Anniversary

Four years ago, Jared and I met at work. Before he started, I’d heard all about him from a couple coworkers. As anyone who knows me knows, out of shear stubbornness, I don’t like things that are overhyped. I’ve never seen the movie A Beautiful Mind or read Harry Potter. I know my ridiculousness is only hurting myself, but I continue. With this in mind, I was prepared to dislike Jared.

He scheduled meetings with each staff person to learn what they did with the organization. During our meeting, he stared at me. With clasped hands. Like Von Trapp family singers clasped. I couldn’t figure him out. Then he saw a card from my mom on my bulletin board. It had a deli sandwich on it. He told me a story about an impromptu road trip with his German friend Joerg and how after too many hours of driving they’d formed the Sandwich gang. Part of the story he spoke in a German accent. I like stories and accents. I was warming up to him.

My office was by the kitchen and his was by the printer. Over the next couple of weeks, he drank even more coffee than normal and I killed an unnecessary amount of trees. Several times I made him eat lunch with me. We started leaving at the same time. On one trip to the cars, he asked when my last day was (I’d put in my notice a couple months early). I took this as he couldn’t wait to get rid of me. He was asking because he thought it was poor form to date coworkers. We both attended a coworkers birthday outside of work because we knew the other one was going to be there and talked for several hours across a narrow bar table. I found out he’d been married before, too. Because of this, it felt like he understood a language that few other people I knew spoke.

 
He invented a party and invited me. He worried no one would show up to his last-minute-want-to-invite-a-girl-to-do-something-outside-of-the-office party. I came “fashionably late” (which meant ten minutes late, for me) and his friends all showed up fashionably late (meaning the actual definition). Jared made Spanish tapas, his go-to impress-a-girl food. I’m the opposite of gourmet. But I ate them and complimented them and when he walked me to my car, he kissed me.

The next night we went to go see The Hangover. Later that week, he went to a movie with my parents and some other family. Weeks after that, I met his family in from out of town. Six months after our first date, a couple days before we moved in together, he asked me to marry him. I said yes because I’d already seen how hard he would work on our relationship. I think effortless relationships are like fairies or unicorns. Of course there should be more good than bad, but it takes work. This is not a secret I’ve discovered. This is what any long term couple knows. I’d met a person who’d fit more than 95% of my List of Things I Would Want I a Partner (speaks another language, likes to travel, probably not from San Diego, etc.) AND he was willing to work with me.

Three weeks after we got engaged, we found out I was pregnant with Henry. The month after that Jared got a new job. The month after that two of my closest family members died. Two months later, I got a job running a nonprofit. The next month we moved again. Two months later, Henry arrived via emergency C-section. I don’t really remember the next couple of months. When Henry was six months old, we moved again. Then Jared lost his job unexpectedly. Three months after that, my parents moved to Alaska and we moved again, into their house. For almost a year, we worked part-time jobs while our dog progressed through a nervous breakdown, culminating in him jumping through a glass window. We started looking at jobs around the country, landing two in Maine. Days after accepting the positions, we got married and celebrated with Mexican food. Then we moved across the country with our almost 2-year-old and manic dog. Then, because it looked like things were settling down waaay too much (what with healthcare for all of us and stable income), we decided Henry needs a sibling. Baby #2 (aka, Front Loader or Gilbert, both suggestions from Henry) is almost 28 weeks along and here we are at our first wedding anniversary.

Jared continues to be an excellent cook and to make me laugh. We bond over taking scenic back roads of Maine to keep up our gas mileage. We still agree the Toyota Yaris (hatchback) is the best car ever. We still appreciate the gamut of movies together (and are celebrating our anniversary tonight with a viewing of The Hangover III, even though Hangover II  made me wish I didn’t have eyes). Right now he’s cuddling with Henry on the couch while translating the Secret of Nimh into Spanish and still, seeing the two of them together feels like I just ate a still-warm, doughy chocolate chip cookie.

And with all that good stuff, the regular attraction stuff, he still works hard at us. We will yell or ignore or do the things people do when they are angry and want to be stubborn, but then we talk. Facing each other in bed with Henry snoring on the other side of the wall. While I’m not eager to repeat the family deaths, gazillion moves, variety of jobs, traumatic births and cross-country relocations – all of it showed me even more that we’d made the right choice.

Happy Anniversary, Jared.