What I Have Learned Over the Course of 20 Anniversaries
My husband, Tarik, and me during our first dance. Photo by our friend, DK, taken with a disposable camera.
Today is my 20th wedding anniversary. This year things did not go as we had planned. We had booked a cabin near the Sequoia National Forest, but sadly that forest is now under threat of wildfire and our trip had to be canceled. On top of that, we’re still waiting on our refund. So instead of our trip, we had a “staycation” together, making popcorn and watching movies and shows about ghosts, witches, and all that good stuff October brings. I baked gluten-free honey cornbread and banana bread, made veggie broth and bone broth, and Tarik roasted some meats. We read books and drank lots of coffee. It wasn’t what we had planned to do, but it was lovely and quiet all the same.
And it certainly was better than our 17th anniversary, which was spent in the hospital, my husband, Tarik, as the patient, having passed out in our kitchen from dehydration, and me as his companion, in a cream-colored leather recliner they brought to the room specifically so that I could sleep by his side. Tarik’s health is much better now, while mine has declined, starting with the massive back spasm I experienced while driving to Orange County from Los Angeles, a few days after that hospital stay. I’ve been using a cane ever since.
On our 10th anniversary in 2011, we spent a week in the top-floor suite of a 3-walled, 4-story villa on the shore of the beach in the historic section of Puerto Vallarta. We spent that week eating, swimming, sunbathing, and sleeping. We tried sleeping in the open rooms facing the ocean, but it was too hot, so we always ended up in the one air-conditioned room, which was fine by me because the rest of the rooms were shared with geckos. On the second day of the trip, October 5th, Tarik emerged from the water having lost his wedding ring. I cried at the timing. He tried to convince me that it would be romantic if I threw mine into the water to be with his, but I was too attached.
Maybe I would have done it had I known that I would lose mine a few years later, in a far less romantic way, while throwing away heaps of plastic bags on “truck day” at my old job at The Container Store. I had lost so much weight from Lupus at that point, that the ring just slipped right off, and I didn’t notice it until much later in the day.
Throughout the years, anniversaries have come and gone, some grand, like the trip to Puerto Vallarta or a really fancy dinner, some quiet like this year’s, with many in between. Some years there was money and time for the big to-do, other years we were so strapped for money and time that we toasted our years together by dipping two spoons into a pint of Ben & Jerry’s.
What I have learned over the course of 20 anniversaries is that my love for Tarik is deeper than it has ever been. Love after 20 years of a happy marriage is not the same shiny, frenzied love of the first few years. This love, the love we share now, is a quiet love, a knowledgeable love, a skilled love. A love that has been through multiple tests of patience, silent prayers, and thousands of miles of togetherness and of space, including literal miles like the years we lived in Spain together, and the years we lived far apart, while Tarik was working in Africa.
Visiting Ochagavía in Spanish Basque Country, 2005
This is a love that vowed to put up with each other’s idiosyncrasies, only to realize that there are always more and more weird things each of us adds onto that list, like going from learning that your husband hates it when people sitting across from each other at a table in a restaurant, have ordered the exact same dish, to figuring out many years later that he can’t keep track of the different characters in a TV show if one of them suddenly changes their usual attire because he can’t actually tell their faces apart (I have learned this is called prosopagnosia).
Or, going from learning that your wife may believe in ghosts to years later, getting used to the many altars, offerings, and amulets she leaves around the house, the weirdest being that upside down broom she keeps behind the front door.
Taken after officiating my friend’s mother’s Celebration of Life in 2017
This is a love that has a growing number of inside jokes like, “Light up the Sky!”, “Can I get some of your, uhhh, tacos?”, and “Why not a little ice cream for a lord like me?”;
Movie and TV quotes like, “Ooo, ooo, ooo, DeLongpre!”, “Lady?! You call me lady?!”, and “My glasses, I can’t see without my glasses!”;
and even a very complex secret handshake that involves the pantomiming of fireworks, phoenixes rising from the ashes, and the Champions League jingle.
This is a love that has ridden in an ambulance together, sleeps with CPAP masks, and pulls you out of a chair when your legs have fallen asleep. A love that lets one of you watch National Geographic veterinarian shows when you’d rather be playing a video game. That lets you watch anime when you’d rather be watching Real Housewives. Gives you space when you need it but knows when a hug would be better.
New Year’s Eve, 2021
So, although this year did not go as planned, I am happy with this anniversary nonetheless because I have been lucky enough to experience the depth 20 years can bring and I look forward to all the years ahead of us. “Because cool kids belong together.”
Tarik, I loved you then, I love you now, and I will love you always.
