2 Years

Today marks 2 years since the day that I asked Megan if she would marry me. Then we were single, tan for February first, and skinny. I had a ring burning a hole in my pocket that I picked up only days earlier. Its weight was growing, yearning to serve its purpose. I was Frodo, single-mindedly pressing forward to unload that ring in the fires of the gazebo at Alice Keck Park. She awoke to my call just before sunrise, and followed a trail of flower petals for 2 blocks, to the center of the park where the turtles and koi, the sun rising on the water, a cup of hot chocolate, a guitar, and I were waiting. I sang a simple song, which convinced her that she should say yes. She did. It was our happiest day. Yet.

Today began with that song, a carefully timed moment to be sure. It is commonly known that you should not wake a sleeping baby, but less frequently recited is the more important rule: never wake a sleeping mother. Yet these are the trials of romance in a house of babies. If I do not awake her with our song, our boys will with their hungry cries. So I have to ask, which shows my love more, romance or sleep? Two years ago sleep was only a trifle when romance was at hand. Today we savored the 3 minute song, laughed at what 2 years can bring, laughed at what 21 months of marriage can bring, laughed at family planning, then started changing diapers.

Two years, two babies, two pale white flabby parents whose romance has not faded, only been squeezed into shorter intervals. It is not blooming. It is growing deeper roots. Perhaps we appreciated our tan-ness because we knew so little of what else there was to appreciate. Two years ago I did not know which occasions my then girl friend would have to rise to, only that I was confident that she would. Now she has risen to far more occasions than I would have hypothetically imagined, and shone. Brightly. So that I love her far more this morning than I did that morning. Pale as she is.