MarLa Sink Druzgal

Today’s post is for my husband. We married on New Year’s Eve, 1993.

The morning after you drove me home in the snow, when my bicycle was all I had for the twelve-mile ride; the morning after we spent the night talking in your car by the lake, when we watched the otter swim past…

I called my mom and told her I met the man I was going to marry.

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I farted on our first date, and you laughed, I knew you would love me, raw.

I farted on purpose.

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When we separated after only a few years, I thought it would kill me.

It made me stronger. It made us stronger.

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You talk every time I start to take a video, and interrupt me every time I’m writing, and don’t have the best way with words.

When I am in crisis, your timing and your words are always perfect. This is the only absolute that counts. And I love you forever for that, and more.

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When I lost our babies, then lost my womb, you comforted me, gave me time to heal, to become me again.

Then, after time softened the edges, you told me you didn’t marry me for children. You said you married me for love…and my boobs.

.W

When men shake their head at you in consolation, in wonderment, in commiseration that you have “survived” so many years of marriage, you smile, and say you’re lucky.

And then I feel even luckier.

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When someone asks you, with serious face, how we managed to be married so long, and we still seem to *like* each other, you say, with your equally serious face, that it’s work, sometimes hard work, but you work together and it’s worth it.

Then later when I purr over your response, you say that it is work, and friendship, and knowing that when we fight and we think things are broken, they are never really broken, just chipped, or cracked, or whatever cliche you like at that moment, and that we will be “us” again tomorrow, or the day after, or maybe longer if it really hurts. And I realize you’ve just said another perfect thing, and I love you forever for that, and more.

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Thank you for this anniversary holiday. But thank you, more, for the twenty years to reach it.

Happy Twentieth, Kurt.

Love, Marla