It's so strange to have firsts again. After five years together you tend to get pretty used to somebody and when that includes 4+ years of living together, moving together a couple of times and planning a wedding together... you maybe start to think all your firsts are gone.
All you people who have been married for decades can just quit your damn laughing right now, I'm trying to be sincere over here.
Seriously though - we had our first kiss before we started dating (whoops.) Our first date was so long ago we don't always agree on what movie we saw anymore (Fracture.) We moved in together... four and a half years ago. We got over the whole 'we have bodily functions' thing quite a while ago. We've moved together... four times now? There are a lot of great things about knowing someone that well. You have jokes that only two people in the world get. You can have pretend fights over a car arm rest and know what it means. You have a nook to fall asleep in. You can be called Puddles and not find it offensive. You can listen to the man you love tell you that he's going to go drop a deuce and really not even flinch at it. You can exist in the knowledge that he's going to be so pissed at you for writing that sentence on your blog. But that he'll get over it. (Right, hunny?) You can know that buying a new couch is probably going to involve sitting on every couch in the metro area. You can rest assured that unless you find something totally awesome and/or funny - you'll never have to have anything heart-shaped in your house. You can
really make the other person super angry in no time flat on purpose. Just a few well placed words, a couple of dishes here and there, hell a towel left in the right place and you can have your partner
fuming. And sometimes you want that. It's super fucking weird - but you do. You want to pick a fight. And you don't want to pick it with anyone else. You've come to the bizarre decision that having a huge fight with the person you live with, the person you love, the person who means the world to you, that you cannot live without; is the best possible decision you can make at the time. Truly it probably is the best decision you can make because you
also know how to make them forgive you in no time flat. With a word, a look, flowers bought for the first time in years, a note left in just the right place. With that special kind of torture that only redheads know how to do.
Knowing someone well enough to marry them has it's perks, it really does. Well beyond joint taxes and lower car insurance rates.
And yet... My husband and I went on our first walk as a married couple the other day. We held hands and walked down the street to the park by our house.
We pointed at puppies and pretty flowers together.
We stopped as I took pictures.
We hip checked each other as we walked down the path in the woods.
We made fun of one another. Because we're both dorks, and really like pointing that out to one another.
We've probably gone on a thousand walks together. We've done all those things before. We've probably spent weeks of our lives holding hands. We now have a running count (if you knew how I mistyped that, you'd be laughing) of who has pointed out more
trains to the other, let alone the most puppies or flowers. He is a man who has probably lost count of the number of hobbies he tolerates in me, thus I doubt he hardly notices stopping for pictures anymore. And to try to even describe how used we are to making fun of one another is just impossible. I can't separate it from our normal conversations, from our day-to-day interactions, from our passing one another while we're getting dressed in the morning. It is so ingrained into our relationship that it would be weird if he
weren't making fun of me.
But this walk, this one in one thousand, this was special. Because I can't help but know that it's the first time that we took a walk as husband and wife. For as little as that dumb, pointless piece of paper means to us at the end of the day it's still this giant deal. He still has to do a tremendous amount of paperwork if he wants to leave me now. I still can't help but notice that holding his hand feels a little different with a wedding ring on it. And I can't help but want to walk on his left side - so that I can notice it. I can't help but look at him and know that we'll go on thousands and thousands of more walks and he'll hold my hand. And we'll stop as I take pictures, and we'll point out puppies and pretty flowers (and trains) to one another. And we'll hip check each other as we walk in the woods or along the sidewalk. And we'll make fun of each other. Because we're giant dorks. And we really like pointing that out to one another.
And for all those thousands and thousands of times he'll be my husband. That sentence makes me happier than I can say. It warms my grinchy heart and all those good things. But this walk was special. It was like a first date, really. Only better. Because I know all those other things already. Like where my nook is, and how to make him angry, and that Puddles is actually very cute, and that we both poo and that's okay, and that redheads are the best (obviously), and what movie we saw on our first date, and that we're going to have to sit on all of them before we buy a couch. He's my Steve. And that's greatest.
But just after that is that we just got married. So we do still have a few good firsts left in us yet.
