“I’m sorry I’m ruining our sunset cruise” I said as I leaned my greenish face against the ropes of the banister.
“It’s okay, honey” he said, patting my back until he remembered that the last thing I want is to be touched when I’m feeling like I’m about to die of nausea.
It was our 15th anniversary so we decided to splurge on a romantic sunset dinner cruise.
I’d managed to sit up and applaud for the couple who’d just gotten engaged on the bow of the boat (or maybe it was the stern?) but then I crawled right back into the coffin sized bathroom below deck to wretch and sway while everyone else slow danced on the deck as the sun went down.
He waited outside the door, gently asking if I needed anything at 5 minute intervals.
It was maybe the most romantic thing he’d ever done.
One of the newlywed couples with us on the boat mentioned that we struck them as “a couple who seemed to get along really well”.
We looked at each other and smiled because it’s true, we do, but it feels hard-earned in a way worthy of acknowledging.
Last year I wrote about how sometimes love is like a battlefield, but that’s okay as long as you’re fighting your way TOWARDS each other.
This year our love feels more like a garden, with beauty springing up out of tender places.
And so it goes.
This is real life.
Some years you get sick and ruin your romantic celebration.
Some years you struggle and you wound, but you refuse to quit fighting for the best version of “us”.
Some years you laugh more and kiss more and you make new inside jokes.
Some years you celebrate your anniversary with little fanfare- at home, over takeout on the back porch. But some years feel special so you run away together to celebrate all the good, the hard, the new, and the old.
Because marriage is all of it together. Forever. Amen.
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