When I said "I Do"

My husband and I recently had a two-year wedding anniversary.  And we completely forgot about it.  In our defense, there was a lot going on--we had just moved to Idaho, the kid wasn't sleeping much, we were worried about buying a house and jobs and all that.  So we spaced it.  But I thought today I might make up for that a little by writing about him.

We have been married for two years, but in April we will celebrate the fifth anniversary of our first date.  We have lived together since October 2003.  We have been through a lot, as most couples worth their salt have.  We had a long-distance relationship for the whole first year, and even after that, he was frequently gone for weeks at a time on some kind of mysterious training junkets (he was in the Japanese Self-Defense Force, something like our National Guard--except that it is the only military Japan has, which makes it more like our army...except that the Japanese ones can't actually carry bullets and are completely unprepared for any kind of actual self-defense, despite the fact that many of them practice judo and karate [one time I asked my husband what they would do, without bullets, if North Korea did invade, and he said, "Call the police."]).  We nearly broke up a few times--I mean very nearly.  At the beginning, we couldn't communicate because we had no language in common until I got my ass in gear and learned Japanese.  We had an accidental pregnancy and then a horrible miscarriage.  We got pregnant again.  We moved to the USA and got a fucking Green Card.  We had a kid.  We moved to Alaska, back to New Mexico, and now to Idaho.  It's really been a lot.

Through this all, what amazes me most about our relationship--and I think this is probably the hallmark of a good marriage as opposed to a bad one like my first one--is that we periodically fall completely and madly in love with each other all over again, like we had just met and were in the first breathless grips of romance, except that our kid is there singing the goddamned WonderPets! songs which kind of dampens the lovefest.  We obviously go through periods where we are more like companions or friends who live with each other and, occasionally as time permits, have sex.  Then some mystical waxing of the moon happens, and we are both just smitten again.  We're in one of those times right now.  I feel like a schoolgirl.

When I first met him, he didn't have any hobbies or free-time pursuits other than walking around and watching a little telly.  Seriously.  He had no interests.  I didn't know what to make of this at the time, but I have since realized that it was only true in the context of Japan.  The truth was and is that he had no interests in anything to do with Japan (except Japanese TV and comedy).  His interests now are in hunting, fishing, and cutting wood for our wood-burning stove.  Very manly.  Those things just weren't possible in Japan.  Obviously there is fishing and fishermen, but fishing as a hobby is absurdly difficult in most of the country due to poor habitat (concrete riverbeds and coastlines), pollution, inaccessibility, etc.  He is blossoming here in the Rocky Mountain West, finding exactly the person he always wanted to be and the culture that will allow it.  That is surely part of our renaissance of love; we're both just really happy.

I was first attracted to him, beyond physically, by his obvious honesty and calm demeanor.  On our first meeting and first few dates, he was patently not trying to impress me; he said a lot of the wrong things.  I thought, though, that when men say the right things on first dates, they're usually just trying to get in your pants.  Here was a guy who, although clearly attracted to me, was less worried about getting into my pants than just being honest.  Awesome.  He was also then, and continues to be, totally unflappable.  I have seen him angry so far twice in our five years.  The first time was when some yakuza were trying to extort money from him; the second was when I had said some things that were truly out of line, and I was being a bitch, and he got a little tweaked.  Both times he continued to be polite to a fault--he's always polite. 

He is really my opposite in a lot of ways.  He barely skated through high school (and the worst high school around at that).  He doesn't care for talking and would go days without talking if I let him.  He is always calm and polite and very disciplined; he never loses his temper.  He hates socializing.  He genuinely does not care about much--he has no real friends and does not want them; he does not care how dinner tasted so long as he is full; he is very easily contented.  I know he never wanted to be married until he met me, but I would have thought he would have gone for someone less temperamental, extroverted, and bookish.  But he says that I make his life more exciting than it would otherwise be.  Without me his life would be predictable, but he never knows what sort of thing I'm going to do or say next.  He says he loves this element of surprise and loves the way I think.  I love him because he gives me some balance; I am more calm and unflappable now than I was before and more easily contented.  I don't really think he's made me more polite, although he did make me see the reasons to be superficially polite in Japan.

He's also really the reason I keep this blog.  He doesn't want to talk about this stuff with me because he gives less than a fig about politics, and his total response to my anger at blaming the patriarchy was, "Mm" along with a nonverbal but clearly expressed in that inscrutable Japanese way rebuke along the lines of:  You already know that nothing you say will change the mind of people like that, no matter how well-worded or well-thought your reply.  So, rather than let her drive you insane, just forget about it.  Just simply decide to not think about it.  Seriously, you need to stop thinking about it before you have a heart attack."

He only halfway gets that, to forget about it, I have to talk about it.  I started this blog so that I could rant and rave and then, well, mostly just forget about it.  It's given me great peace.  I should have done this years ago.  Ah, well.

How about a toast, then?  To two years of marriage and being 100% in love with my husband and looking forward to a future in which he is someday a codgerly old man who putters about in the garage while I fuss over our grandkids and rant and rave about the state of our country and make jam and we still look at each other and see our whole lives there in each other's faces, to being more than the sum of our parts.