Every week before I write out our grocery list, I try to jot down dinner plans for each day of the week. After working on this week’s list, I’d left it on the counter. When I came back to it later I noticed someone had made amendment to the plan.
On Thursday, next to where I’d scrawled the word “leftovers,” Brad had drawn a little star and added the word, “special.”
As in, we should have something “special.”
Because it was a special day. Our anniversary, in fact.
And I let out a cringy giggle when I realized my oversight.
“I noticed you edited the grocery list,” I mentioned to Brad later. “Are you saying you want something more special than leftovers to eat on our anniversary?”
In my defense Thursday nights are the bananas night in our household- Lily has soccer, Jovie has gymnastics, the baby adheres to a strict schedule of wandering back and forth in the community center hallways and occasionally eating Goldfish crackers off the floor.
It’s not typically a night I plan special dinners, because sanity! And survival!
“I figured I’d make something for the two of us after the kids went to bed,” Brad said.
Because thoughtfulness! And romance!
And that’s been my sweet husband since day one. Always making sure to prioritize the us-ness of our family. The founding members. The, Brusan of the Jennings clan. (Get it, Brusan? Brad+Susan=Brusan. Like you’re cruisin’ for a Brusan? Or, who enjoys snoozin’? Answer: Brusan. Whose love for each other is still oozin’? Answer again: Brusan. I’ll stop now. Early on, we vetoed the alternative of our celebrity couple nickname (Susan+Brad=Sad) for reasons we feel are obvious.)
Ten years ago for our first anniversary, Brad planned a trip to Key West. It was glorious. I’d never been to Florida. We flew into Miami and then drove down through the Keys on Route 1. I marveled at the pelicans flying right beside us, the palm trees and the pastel-colored houses. We took advantage of happy hour and sleeping in and wandering art galleries and the Hemingway House and and lounging on beaches and Sunset Fest and the odd little man with his circus cats.
We held hands and made plans for our life together and were silly and cuddly and no doubt, extremely shmoopy.
All this for one year of marriage. One year!
Looking back, I feel like we probably hadn’t quite “earned” that trip to Key West. I mean, for one, we hadn’t survived one year of marriage with children. We had the dog and two cats, sure. But we had yet to engage in extended negotiations over how many bites of green beans had to be eaten before cookie, or had to clean a carpet covered in diaper cream, or had to listen to the “Jake and the Neverland Pirates” soundtrack on a loop for days. We didn’t have to take care of multiple children with stomach viruses while also suffering from stomach viruses. The drive to Grandma and Grandpa’s (or as we called them back then, “Mom and Dad”) lasted just two hours and nobody asked, “Are we there yet?” or experienced emergency bathroom situations or demanded snacks or asked, “Are we there yet?” again. And again. And again. Now that trip takes five hours, half of which I spend in the middle of the van with a 40-pound anxiety-ridden dog on my lap while attempting to entertain an inconsolable toddler by singing “Wheels on the Bus” over and over and over again.
We hadn’t experienced days when we barely talked to each other while running man-on-man coverage of various daughters. Or been annoyed with each other for watching the sports instead of watching the baby or for failing to vacuum up months’ worth of crumbs that had accumulated in the carseat. For being too lenient or too stern. For being so sentimental about old art projects and not careful enough about coasters on the coffee table. For not being affectionate enough for for wanting more intimacy. For all of the needling little things that chip away at the house we began building together at “I do.”
Who were those people who just boarded a flight to Florida and sipped cocktails while doing the crossword? Our only real concern (and for Brad, this is a significant concern) was whether there’d be room for our carry-ons in the overhead bins.
I don’t quite remember those relaxed, glowing people.
Here we are now. Weather beaten and tired. Our faces more lined.
Brad likes to marvel at how dark and thick his hair was back then. These days its grayer and thinner. He’s a little bit more of a Clooney on top with the lovable humor of a Rudd and the haplessness of a Stiller.
For the past 11 years, he’s been the one to ensure the “us” of Brusan doesn’t get lost in the frantic pace of all the rest of our lives together. When I get mired down in the pragmatic, practical parts of just getting through a day he is constantly searching for the minutes or hours or days of us-ness- whether it’s a weekend in the Great Smoky Mountains or an Avett Brothers concert or dinner out or just watching an episode of “This is Us” or “Big Mouth” or “90210” (the original… we gave up on the reboot early on) together.
Eleven years feels like a soft, old glove. Something we’ve always worn. Something we don’t think much about right now because life is so busy and who has time? But both of us have had parents celebrate their 50th wedding anniversaries in the past three years. Fifty years! From that lens, 11 seems kind of quaint. Like a 37-year-old mother of three listening to an eighth grader wax on about their time in first grade and how young and impressionable they were then. How grown up and mature they are now.
We’ve barely been married one-fifth of the time they have. Just a small fraction of it. Looking at both sets of parents- my Mom and Dad and Brad’s parents- I don’t believe there’s some magical formula that only they know where the solution is eternal wedded bliss. There’s no fairytale beginnings or endings. It’s a choice. Choosing that other person over and over, day after day, year after year. Choosing that person when life is an unending hurricane of setbacks- broken down cars and new water heaters and belligerent children and extended family drama. And choosing that person in the quiet moments when the kids are in bed and the laundry’s been folded. That choice is a muscle that gets stronger as the years pass, I think.
Brad’s been marking each year of that choice on our wall- each number anniversary themed, paper for the first year, a cotton baby blanket for the second- the year I had Lily, a leather frame for year three, flower petals on the fourth, etc. Each year another “I do.” He’s swoon-worthy, I know.
Maybe I’m not the exact same person Brad married. And he’s not the exact same person I married. Our dreams have evolved and our priorities have shifted. We’re a little less prideful. A little more humble. We’ve learned when to speak our minds and when to let a moment pass. But at the root it’s still us. Brad and me. A decade and change older. But the same bones. The same little oddities. Same hangups. Same charms.
Maybe there is a bit of alchemy to it after all. You start out as two moony-eyed people in fancy clothes dancing and drinking champagne and you slowly transform into two bleary-eyed people in pajamas watching Kelly and Dylan make out in a pool while drinking beer. The magic is, the people you were before couldn’t have really known how sweet those quiet hours could be. How the us-ness is so much better when it’s the choice you keep making.
I share all this, not because I’m any sort of relationship genius. Or because our relationship is flawless. Brusan is a work in progress. The Sistine Chapel of our time here- as rendered on our living room ceiling, near that unexplained crack and the cobwebs. Overseeing the drifts of Lily’s chapter books and Jovie’s blanket and the baby’s various plastic playthings.
Brad with the vision, me holding the brush, dripping paint on the carpet.
Today I thought I’d surface from the raging currents of our life to note that today is more special than leftovers.
And that I’m grateful for a partner who reminds me over and over that in the midst of the day-to-day our us-ness is wonderful and ordinary and extraordinary all at once.
Brad and I try to make sure each other knows how much we value each other in writing- Brad is better at that, too. Early on we’d both dabble in (frequently) bad poetry. As people are wont to do when they’re newly in love.
In honor of that and our eleven years, here’s some bad poetry.
There are few rhymes to eleven
Just seven and heaven
And various proper nouns
And the word leaven-
an influence that works subtly
to lighten or modify another thing.
Here we are, eleven years in
With little rhyme,
but plenty of reason.
Three round faces,
three big smiles,
three wrinkled noses
And six small hands
tethering us together
As we haul each other up the mountains
And hold each other in the valleys
of our breakneck days.
The volume of our lives
has been turned up to eleven
And there’s a song in there somewhere
If we only had a minute
to write the music.
We’re 747s taking off
in opposite directions at dawn
And landing bedraggled and jet lagged
at dusk
In time for a meal
and the baby in the bathtub
and the dishes in the sink
and story time
and the quick chat
before the kiss good night.
If in year one
we glowed in candlelight,
basking in the warm beaches of each other,
imagining all the places life would take us,
never foreseeing a moment
when we would not be infatuated
with one another.
In year in one-one
we’ve been seared
in the roaring fire
we created.
The constant, white hot expansion
Of our universe.
The reality of the life
we imagined in year one
no longer the shimmering mirage
of an idea
but the technicolor nebulae
of glittering eyes
and mismatched socks
and butterflies in the garden
and toothpaste in the bathroom sink.
What a beautiful mess we made,
We’ll say,
Holding each other’s gnarled hands,
Looking back at eleven
in years
twenty-one
or thirty-one
or fifty-one.
After the Legos move to the attic
After the bedroom walls return to more sensible shades
After the last box of Lucky Charms leaves the pantry
And the we watch “My Little Pony” for the final time.
After we’ve found each other again.
All those fires we put out
and kindled.
Together.
One and one.
Leavening each other.
Happy anniversary honey.
