H and I woke this morning, and as usual, he was verbal while I was still shaking off sleep..."Guess what!" he said. I mumbled into the pillow. "Today is the first Wednesday we have been married." Two days ago was the first "married shower."
Many people have called or asked whether I feel different since the wedding, and I don't exactly. There aren't any long sighs, and movie-tone gazing into each others' eyes in rapt attention. There aren't any new discoveries about whether or not he will fill the ice cube tray (he does), or wash the dishes (he does), or work in the garden (he doesn't except on specific requests). But it has been a week of firsts.
We took our first car ride together around town, as a married couple, and stopped to see our friends Shirley and Pete. It was good to see them, but not momentous exactly.
We had them over for champagne and talked as two married couples. We caught up on the town's doings, but it wasn't earth shattering.
H and I went out to dinner together and as we talked about deeply important things, I sat across the table from him and watched his hand with the gold band, and thought, "I am out with a married man." And realized that that's ok, as he is "my" married man.Not an event worthy of note except to the two of us.
So what is it that I am supposed to feel that is different? I suppose a younger couple might note the first dance, the first morning after the "night of bliss," the first party made for friends. But we have had three days of parties, and we are not a young couple and we have made this decision after many years of shaping ourselves by each others' patterns. I know what will make Herb angry and what will make him laugh out loud. He knows what will make me cry and what will make me shout for joy (iced coffee with coffee cubes). And these patterns haven't changed because the state has a piece of paper with our names and addresses and a signature from our friend and officiant, Nelson. We even joked that we could just fail to file the paperwork, and then we would appear to have been married without ever bothering to follow through on the civil piece of this act. We wouldn't be different than we are now in any measurable way. Would we feel different if this had been a public witnessing but not sanctioned by the state? I doubt it.
What is different is carried in the expectations I think. And it is symbolized in the words that people use as a shorthand for something much bigger.
Jokingly, I have been saying, "I will have to check with my h...huh..... huh...Herb." And he has been saying I will check with my "wuh... wuh,...wuh... woman." But really, the words "husband" and "wife" are odd on the tongue as yet. (See footote below) I am sure that we will take these words for granted eventually, but I am struggling with what it means to be seen in terms of our roles with respect to each other. We each still have the same friends and responsibilities. We are not radically different than we were five days ago, except that we had the best party I have been to. We are not radically different except that the two of us stood in front of 130 of our friends and said publicly what we had said privately...in the words of Susan Sarandon: "“We need a witness to our lives. There's a billion people on the planet... I mean, what does any one life really mean? But in a marriage, you're promising to care about everything. The good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things... all of it, all of the time, every day. You're saying 'Your life will not go unnoticed because I will notice it. Your life will not go un-witnessed because I will be your witness'.”
This is a first for me...this notion of witnessing, and of witnessing the terrible things, the mundane things. I have found a kind of comfort in the solitude that has shaped my life to this point, and this witnessing thing is still awkward. But that is the promise we have made to each other. That we will open ourselves to each other, trust each other, and stand in witness. And we have asked our friends, those in attendance on Saturday night to witness that commitment. It is a commitment that can not be breached without violating what we have agreed to before those we trust and love.
That is a first. And that feels very different.
Footnote: (Shirley says I should never say "I will check with.." but rather "I will let him know..." Ahhh! Women's wisdom!)
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