“How’s married life?”
“How should I know? I’ve only been married a week and four of those days were vacation!”
-Lt. Citrus and C.
Usually when reality hits me it does so with enough force to break teeth. So here I am, a week into marriage, flinching and waiting for some kind of blow to fall…but it hasn’t landed yet!
Daae says her favorite part of being married is waking up and seeing her husband next to her every morning. J. and I, neither of us being morning people, tend to ignore the alarm and fasten our eyes firmly shut against the light for at least a half hour after we had nobly intended to get up, and then try and urge the other person to take their shower first so that one of us can sleep even longer.
After we’ve both managed to get presentable in spite of ourselves, I’m off to work on campus and he’s off to the city for 4-8 hours a day where his summer job is helping a firm write an article for publication (meanwhile C., being the resident aspiring writer in our newly hatched family, is stuck back as a secretary for a bunch of people who managed to overlook her several emails warning them of her week-long leave and created all sorts of muddles for her to sort out when she returned to their grateful, frantic arms. There’s no justice in the world!). After work I’m back at the gym, which after a two week absence has been hellish, for an hour before heading home. Where, depending on work, chores, and moving in necessities, J. may or may not be.
And as for setting up house! We opened our hoard of wedding presents monday evening, feeling rather smug about how orderly we were being about writing down who sent what, disposing of boxes, and carefully sorting…until we stepped back and surveyed the carnage from outside our little cardboard cocoon. We looked at the two rooms filled with receipts, wrapping paper, and presents, looked at the clock (midnight), looked at each other, and went to bed. And did pretty much the same thing last night when confronted with the wreckage again.
So far I think we’re a pretty boring couple.
But there is this. When unwrapping presents and pulling out the one from Dr. Don, he listened intently when I went off in raptures about how Don had sent me plates! The story of which is that last summer I was in Oxford with him and some other students and we’d gone with him to the Oxford English Dictionary projectwhere we had a presenter, who was also a researcher on the team, who shared his favorite word with us: twiffler. Which literally means it’s a plate that can’t make up it’s mind what size it is! Don had given us twifflers and I was ridiculously excited about it! J., who did not tease me as he usually does for being a hopeless nerd, got this big smile on his face. And when I rather mulishly demanded, “Why are you grinning?” he just kissed me and said, “You’re my wife.”
Which, I’m not going to lie, makes me pretty giddy to hear.
“You are fashionable, fabulous and sharp witted.” Well, I hope so. “You most resemble Alexander the Great: you are an excellent leader, enjoy power, and are ambitious.” Er, guilty about the power hungry bit…but that seems to clash with, “You are a natural homebody, you enjoy quiet and don’t like to take the lead.” Then there was, “You are a sign of happiness in many peoples’ lives and bring hope to the masses,” which is immediately juxtaposed with, “You have no friends. You get what you want and it doesn’t bother you to deceive others to get it. People are intrigued by you but don’t trust you.” Ouch! “You are spunky with a dash of sass, but somewhat untouchable.” That’s a lot nicer sort of intriguing than the You Have No Friends approach! But…”You have a tendency to suck the life out of people, leaving them a tragic wreck of their former selves.” Double ouch! I’m then complimented by the outcome of, “You are very intelligent and always think before you act,” which is a flat out lie as proved by the next diagnosis, “You tend to have a temper and say things you wish you could take back,” which is unfortunately true. “You’re a major klutz!” Duh.
Future parents-in-law coming to see the flat where their son will be living once he marries me = mad dash to scrub bathroom, wipe down kitchen, throw multiple lemons down (our incomprehensibly aggravating) garbage disposal, make bed, stash Victoria Secret bags/boxes and issues of Cosmo from scandalous friends (seriously, people, are you trying to get me killed?!) , and spray whole house with happy, fresh apple scent. All for half an hour of sitting in our living room making small talk. And since I have NO food in the place (thank goodness they didn’t look in the FRIDGE!) I had to wait until today to buy myself a post-parental Cafe Rio Tres Leches cake! 
Now, my family is fantastic, but I’d have a nose the length of London Bridge if I said we were healthy and normal. We’ve had a lot of problems, not that other families don’t of course, and they have spanned generations and decades with a lot of resentment built up. Hey, we make it work, but my family has always been a major hold-up for me in relationships; my parents’ marriage and our dynamic as a family worked, per se, but it wasn’t what I wanted for myself. But it was the only example of marriage or family I grew up with, so I didn’t really expect to be able to break the cycle. I have higher hopes these days but I still get nervous about thinking of being a wife (and MANY years down the road, a mom). I have this awful fear that one day I will be the one sitting in a psychiatrist’s office casually reading a magazine to hide the inward guilt gnawing at me that my kid is in the next room having his brain picked apart to undo the damage that I have done. Ghastly!
Small Dog Syndrome 