Marriage is a beach

Being married reminds me of swimming off the Oxford Ferry dock when we were little. It's easy to get nostalgic. And it's fun. Thankfully, after 13 years today, our marriage hasn't been banned like swimming off the ferry dock.

With a late June wedding, summer makes me think of our day in the sun, getting married on the Tred Avon River in the church I grew up in. But summer makes me think of Robin and our 17 years together, in general. She is a teacher and a good many of our trips and adventures have happened over the summer, when she is on vacation. We've covered some ground--Colorado, Maine, Florida, Cooperstown, N.Y. (pictured above), the Outer Banks--or we've been just as happy on our home rivers or Ocean City.

I know that summer is going to bring us time together, to do whatever. Marriage has done the same. So maybe marriage is summer vacation.

Maybe I've been mulling over too much Kierkegaard lately, with his fear and trembling over life's big decisions, but life can come unwrapped or unglued or just be generally chaotic at times. We'll keep the water metaphor rolling here, with life as water/river/ocean. Our response to the water, is to build a life--whether a dock, a living shoreline, bulkhead, beach. Something to buffer us, something to comfort, something to give us shape in the midst of chaos. Our jobs, our likes, our families are part of that. So maybe marriage is a beach.

For me, Robin and our marriage has been that constancy. You don't often see marriage billed as a buffer against existential dread, nor should you, as that sounds pretty fu**ing glum. But maybe you see what I am getting at. When you find someone to go through life with, through the tough times, through uncertainty, that's a rare and special thing.

But in 13 years it has rarely felt that way. It has felt more like the kind of beach you picture, non-metaphorically--it's been fun. Fun to the point where I know I would be missing out on life's most fun times were we not married. From concerts to boat rides, from parties for no reason to speaking slurred French at Schooners Llanding 17 years ago. When I string my best, most fun memories together, most of them have happened in the time Robin and I have been together.

Marriage makes me nostalgic in that way, enjoying the looking back at where we've been. But it also makes me hopeful. The looking ahead to where we might go. But beyond looking in either direction, it makes me enjoy the now. It makes me enjoy getting up in the morning and it makes me enjoy coming home after work.

I'm not sure what I think of marriage as an institution. It doesn't always work. Maybe it's flawed. Maybe people don't take it seriously enough. Maybe marriage shouldn't be so serious. For me, I know why marriages don't always work. Because not everyone finds Robin.

In the spirit of looking back, here are thoughts from our 12-year anniversary last year and on our 11-year anniversary the year before. 

12 Years: Looking Forward

I've walked down docks since I was able to walk--a force of habit growing up in a town surrounded by water on three sides. Walking, or sitting or chicken-necking, or dipping crabs, or drinking a beer or watching a sunset (or sunrise) on a dock with the river flowing, or standing still has always been one of the simple pleasures that fills my soul.

Twelve years ago today, my wife Robin and I walked down a dock next to Holy Trinity Church in Oxford and onto the waiting boats of friends Mike Siachos and Eric Abell. Mike's mom and family were waiting and cheering across mouth of Pier Street's marina. It was the first time Robin and I walked down a dock as a married couple. It added a new depth and memory and smile to my dock vibe.

Last year at this time is the first time I really wrote out loud about our anniversary. I was thinking back on the wedding and our lives together. Funny though, looking at the picture above, which I dig for its perspective of looking forward, is also how and where my thoughts are at the moment. Looking forward. Enjoying the right now and looking forward to those things we haven't done together yet.

It's unfortunate and a misnomer that marriage gets a rap of being no fun. A killjoy. I think that sucks if that is the case. I look back at the last 12 years and could not have had any more fun, starting with the wedding day itself. And I look around at some of the married couples we frequently run with, many of whom have kids, and the same seems to hold true. Having a blast.

Today, celebrating our 12-year anniversary, we're planning a boat ride to Oxford with great friends. One of those friends, who sang at our wedding, will be singing and playing with a band at Pier Street. There's a more than probable chance that Robin and I will walk up a dock together. And there is a more than definite chance that I'll be thinking about our first walk up the dock together, 12 years ago in Oxford. The way I think about it just about any time I'm on a dock, looking at, or swimming in the river.

11 years

It all started at the Avalon Theater. The same place where, as a kid, I saw Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark. Years later, at a Blue Miracle concert, I met my wife.

There were different times before we started "going steady" that we were out with friends and Robin and I would get talking and the noise of the bar and everything around us would just fade into the background for me. I have a crystal memory of Robin and another friend, Nan, sitting in front of a computer with 3D glasses on, laughing hysterically, and thinking that I could happily hear Robin's laugh for the rest of my life.

Of course, when we met I didn't have much in the way of prospects going for myself. I had freshly failed out of NC State and had dedicated myself to running and lifting weights to get ready for the Army's 82nd Airborne Division. Kick my ass, get my life straight, get some money toward finishing college.

Meeting Robin didn't happen at a time when I was looking for the other half of my soul or at a time where it made any sense to find her. But when it happened it was blatant. Obvious. This changes everything.

Our life has been co-designed and co-built ever since. It's like putting a "c" and an "h" together, you no longer have a c sound or an h sound, but a "ch," whi"ch" has been mu"ch" better in my book. The life and family we have built together far surpasses anything I could do on my own.

On my end, from the decision not to go to the Army, to getting back to work in restaurants, to our first apartment in Oxford, to graduating from Chesapeake and Washington Colleges, from deciding against philosophy graduate school at Duquesne, first public relations job at the Academy Art Museum, to getting married 11 years ago today.

From buying our first house, finding our Golden Retriever Ivan, to the birth of our first daughter, Anna, job at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, moving into our second and current house, birth of second daughter, Ava, Robin transferring from Tilghman Elementary to Easton Elementary, these are just some of the very few bare bones chronological milestones over our 15 years together.

I guess growing up you have some vague notion as to what marriage and family is or means. But it isn't until you find someone who you can't wait to go to bed with at night and can't wait to get up with in the morning and can't wait to spend the day with in between, that you truly know what marriage brings to the table.

And once you share the moments of bringing kids into the world and watching and helping them grow and getting completely amped to see what they learn and accomplish and have fun doing and can look at each other and smile and know that you can't wait for today and the next day together, still, that I realize the blessings that I've got, for having found Robin.

I look back over our 15 and 11 years together and married and see both the chronology of our lives together, but also really powerful and/or random snippets. Driving to Colorado and Maine together, time in Cooperstown, NY, sunsets on boats on the Choptank and Tred Avon Rivers, trying to speak nothing but French for an evening drinking at Schooners Llanding, a random Jeb Loy Nichols concert at Rams Head On Stage, our honeymoon on Ocracoke Island. Both fragments of so far and maybe a road map of the next 15 and 11 years and beyond, of going to bed together and waking up together and seeing what to do with the days, together.