So here I sit, in my home, on my porch steps with a tall cool glass of water, my cigarettes next to me and my netbook on my lap. I've swapped my dress and my wedge sandals for a tanktop and cutoffs, and peeled off most of my jewelry, although I've yet to wash the makeup from my face.
Today was indeed a day of love. Jeremy and I loaded our boys in the van and headed for Traverse City today to see two of my best friends, Mat and Betina, be joined in wedded bliss, an event four years and a couple tragedies in the making. Their love for each other is so strong it would put titanium to shame. They've been down hard paths, both of them, but it's served to strengthen the depth of their feeling for each other, I think. They glowed with it. They shone with a radiance that hurt my eyes, in a good way. Their wedding was small, and the fact that we were privileged enough to be there made my heart swell nearly to the bursting point.
We left immediately after their ceremony and drove to Elk Pointe Beach, to watch my sister and her then-fiance, now-husband get married. The traffic was crazy, and we were a few minutes late, but we made it, tired sticky toddler and hyper sticky pre-schooler in tow, in time to see the last half of the ceremony. My niece, my sister's daughter, stood up with the bride and groom, and was equally as beautiful as my sister the bride. Again, the love shone out over all in attendance like a blessing, a benediction. We had to leave the reception early - I was getting a headache from the heat and the driving, and from the stale air that the fan forced into our van - but I posted what would have been my toast on my blog here. Hopefully Jeni gets to read it.
And now, I'm at home and comfortable, and my mind's been going over what I was so lucky to have witnessed today. Two entirely different ceremonies, both in participants and in style - my sister's was a rather larger, more formal affair - and yet so similar in the love that glowed from the eyes of the two newly wedded couples.
Recently, I signed on with the marriage boycott group at this site. I did this as a matter of choice - until marriage becomes legal for a couple, regardless of their sexuality, in all fifty states, it will never be an option for me. My adopted brother is gay, as is one of my dear friends, so this is a matter that is very close to my heart.
While I was on that site, I read about the marriage alternatives. There are a few: simply staying single, living together without marriage, or commitment ceremonies, which can be anything from a marriage without the legal paperwork to a big party to celebrate your couplehood.
Jeremy and I have been living together for four years now. He moved in with me about two or three weeks after we became a couple. Some might view that as rushing, but to make a long story short and sweet, we were spending every night together anyway, he was behind on the rent for his place, and it just made more sense for him to go ahead and move in with me, rather than keep paying an outrageous sum of money for what had basically turned into a five-room storage unit. The other, less practical and more emotional reason that I asked him to move in with me was simple: Despite the fact that we worked together five days a week and got drunk together six nights a week, I missed him when he wasn't around. I couldn't sleep without him lying next to me. A week into the relationship, I couldn't picture my life without him.
We have two kids together, two wonderful, beautiful, intelligent, happy, active, loving little boys. We've been through more than our share of hard times, and we've had our good times too. He nursed me through recovery from a hard labor and delivery with Matthew, and through the recovery from my C-section with Jonah and my tubal ligation. He held me as I cried when I found out my grandma had passed away. I held him as he cried when his uncle Bob died. We held each other when Corey passed on. He was by my side, holding my hand as I pushed Matthew into this world, and when the surgeon lifted Jonah out of my womb.
While it is an intrinsic and undeniable part of my nature to question everything, I have never questioned his love for me, or mine for him. I am positive that we will be together for the rest of our lives.
And yet, for some reason, although the thought of marriage fills me with cold dread, and though I've signed on with the boycott, the thought of a commitment ceremony has me intrigued. In fact, it's something I'd like to do.
Why?
While I'm not jealous of Mat and Betina or Jeni and Andrew - I feel nothing but joy for them - I want a little bit of that joy that they had today for myself. While I know that Jeremy and I will be together for a very very long time - the rest of our lives, I think - I want to promise that to him in front of our family and friends.
My dad's asked me a few times why we don't get married. His mom has said the same. Neither one of us believe that it's necessary, but it seems to me a commitment ceremony would be a nice compromise.
My marriage to the ex was a joke. It was a rushed affair at the courthouse - I wore an old blue sundress and yellow work boots, for God's sake, and I knew going into it that it wouldn't last. There was a part of my brain screaming "run!" the entire time, and yet, I didn't. I couldn't. He did an excellent job of separating me from my family, my friends, everyone that could have talked me out of it. He kept the gas in the car too low for me to go to my parents' house to tell them - perhaps because he knew they'd talk me out of it. Who knows? It's all water under the bridge now, another sordid scuzzy memory I keep locked in my deep dark past that I do my best not to remember.
I guess, what I want, is to erase that memory. To replace it with something bright and beautiful. I want to walk towards Jeremy in a dress, with that joy on my face, and tell him in front of our loved ones that I'll stay with him until he doesn't want me any more.
Not a marriage, no. For one thing, divorces are nasty, messy affairs, and should there come a time when he decides he doesn't want to be with me any more, I want him to be able to step out of my life as easily as he entered it, with no court involvement and no monetary cost.
Just a simple announcement of the love we've grown together over the past four years, and the love we'll keep growing till we're old and gray. To erase the bad memory and replace it with a good one, with the man I've loved since I was young, skinny, and immortal, and that I still love.
Of course, that's just what I want. I mentioned it to him once, about a year ago. He never replied to me with his thoughts on the matter, and so I take that as my answer that it's simply something he's not interested in. Maybe it's too close to an actual wedding for him - I don't know. Maybe he's simply not interested. Like I said, I don't know. And I don't have the nerve to bring it up to him again. I don't know that I ever will. I dropped a comment about it today without thinking - that if we ever did have a commitment ceremony, that I'd want Betina to stand up with me.
Again, no response.
So I'll take that for his answer, that it's a no. Which is fine. I wouldn't want to push him into doing something he didn't want to, and something we couldn't afford to do anyway. It's a silly thought, I suppose - I'm still looking for a job, and we're having a hard enough time paying for our bills anyway. But I'll save the thought, I guess, for daydream material.
After all, a girl can dream, right? And while mine may not be the standard dream of white dress and tux, a last name swapped out for a new one, the carried-across-the-threshold and the white picket fence and all that, well, then, I've never been the standard sort of girl either.
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