c) stuck it out this long and made a Baba of me. Next best thing that ever happened to me, after her asking me out.
I’m also fortunate to be among those 18,000 same-sex couples who remain as hitched today as we were a year ago, when I wrote:
A day can go by, probably more now, after the fullness of kids, when we don’t manage to hug or kiss one another. But we roll over and curl into one another’s bodies in our sleep, expecting to feel some part of the other’s ankle, waist, wrist, as much as we expect the feel of the sheets. Our love is no longer the spark in the air between us, it’s the air itself. We are an old married couple, about to get married.
And tomorrow, we’ll be an old married couple, celebrating our first legally married anniversary. Thinking about old friends who don’t have what we have, but should. Appreciating every moment (or trying to), knowing that there but for the grace of — ? — go either of us. There, eventually, one of us will go. And then, after a time, the other. Meanwhile we pay as close attention as we can.
Do I get another ten years of this? If I do, I promise/threaten right now I’ll be singing this duet with her (me: Tevye, her: Golde; natch).
*I picked up a coupla buttons like this at one of the election day trainings, and always thought that button campaign had a kind of poignant-pitiful supplicant tone to it. Like knowing how many years we’d been together would somehow make a difference. (We deserve our nuptial strife and discontent as much as the longevity, even if state protections may aid some aspects of the longevity part.) Â But did it help? Not enough. Least wise not this last time around.
I remember this line from your essay one year ago, and it is still one of my favorite, most romantic lines ever:
“Our love is no longer the spark in the air between us, it’s the air itself.”
Congratulations on 15 years of love and life together.
Heartfelt congratulations to you both – we are all fortunate for a), b) and c) above.
Thank you dear dear friends, both. Every relationship relies on the good friends surrounding it, and I know without you two ours would be far more anemic and limping. Plus, our kids would tire of our nighttime story-reading voices a lot sooner.
Much love from the middle of nowhere on your anniversary.
Your words and pictures always brighten my day.
Congratulations! I hope celebrating tomorrow can help you heal further from your loss.
Congratulations! As I like to say to Helen, time flies, so we must be having fun.
Oh happy day! Congratulations on 15 years. I am (selfishly) eternally grateful for a), b), and c). I love, love, love, the family you two have made, and I consider myself lucky to be able to call the beloved my sister, and you my sister-outlaw (does that still apply?).
XOXOXO
Rachel
Congratulations, congratulations on your 15 years. I love this post. I came across ‘My Lesbian Husband’ in the library last week and have been eating it hole.
Just as my own beloved and I are trying to settle into a temporary period of employment-induced living apart, I have finally worked out that I would really, really like to be writing your post about her in 12 years’ time.
And I wonder what took me so long?
Chris, Blazer, Dana and sister Rachel, thank you so much. Rachel, your delight at our family is only equalled by my delight with yours. I couldn’t have happened into a more welcoming tribe. (I’m still having a hard time letting go of the “out-law” designation, even though I’m now legally “in-law.” S’pose a person can’t really straddle both titles, and the straight-up “out-law” no longer is accurate, unless I pick up armed robbery as a pastime, which, strained family budget notwithstanding, I’m not likely to do anytime soon.)
Juliet: Ah! Linnea — the eponymous lesbian husband — is my shero! My butch intellectual role model, when I was a pup of a grad student and she was a — well, an older pup. Majorly inspirational of being looked up to. Barrie Jean Borich’s book is a staple in our library, and the title of that book (and its content) helped open my mind to the potential of reclaiming and expanding the meanings of familial roles and names. And thus lesbian fatherhood, and thus lesbian dad. What a splendid feast for you. I couldn’t be happier.
Let’s stay in touch long enough to check in again in a dozen years, eh?
Absolutely. 🙂
By which time I may have stopped missing the ‘w’ from the front of ‘whole’.
oops.
LD, Again what a beautiful post. I always feel awkward about saing “congratualtions” when it comes to relationships. Maybe it is because I don’t feel a complete connection with the word; I don’t have a feeling of what it really means. Or maybe it is because Congratulations feel like something you say when someone does something other than what comes naturally (sometimes to fight, sometimes to love, but always to be partners.) In any case, happy 15.
Many thanks, LaraCarina. And heck, I’ll take the congrats! We work at this thing, and even if the desire to do that work comes naturally (and is inspired by one another), it takes effort. Particularly now that we have these two wee little time sucks extraordinaire! (And of course I mean “time suck” in a good way.) So thank you. I will count myself extraordinarily lucky to get another 15, and maybe another 15 on top of that. I will be the happiest one in the room — and I’ll bet the oldest one — at our 50th.
Congratulations to you both! May there be many more years and rainbows. Skip the unicorns because, really, they’re kinda freaky anyway.