Tuesday, February 10, 2004

The brother pops the question

Our engagement story: The first time he proposed, my husband panicked and asked me in the laundry room of his parent's house because I was upset he was leaving town and he wanted to cheer me up. Then, he lived somewhere else, we broke up with great bitterness and rancor and got back together a long while later. We were still way in love though. So when he asked me as a way of restarting our relationship I think I said something like: "No way! It would never work!" I think I may have gasped in horror. Maybe not those exact words but there was one of those movie epic "noooooooohhhhs" in there like when the mother in law finds the daughter in law hanging from the rafters in the barn. Since he took up randomly asking me at weird moments it's kind of hard to put our finger on the 'yes' moment. I think we were sitting on the grass somewhere after one of those exhausting walks I used to drag him on. He would walk with me in sleet, snow, rain. How could I not marry him? Well, there were lots of reasons not to but we sort of waited it out until we forgot them.

I wanted to spend my life with him. He's amazing. But we were actually capable of having such long fights that we would sometimes even skip meals to continue them. (In my family, that's normal.) So although we were meant for each other I was afraid we might starve. For some reason, this doesn't happen any more.

There are some other details I am leaving out. But it's good for the engagement moment to capture the kind of couple that you are. E.g., I'm the kind of pregnant wife who says things like: "I feel that weird hatred for you coming back." And "It's strange that I'm so in love with you and yet you are annoying me so much." And he's the kind of husband who laughs at me. He knows when to ignore me and when to be amused and I can't think of a better quality in a man. At least one insane enough to marry me.

I hope he doesn't read this. We have different versions of every event throughout our relationship. It's like Rashomon in our house, man.

This is Dooce's description of her marriage and her past and how it all worked out. Some day maybe I'll really talk about marriage. For me, marriage is not at all that you find someone that is so perfect and wonderful that you love them every minute and you are so perfect and wonderful, etc. No, instead it's more like you are both just the same idiotic schmoes you always were but somehow you are so in love and somehow you end up being better to each other than you are to anyone else in the world--and maybe better than you thought humanly possible. I.e., I would kill anyone else I had to see all the time but him I actually love.

AND SHE HAD HER BABY. AND HER BABY IS DANG CUTE. I'm afraid this pooping post takes her to new levels of brilliance. How does she do it? Who else could take such a subject and give it the golden gleam of brilliance. What Melville was to whaling, Dooce is to bodily functions.

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