Royal Wedding

I want to personally thank Prince William and Princess Catherine for tying the knot last week because it gave me the chance to dress Primo in his Easter suit again, and to finally wear the tuxedo shirt and bow tie I bought in December from H and M for $9. Behold the cuteness:

Continuing the tradition of buying my kids stuff they don't need just because it is on super sale, last year my mother bought Primo a Calvin Klein suit, and its been hanging in the closest screaming "FIND AN OPPORTUNITY TO WEAR ME!" for months. On Easter, I put him in it, even though he was way overdressed and looked like a butler among the rest of the devoted attendees of the one Catholic church in David's Tennessee hometown. And I figured that would be the only time he wore the suit unless I found a way to score him ringbearer duties on somebody's wedding (anyone need one? he's got experience, and the suit). And then, miraculously, we got invited to a royal wedding viewing party.

At first, when I got the evite that read "William and Catherine Are Gettingt Hitched!" I responded to my friend, "Honey, you sent this to me by mistake. I don't know your friends William and Catherine." But when she enlightened me, and I read the evite which encouraged guests to wear their most royal finery and promised tea sandwiches and fish n chips, I was over the moon.

There is nothing I like to ingest more than cucumber sandwiches. Just the thought makes me salivate. In the middle of my severe, unbearable morning sickness with Primo, I remember having a few days where I desperately WANTED to eat something, and the thing I wanted to eat was cucumber sandwiches. I tried to make them but they turned out all seedy and soggy and it depressed me. I probably could've perfected my recipe except that in three days, I was back to vomiting my internal organs up. That was the last time I had cucumber sandwiches.

The party was amazing -- really, the sort of themed fete which I aspire to throw, but fall short of achieving because I lack an innate sense of design and classiness. There was tea service and Pim's. there were bangers and mash and fish n'' chips served in brown bags with newspaper underneath: "Just like they do it in London" I told Primo, though I can only presume as I've never been to England.

There were crustless cucumber sandwiches on slighty stale white bread which was heaven on earth. AND tiny egg salad sandwiches, too.

And my Martha Stewart hostess friend even made a Union Jack out of cut berries.

"I don't even have words to describe what you've achieved here tonight." I told her, "You're an inspiration."

Oh and yeah, the wedding was nice. I would've died for a veil like that when I got hitched. Also, her waistline. But my favorite part, I think, was the fact that they used the term "thou" - it was so Shakespearean. "Wilst thou, William, take Catherine?" That's classy, man. Don't think this Brooklyn girl or her rube husband could've pulled that off.

Seven years ago today

Seven years ago, I wore a 10 foot-long veil and clutched my father’s arm as he walked me down the aisle. Waiting there was David in the first suit he’d ever bought for himself, shaking visibly. When you look at the video tape that my cousin shot you can see my chest rising up and down frantically, almost like I’m about to hyperventilate. I was so nervous that I could hardly work up the courage to say my vows. And when it was over and the priest pronounced us man and wife, we booked it down the aisle so fast, I remember the photographer was pissed because she couldn’t get a single shot of us that wasn’t blurry. We flew out of there to start the next stage of our lives.

Looking back, I’d say I was one hundred percent right to be as nervous as I was. Not about the wedding because in the grand scheme of things who cares if you trip over your veil or the florist delivers daisies instead of anemones. But about the marriage part. Taking a vow to honor and cherish someone under all circumstances all the days of your life. No loopholes, no exit strategy, no plan B. Together. Forever. Period.

That is a big-time promise. And it meant something to David and I that we did it in front of all our friends and family, in a church with a priest sealing thr deal.

In fact, I remember feeling a terrific sense of relief when the ceremony was over, and yes, it was mostly because I didn’t have to worry about my flower girl showing up on time or not me breaking a heel on the alter steps. But it was also a relief to have taken those vows, to be locked in, as it were, to a deal that was clearly stated, And not because David was some kind of slippery guy who I had to pin down – on the contrary, he’s always been extraordinary steadfast and loyal. But because in today’s world, it seems like there is nothing absolute, nothing that one can’t undo. You can get remove your facebooks posts and get tattoos removed and undo a vasectomy for God’s sake, Contrary to what you might expect, I found release in an irrevocable promise.

When I was in high school, I read Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being and I remember being powerfully struck by one passage which I’m pretty sure I scribbled down in bubbly script and pasted in my diary next to a picture of Robert Sean Leonard. Unlike my crush on Mr. Leonard, I stand by the quote.

“But in love poetry of every age, the woman longs to be weighed down by the man's body.The heaviest of burdens is therefore simultaneously an image of life's most intense fulfillment. The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become. Conversely, the absolute absence of burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant. What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness?"

To me, marriage – and parenting, for that matter – is like the big down comforter I have on my bed. I need to sleep under it, even in the summertime, because if I don’t, I shiver. Sure, sometimes I feel a little suffocated by the thing but I then I just stick a foot out or peel them down a bit. I never toss the whole thing off because without the weight of it, I can’t find any peace.

Seven years ago, what I knew about marriage was this: I loved David and I wanted to be with him for the rest of my life. During the ceremony, I had a friend read Shakespeare’s sonnet “Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediment,” because I really dug the idea of love as an ever fixed rock that looks on tempests but is never shaken.

But I remember that our priest, who David and I adored, corrected Shakespeare in his homily. He said, “All this stuff Shakespeare says about love never changing is a bunch of baloney. Because love changes, it changes all the time. What doesn’t change, what can’t change, is the commitment to love. And that’s what you need to renew every morning when you wake – you need to decide every day that you are going to commit to loving this person.”

Today what I know about marriage is this: I love David and I want to be with him for the rest of my life. But I know, too, that it takes work, and contrary to what I thought when we were newlyweds, the fact that you have to put in the work doesn’t make your relationship any less good, or less strong, but in fact, better and stronger.

The other thing I know about marriage now is that when you’re in it for the long haul, sometimes you have to fake it til you make it. But – and here’s the beauty part, the magic of it all – you always make it sooner or later. If you have the patience and the faith and the commitment to love, you always find your way back together again, and the union then is like the house made of bricks, compared to the house of straw you had on your wedding day.

So there you have it folks, my wisdom on marriage boils down to a Three Little Pigs metaphor. For anyone planning a wedding, I give you permission to use that in your ceremony.

To David I say this: So far, I haven’t liked anything in this lifetime as much as I’ve liked growing old with you. Here’s to another 7(0) years . . .

No more romantic getaways, please

You couldn’t pay me to go on a romantic getaway with my husband. No way. Not happening. And I’ll tell you precisely why:

Every single time we try one of these weekend getaways, one of us falls terribly ill.

Not just a cold or a bad headache or some pre-menstrual cramps but a stomach flu or mysterious raging fevers. And this weekend it happened AGAIN. This makes the fourth of fifth time in the past year or two.

David and I drove up to the Hudson Valley to attend the wedding of my dear friend Amelia, whose letters from Port au Prince I posted after the earthquake. Amelia kindly invited the children to the wedding and I kindly declined to take them. The last wedding they went to, my cousin’s, was such an ordeal we’ll never forget it. Apparently, neither will my cousin. Last year she told me the clearest memory she has of her wedding ceremony was Primo yelling, “I DON’T WANT TO GO TO THE CAR!!!!!” as David dragged him kicking and screaming down the aisle, after he had a tantrum during the wedding vows. So we don’t take our kids to weddings, if at all possible. Plus, since our own anniversary is coming up we thought we’d make a romantic weekend of it, have some steamy loving in the Courtyard Marriot. Cue Marvin Gaye.

On the drive up, I had definite presentiments of illness. Scratchy throat, growing feeling of weakness. By the time we reached Poughkeepsie, I called Amelia to let her know we couldn’t make it over to her parents’ house forthe pre-wedding pizza party. I was feverish, shaking, seriously ailing.

And so it was that our first romantic night was spent with me shivering in the hotel bed watching The Real Housewives of New York City (OMG my new favorite show, I was loving it, though maybe it was the fever) while David drove up and down the highway looking for Tylenol, cough drops and a pair of pajamas, since I’d neglected to pack them and a sick person needs her pajamas.

Then we ate hamburgers from the diner next door in our bed while I moaned in misery.

In the middle of the night, the chills came. I despise the chills. There is little worse than the feeling that your blood is freezing in your veins. I hobbled around the hotel room in search of more blankets. There were none. I called the front desk and was sent to voice mail. SO helpful. Then I put on my sweater, David’s fleece jacket AND my own jacket, and laid all the towels from the bathroom on top of me, under the blanket.

Are you getting a picture of the hot loving? The R and R? The marital renewal??

Raw suckage, I tell you.

Next morning, I propped myself up, Weekend at Bernies style, and survived the wedding. It was a beautiful wedding and I cried like I was making French onion soup. By 5pm I was back in the hotel bed, shivering and moaning. Repeat Friday night feverish festivities.

Sunday morning, though, we received an EXTRA treat. David and I were roused by a mindblowing, earsplitting fire alarm going off. The alarm was going off in our room as well as in the halls and everyone else’s room in the hotel. I can not possibly describe how loud the fucking thing was except it reminded me of those devices hardware stores sell which emit sounds at a frequency that mice hate to keep the vermin from your house (don’t work, by the way, our mice just frolicked around them). So we stumbled around throwing our belonging in our bag, half-mad from the roar of the alarm, tripping over bottles of Tylenol.

I feel REJEUVENATED; let me tell you, after that weekend away.

Maybe on our next romantic getaway, we can both get root canals.

Happy Anniversary!

Yesterday was David and my six year wedding anniversary. Hooray for us! We like to joke that we’ve been together six years but it feels like sixty. If there was a “Which television couple are you?” quiz on Facebook, we would be the Honeymooners, for sure. But before my newlywed, non-parent friends get unduly alarmed about how kids crush the romance out of a marriage, let me hasten to say that feeling like you’ve been together sixty years isn’t a bad thing, necessarily.

Case in point: the terms by which David and I now address each other. When I’m not calling him “shithead” and he’s not calling me “nagshead” we usually refer to one another as “Mommy” and “Daddy” even when the kids are not present.

Now, I’m not proud of this. This is precisely the sort of thing I thought I would NEVER do before I had kids. I mean, its something people who have lost their selves in the process of becoming a parent do, something old, uninteresting people who never have sex do. It’s something my parents do.

But now I do it too, and there’s just no way around it.

David told me about one time when he was at the corner bodega, and the guy who works there and knows

David from his Friday night beer-runs, asked him why he was also buying Ben and Jerry’s this time.

“Just picking up something for Mom,” he replied.

“Is your mother visiting?’ the man asked.

But of course he was talking about me.

I’m not going to lie, That was a blow.

But it was also a year or two ago. And since that time, we’ve moved past the newness of this stage of our lives, and into the dense, deepening madness of it, And I have realized something.

Who gives a shit what we call each other? Who really has the energy to make sure that we’re addressing each other in quirky, romantic ways that keep our essential characters intact and shows respect for the people we are, apart from our roles as parents?

Its worrying about that crap that makes you old before your time and sucks the joie de vivre right out of you. Or at least that’s my position. What matters is that we are here, together, addressing each other at all, coming together even if in haphazard, clumsy ways, even if a trip to the dentist’s office, without kids, is considered a hot date, even if sex is accompanied by a Dora the Explorer soundtrack, even if the sentence “I love you” is too long to make it out without an interruption half the time. The joy of being together for six years going on sixty is that we don’t have to finish our sentences. David knows what I’m trying to say even if all I get through is, “Daddy, I love---” before an airborne Lego collides with my forehead.

When you’re married with young kids, the fastest way to ruin, I think, is to compare your marriage to any of its past incarnations. It’s a whole new paradigm. Less desirable in many ways, sure, but a hell of a lot better in others. At our anniversary brunch yesterday, I glanced over at this early twenty-something couple sitting at the table next to us, on a first or second date.

“That was great, thank you,” said the woman, who’d clearly blown out her hair that morning and had taken pains to pick out an appropriate not-too-skimpy-but-revealing-enough sundress for the occasion.

“No, thank you,” said her date, a man with no wrinkles in his button-down shirt.

Watching them, I felt exactly what they must feel when they pass me yelling at my screaming, snotty-face kids.

“I am SO glad not to be them,” I said to David.

“Me too,” said David, “I hated dating.”

“Well, I didn’t hate it. I liked it just fine. But been there, done that. I wouldn’t go back for anything,” I sipped my Bellini, “Honestly, I would rather sit here, arguing with you, than be on a first date again.”

And just like that, with the help of a little eggs benedict and a morning drink, we went from the Honeymooners to the other couple in When Harry Met Sally.

It’s the truth, too. We are, I'd dare to say, still crazy after all these years. David is my best friend and I’d rather be doing jack squat with him, I’d rather be wiping up vomit by his side than lounging in Rio with someone else. Sure, those singles at the restaurant get to look forward to hot, mystery sex, and breathtaking turns of romantic fate, the thrill of discovering someone and being discovered themselves but they also have to wade through all that awful not-knowing, the unbearable lightness of being uncommitted. And though the weight of my family sometimes feels like a ton of bricks dragging me down, its an anchor. And I know. I know that Big Daddy—I mean, David -- and I are tied together, old-school style, by which I mean irrevocably and forever. Maybe not the way I imagined it six years ago, but exactly the way I like it today.