7/25/2018- Nice to Meet You, Husband

I made it! I officially survived a second summer of Mark working away from home. He showed up last Wednesday, a bit unexpectedly, having been moved to the Plant City area for work for the final two weeks. He slipped right back into our bed and right back into our lives without much fanfare. Right back to work the next day.

Damn. That's not how I wanted it to go.

“Marriage is those two thousand indistinguishable conversations, chatted over two thousand indistinguishable breakfasts, where intimacy turns like a slow wheel. How do you measure the worth of becoming that familiar to somebody – so utterly well known and so thoroughly ever-present that you become an almost invisible necessity, like air?” -Elizabeth Gilbert

Mark and I were never supposed to get married. We said so on our first date. I was divorced and cynical and he was an amazing bachelor. Clearly, that didn't work out as planned, and we sealed the deal with two kids just to make it all good and messy. I can't imagine life without him. He's like Oxygen to my soul. But none of this is anything like you dream about when you are thinking about getting married- especially the first time. So many of the days roll through like the day before and if you blink, weeks can roll by in a whirl of work and dinners and rushing and breakfasts and diapers and discipline. Sometimes, you can't help but to wonder if there's still magic there.

There is.

The second he walked through the door, I took my first deep breath in weeks. We haven't shared a glass of wine, a meal, or even a conversation yet and he's been home 5 days. The magic is just a shared laugh over a silly toddler or an eye roll across some dramatic tears. It's another set of hands getting dirty right next to mine. I never understood that marriage is just a slow, constant churning of day to day. So constant and so steady that you can forget it's there filling your lungs with life. That's the real magic.