Wrangler Dani

Today Adam and I have been married for nine years. I’m notorious for never knowing how long we’ve been together, but for some reason nine is hitting me this year. It’s not the typical landmark year, not 5 or 10 and certainly not 25 or 50.

Maybe that’s why it feels momentous, because isn’t that how the big things happen? Marriages are built and forged in year three and year seven-and-a-half and in the middle of the night in year nine, at least in my experience.

I met him when I was not particularly proud of myself. I was squatting at my Grandma’s house, eating Cheezits for every meal and working a soul-sucking desk job with some real characters (characters = 60-year-old women chasing 35-year-old men and complaining about botched boob jobs) at the LA Times. What was supposed to be an exciting “here’s the rest of your life” period instead became a “is this really the rest of my life?” period. Wait a minute, I was an honors student, a passionate journalist, what was I doing? Wasn’t I guaranteed a great job and a cute apartment and the ability to apply mascara?

And then Adam. To say that my exhausting and infuriating job didn’t matter anymore is to be a forgetful old lady, but it sure mattered less. I fell hard for this Texan and even when I tried to shake him I secretly hoped he was the kind who couldn’t be shook – which is one of the truest things about him, more than 10 years later.

I often feel shaky, scared of motherhood, scared of the future, shakily reaching out and then pulling back in. But I married up, I married reliable, unshakeable, stalwart. When I met him I thought it was sweet that he held my hand in the car – now I find it essential. I thought it was cute that he never gave up, that he saw hard work and kindness as essential values, that he took responsibility for others – now I don’t know how I ever saw those qualities as anything less than world-changing. In year nine the truest things shine through – our failures and faults as well as our beautiful, glimmering pieces, the slices of true kindness or care that is so often buried under habit or ritual.

Year nine is no big deal, except that I’ve seen marriages fail now, sometime in year four, year eight, year eleven. It seems to make sense that if marriages are drowned in no-big-deal years, they’re saved, revived, or held tight in no-big-deal years too. So here’s to no-big-deal. Here’s to nine years. Here’s to growing up and growing our family and facing the future, holding hands.