Ten years ago, I never would have thought I would find myself here. With you. Ten years ago, I was a silly, careless girl who was looking for love without even knowing what love was. Our first five years together showed me what love was, or at least what it was for me at that point in my life. You showed me that someone outside of my family could know me and care for me beyond the surface level, maybe even more than I cared for myself. Which is why when you asked me to marry you, I never hesitated. It was, for all intents and purposes, a magical, perfect moment. On our wedding day, between all the hustle, bustle, bouquets, missing contact lenses, fake eyelashes, and white tool, I made my vows to you. I promised to spend my life trying to show you how much I appreciate you if for no other reason than because you and you alone, make me the best version of myself. I meant it then and I mean it now. Now. Now, we have two beautiful daughters. Two precious girls as beautiful as they are mischievous. They are our greatest joy but they are also our greatest source of stress, of unknowing, of insecurity. Are we doing what is best for them? What’s that smell? Should we be better? What did she do? Why is she crying? Did you hear that? What do you think? Did you notice that?
And now, as if raising two humans in a world of uncertainty wasn’t enough, that world has become the most uncertain we’ve ever known it to be. For weeks, we heard stories from across the world, but it would never make it to us. It would never affect us, until it did. And now. Now, here we are, locked in our home, praying for the safety and well-being, including social, emotional, intellectual, and physical, of these two tiny humans while we fight to maintain our sanity, our productivity, our sense of self, and our relationship.
Here’s the thing. When you agree to marry someone, are you really thinking of what it will be like to be quarantined with that person? I mean, really quarantined? Like not able to physically interact with anyone other than that person? I for one was not thinking of this on that Saturday morning when you slipped that ring on my finger. And yet, here we are. Together. A friend of mine described it the other day as, “this is more married than I ever intended.” Yeah. Me too. And I know you feel the same way.
They say when it comes to parenting, the days are long but the years are short. Well, I’ve got a new saying for them. When it comes to parenting, the days in quarantine are really, really, REALLY fucking long. And yes, maybe the year will still be short. Maybe, and yes, hopefully, we will look back on the spring of 2020 and laugh. We will reminisce about Eloise’s first birthday, a party of four. We’ll shrug off the concerns we had about Clara’s social regression due to the cancellations of all her activities. We’ll look back on the pictures of our hikes in the woods and the assembly of the new swing set, the videos of our Scout’s first steps, the memories of family movie nights and living room forts, and we’ll smile.
But we’ll also likely remember with less fondness how hard this is. How our best attempts at staggering our video conferences are only the slightest bit successful and how we basically spend our days pawning children off on one another. I’ll surely remember all my best intentions of home-preschooling that fell by the wayside for any number of reasons: lack of supplies, lack of patience, lack of skill set, lack of planning, lack of sanity. You’ll surely remember trying to maintain a work-life balance that you’ve never known before and hopefully will never know again: supporting a wife who at times is completely unraveling while being a full time stay-at-home dad with a full time job. We’ll remember this time as hard because it is hard. It’s something that I never envisioned having to experience with you, let alone something I had ever imagined. So I want to say thank you. Thank you for understanding that my fuses are short, my patience is thin, and even though I’m doing my best, it doesn’t feel like it. Thank you for making this as fun as possible for them and for me. Thank you for helping me see our priorities, for binge watching terrible reality television with me, for listening to how my heart hurts, and for dancing in the kitchen. Thank you for being my partner in life and now, in quarantine. You are the only person who gets me in the way I need to be got, and if our marriage means that we have to be locked in our home together for the foreseeable future, then I guess I’ll take it.
