If there's a secret to marriage I'm pretty sure it's finding someone who can make your life feel like a twelve year old's perpetual slumber party. Complete with inside jokes, games of truth or dare, bad karaoke, horribly bad tv, toilet humor and lots and lots...and lots of laughter. Under the covers late into the night delirious laughter. Some people feed their passions for each other with lust and romance and sex appeal - we use fart jokes, celebrity gossip and, now, our general fondness for and fascination with the third party in our relationship. And I wouldn't want it any other way.
It's been nearly ten years since we made eyes at each other across a crowded room. And by 'room' I mean 'dive bar' complete with peanuts on the floor and Cash on the jukebox. Several shots of Jager later and I was smitten. Jager - because I put the ass in class, baby. I don't know that any love story is particularly traditional - ours consisted of late nights, darts, Famous Rays and sunflowers. It was all very easy and fun and rife with laughter - until it wasn't. The night after G took my hands in his in a New York City bowling alley and told me I was "the one" I came down with the worst case of stomach flu I've had in my life. In. My. Life. I sincerely thought death was a possibility. I threw up things I couldn't even understand not the least of which was what, to this day, I believe was my mother's 1986 Oldsmobile. I remember lying on the floor of my sorority bathroom and finally conceding that I needed to go to the hospital but not being able to muster the strength to walk the five blocks to the emergency room. But I could crawl to the phone. G was there only minutes later and he carried me - carried me - in my dirty sweatpants, puke-in-the-hair splendor, the five blocks to the door of St. Luke's. He sat with me the entire time. Held my hand. And made me laugh. That's the thing about love - anybody can make it great when life is easy and put together and wrapped up in a pretty bow. It's the times when you're at your level worst - the disgusting reality of life, the man behind the curtain, that weeds the men from the boys. That's not the last time we've seen each other in the grandeur of our ugly truths - and though the coveted 'mystery' may have flat lined some time ago in our relationship there hasn't been a single instant that I've questioned our place together. And, in my mind, aint nobody luckier than I am.
But life isn't perfect (what fun would that be?). For all our times of marital bliss we've had some pretty good fights. Scratch that - we've had some spectacular throw downs. One in particular - involving an icy road and a bucket of chicken - resides in infamy as being perhaps the greatest matrimonial spat of all time. All time.
I'll set the scene: It's late December somewhere outside of Bozeman, Montana. We've been driving for give or take 16 hours - for the third day in a row - trying to make it back from Toronto to Seattle. We're straining to stay ahead of a snowstorm that has closed I-90 stranding countless numbers of drivers - the road is a skating rink of black ice and drifting snow - G is white knuckled on the wheel, we're both sleep deprived, stressed and haven't spoken in a good two hours.
The lights of the city emerge on the horizon like little white beacons of blessed hope and, fearing for our lives, we decide to find a motel and call it a night. Of course, neither of us has eaten for a good 12 hours so we're starving and intent on finding whatever is open...after midnight...by the highway...in Bozeman, Montana. Answer? KFC. The Coronal is just getting ready to close the doors for the night when two road weary travelers enter, point to the nearest bucket of chicken, and collapse into red plastic seats as though they were tall glasses of water after walking bruised and barefoot through an unending desert. The girl behind the counter, visually pissed to have to serve two more customers when she had been preparing to cash out for the night, begins the painstaking slo-o-o-w process of bucketing piece after piece of sweet breaded heat lamped goodness - all the while hacking - like full on she could have the black plague or be distributing a lung amongst our chicken hacking - into said food. With each phlegm rattling cough G and I are tensing our collective muscles until she bestows the diseased vessel of chicken to us along with two cokes and a grimace. G pays and we retreat back to the car - the scene of the last 16 hours of mounting tension - when it happens. I have the two cokes carefully balanced on my lap, I turn to fasten my seat belt when G thrusts the bucket at me. In my awkward juggling to receive the chicken I spill the drinks sending ice cold soda down my legs.
Given that this is a story about chicken, let's replace any questionable words with "cluck."
The tension, which we have until this point captured and contained, was now emanating from our bodies in balls of white hot fury. The thrusting of the chicken being the catalyst of wrath resulted in my exclamation of "WHAT THE [cluck] are you DOING?? Can't you see I'm already juggling the [clucking] drinks? Use your [clucking] head!" Which then becomes "WHAT THE [cluck] am I doing??! I've been [clucking] driving for the last 72 [clucking] hours while you [cluck] with the [clucking] radio! Why don't you try to do something useful and HOLD THE [CLUCKING] chicken!"
This is not well received.
Essentially we continue exchanging [clucking] obscenities at each other the entire two minute drive from the parking lot of the KFC to the scariest motel on the planet. This is a building so dilapidated that I question whether it is safe for human occupancy. There are boards in the windows, graffiti on the walls and what I suspect was an evil monkey in one of the windows. It is so cold outside that upon exiting the car our breath doesn't come in plumes - it freezes into ice spears suitable for killing one's spouse. So we stand outside the scariest motel on the planet, in the bitter cold, exchanging violent ice spears until he begins walking away and hits me with: "I'm getting my own room. You can walk home for all I care."
Now, this is an illogical statement coming from a man who is beyond the brink of insanity at this point. I should have recognized that the statement was crazy, foundless and said in anger. I should have taken a deep breath, apologized and attempted to smooth things over after what had unquestionably been a long, exhausting day for us both. I should have done that. But I didn't.
What I did do was nothing short of lose my freaking mind. And in my blind rage I do the one thing that I know will hurt him the most. I don't try to attack him with words. Or my fists. I don't even try to run him over with the car. I throw the chicken. And it all happens in slow motion.
"AAAAARRRRRRRGGGGHHHHHHH!" I cock both arms back over my head and heave forth and towards him with all of my strength. The bucket leaves my hands and begins to soar through the night air...
"NNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" G watches helplessly as the bucket begins its inevitable downward trajectory. He reaches toward it but he's too late - though I'd thrown it at his head, he had been too far away. The chicken misses him and instead hits the icy pavement with an impressive thud. BOOM! It hits so hard that chickens the world over feel it. The bucket skids a foot or more across the ice before it comes to a final halt.
And there it is. Chicken...everywhere. G collapses to the ground, feverishly recovering the breasts, drumsticks and wings strewn across the asphalt, placing them back in the container with haste and with care. In mid motion he stops - and he looks at me. This is a look I will remember because it is the same look I imagine he would give me if I drown a bag full of kittens. It is the worst look he has ever given me. It is so bad, that as he storms inside the motel, bucket tucked firmly under his arm, I remain standing in the parking lot debating freezing to death in the car. I am outside so long that I am certain my eyeballs have frozen solid. Then I realize he still has the keys.
I reluctantly make my way to our room and open the door.
I find him in his underwear fanatically eating the entire contents of the bucket. The. whole. thing. Every piece of diseased, snow crusted chicken leaving only their bony carcases. At that moment the entire fight seemed to burst into a million pieces. I have never laughed so hard in my entire life. I laughed until my eyes thawed with hot tears. I laughed until he was laughing too.
There is not a day that goes by that this man does not make me laugh (intentionally or not). Even in the midst of the worst of things. There have been successes - and monumental failures. Weight lost and gained. And gained. We've moved away from everything familiar and clear across the country. Weathered death. And celebrated birth. Through it all I've been in the company of my best friend.
It's funny that it's through all the small, mundane quiet moments that love truly emanates. Not so much through those grand romantic gestures - though, hey, those are great too. It's in the glasses of water retrieved in the middle of the night because I had been coughing. In locking the front door whenever he leaves, even when I'm still inside, just to keep me safe. In the nicknames. And the kisses. In the driving cross country to make it to my parents house just in time for Christmas. And all the way back. In a blizzard. It's in the silly songs and dances. It's in taping Barney so we can watch it over. And over. And over again. And it's in the face of our baby - because he looks just like his father. The very best father. A father that carried his son in his arms to the emergency room in the middle of the night, and sat with him, and made him laugh. Through the worst of it. Just like he'd carried me.
No - we aren't perfect. And I don't think I want to be - love is in the imperfections. And I [clucking] love our imperfect family.
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