I’ve never really been into decorating, party planning, or fashion, but I’m a huge believer in the power of ritual and music to strengthen emotional connection and create lasting memories, so when I thought about my wedding-- which, I did, near constantly, from the time I was eight or nine years old-- I thought primarily about the first dance. I’m really picky about love songs. They have to ring absolutely true to me from beginning to end with no forced rhymes or cliches, and avoiding cliche in a love song is really difficult. It also has to remind me of one person and one person only for all time in order for it to matter to me. There are plenty of wonderful love songs I stopped listening to after a relationship ended and will never intentionally hear again. All my neuroses made it pretty difficult to find the perfect first dance song when I planned my actual, real-life, going-to-happen wedding in 2008.
I’ll never forget hearing Bob Dylan’s “I’ll Keep It With Mine” for the first time. I was walking from the parking lot on George Street to a class in Maybank Hall. A few days earlier, I’d found an old mp3 player and asked Thom to load it up with music, including a bunch of random Bob Dylan songs, many of which I’d never heard. The first few chords immediately made me think of weddings, and by the end of the first verse, I was standing on sidewalk, texting Thom through my tears. I think I finally found the right song, I wrote.It’s a Bob Dylan song. I’ve never heard it before. Thom, who had patiently listened to me play and list the pros and cons of close to a hundred possible songs (not counting the rest of the songs from our wedding playlist, all of which I painstakingly chose myself-- I have a problem), texted back something like, Well, I’ve never heard it, but if you’re sure that’s what you want, it works for me.His response only confirmed for me that I wanted this particular song to be the musical theme of our marriage, so I’m going to use the song as a tool to organize my thoughts and do even a little justice to the first ten years of our marriage, and the first twenty years of having Thom in my life.
It’s hard to write about something when you’re in it, because it’s hard to see it clearly. That’s especially true for me when it comes to marriage because my marriage is the culture of my life. It surrounds me, it informs every decision I make, it’s the entirety of my life. Especially because we have moved so much during the course of our marriage, there have been plenty of times (including the six months we spent in Germany, where I don’t speak the language) when Thom has literally been the only other adult I know and the only person who has any idea what I’m talking about. That makes him really hard for me to write about. What is there to say about him that’s not readily apparent to me every second of the day? What could I ever possibly forget about our life and our love and the way we work as a family?
I try not to listen to “I’ll Keep It With Mine” too often because I don’t want it to lose its sparkle. I don’t want to get tired of it the way people do with favorite songs they overplay. But when I do play it, as I did this morning, I am immediately taken back to the that moment in Charleston, listening to it for the first and being flooded with memories of all the life we had already shared and all the imagined moments that waited for us in the future.
You will search, babe/ at any cost/ but how long, babe/ can you search for what is not lost?
I hear the slow and steady beat and I think, as I did then, of the low-key way I have been able to rely on my husband’s love for me since we first became friends as freshmen at Charleston County School of the Arts. I remember, as I did then, one specific moment from our senior year. We had Creative Writing-- our major-- first thing in the morning, and we were writing our senior theses, which meant we spent a lot of time lounging around on the couches in the “writing nook” and a small amount of time writing furiously in an attempt to meet our deadlines. On this particular moment, I was upset. I don’t remember what exactly had happened, but my high school years were difficult and exhausting, so it could have been any number of things. What I do remember with absolute clarity is walking dropping my bookbag on the floor and making a beeline straight for couch, where Thom sat writing in a notebook. He had a black hoodie that he wore almost every day, and I used to borrow it all the time because he was always hot and I always cold. On this day, he saw me coming toward him, my face already crumpling with tears, and did what he always did. Without saying a word, he moved over to make room for me on the couch and tossed me his hoodie. I still remember the feeling of sinking into that couch, the safest place in the safest room with the safest person in my life, pulling the hood of my head, and falling asleep while Thom continued writing his notebook, taking a break every page or so to pat my knee. He wasn’t my boyfriend, he wasn’t trying to get anything from me, he wasn’t being dramatic or prying into my business. He was just letting me know, as always, that he was there. He cared. I was safe. I could take a nap.
Everybody will help you/ some people are very kind/ but if I can save you any time/ come on, give it to me/ I’ll keep it with mine.
That feeling, of being in my safest place with my safest person and knowing nothing absurd would be expected of me, has really followed me through most of our relationship. The feeling, of safety, of comfort, of not-much-going-on, is so hard to write about because there truly is not much going on. When we first moved in together, I remember being thrilled because Thom would bring me a cup of tea when I got home from work in the evenings. I was happy because we would put Lucy to sleep and then eat black beans and rice for dinner while binge watching TV shows in our bed. It was thrilling, but so boring to write about, that he was always down to go to the zoo, pick strawberries, or get ice cream. He rubbed my feet when I worked jobs requiring me to stand all day. He tickled my arm every single night to calm my anxiety and help me fall asleep. When it became evident that my beloved grandmother wasn’t going to live long, he spent the money and time off we’d been saving for a honeymoon in Prague on a road trip to San Antonio, complete with screaming toddler, so I could say goodbye. He bought me a car, fixed it when it broke down, and then immediately forgave me when I totaled it the next day.
I can’t help it/ if you might think I am odd/ when I say I’m loving you/ not for what you are, but what you’re not.
He forgave me for a lot. Very shortly before we started dating, I canceled a wedding and ended a long emotionally abusive relationship, the legacy of which was an incredible temper, an elevated fight-or-flight response, and a total lack of knowledge or experience when it came to fighting fair and talking things through with love. Shortly after we got engaged, we had a minor disagreement. A few minutes later, he accidentally slammed a cabinet in our kitchen, and I fully flipped out. I screamed, I cried, I took off my engagement ring and threw it at him. I also threw a bag of shredded cheese at his head and kicked him out of the house. Then I went to my mom’s and worried that he was gone forever, that he had finally see what a rotten person I was and he would never agree to marry me now. Instead, I returned to our little duplex with Lucy to find him sitting in bed. He gave me my ring back. He told me he loved me, that he was never, ever going to leave me no matter how many bags of cheese I threw at his head, and then he forgave me. Or didn’t even really forgive me, because he hadn’t been angry to begin with. He understood. He understood me. It was the first of many times we would be forced to confront my history of trauma in our marriage. It gets better, but it will always be hard. Sometimes I’m pretty sure it’s harder for him in many ways than it is for me. Struggling to understand even when it’s hard, coming toward me when it would be easier to back away, listening as I try to figure things out, reassuring me every step of the way that he isn’t going anywhere.
Everybody will help you/ discover what you set out to find/ but if I can save you any time/ come on, give it to me/ I’ll keep it with mine.
Our fifth years of marriage,we were living in the Atlanta suburbs because Thom had worked incredibly hard and had taken us from food stamps to middle class in a whirlwind year that actually turned out to be pretty horrible. I’d thought the adjustment to the suburbs would be easy for me, and we rented a big house with a deck where I could watch deer from the back porch. But I was grieving the loss of my brother, physically and emotionally isolated, and physically the most sick I’d ever been. I cried all the time-- just like I do now, but in a bad way. “I can’t do this anymore,” I said. “I have to get out of here. I hate this place. I’ve made a huge mistake.”
That year, Thom gave me an ornament for Christmas. It looked like a bathtub and, after the trip from Atlanta to Charleston in the trunk of our car, it was broken. With the ornament, he’d written me a note that said something like, <i>I know we didn’t get to do anything special for our fifth anniversary. I promise I’ll make it up to you.</i> Having kids early had been great, but my one regret was that I’d missed the opportunity to travel more and study abroad. As previously mentioned, we had spent our European honeymoon money to visit my ailing grandmother and then had another baby almost immediately. But somehow, Thom managed to pull an amazing opportunity out of his hat and move us away from the horrible suburbs and to Europe for six months. We spent our sixth anniversary in Prague, where we’d originally planned to honeymoon, and got to ring in the new year in Venice with the kids and my oldest, dear friend, Lauren. He has the ability to make magic like that.
The train leaves/ at half past ten/ but it will be back/ in the same old spot again.
The last verse of our wedding song has always been a difficult one for me. It means different things at different times, but over the years, I’ve taken it to mean that we are who we are, life is life, and sometimes it’s monotonous, but it's still easier with partner. Life with young kids is often monotonous, and Thom signed on for that at only 21 years old, when we had only been dating for three months. Lucy’s biological father wasn’t in the picture, my ex had decided he wanted nothing to do with her, and Thom wrote her a letter (that I wasn’t supposed to see) telling her that he was secretly happy that she didn’t have a dad in the picture because I’d had historically bad taste in men and he was hoping to step in and be her dad, telling her that hopefully everything would work out and she would read the letter when she was older, unable to remember a time when he wasn’t her father. He asked me to marry him. Lucy started calling him Daddy. Eleven years later, he is her dad as much as he is Stella’s dad. He’s there for every school performance, basketball game, tantrum, family vacation, and couch cuddle. For both of kids, he has worked through some serious hardships to be the best possible father he can be, providing them with a stability I never thought Lucy would be lucky enough to have.
Another thing Thom manages to provide that I never thought I’d be lucky enough to experience is me the financial freedom to pursue my passions and activism without having to worry about money. It’s funny because most people think of the partner who works outside the home as having all the freedom, but he is always there to work from home or take time off to watch the kids when I say, “I’m going to Charleston to plan a march” or “I’m traveling to DC to protest the inauguration” or “I’m going to be working pretty much nonstop on this election and it’s all going to be for free” or “don’t talk to me, I’m doing volunteer counseling in the basement.” Not only does he serve a support role while I go out and do my thing, he is always standing right next to me or sitting in the front row when I have speaking engagements, feel nervous, or just need a little extra help. He understands and supports me in my passions and social justice work, he brags about me constantly to anyone who will listen. I can never thank him enough for that.
The conductor/ he’s still stuck on the line/ but if I can save you any time/ come on, give it to me/ I’ll keep it with mine.
It’s funny because I always think I don’t have much to say about my marriage, but now that I’ve started, I feel like I haven’t written nearly enough. I haven’t written about the time I had to have a c-section and was devastated over the possibility of a recurrence of post-partum depression or harm to our baby, so he walked into the operating room and whispered, “I’m not wearing anything under these scrubs.” I’ve haven’t written about the morning after Stella was born, when he patiently waited right outside the bathroom for me to pee for the first time (moms know) and then helped me put my giant mesh underwear back on while my friend Adam waited in the next room with a bottle of champagne. I haven’t written about the week after my brother died when I was so wracked with grief that I couldn’t stand to leave my parents’ house and go home, so he took care of the kids for me and let me stay there on an air mattress on the floor until I felt strong enough to face my life again. I haven’t written about the time I was truly, truly insane and he should have left me and didn’t leave me, but took me to Disney World instead. I haven’t written about the fact that he cut off contact with his parents to support his daughters and our values as family., and has worked so hard to never place the blame of that loss on my shoulders, even when it would be convenient to do so. I haven’t written about the fact that he still-- after over eleven years-- rubs my back and tickles my arm every single night so I can fall asleep. I haven’t written, at least not enough, about what it’s been like to know from the age of fourteen that Thomas Rowell has my back.
The thing about getting married when you’re twenty-three is that you think you’re adult with life experience and a plan, but you’re just a kid with a baby brain and no idea of what the future holds. The day I got married, I had no idea what our life would look like. I didn’t know if we would graduate college, where we would work, where we would live, or even who we would be. I didn’t know how to deal with conflict, how to keep a clean house (I still don’t), how to be a good parent, or how to pay my bills. But I knew that I wanted to learn all that stuff with Thom. And I’m not going to lie, it’s been hard. We’ve been through the greatest moments and worst, most heartbreaking times, none of which we could have ever imagined. We’ve fought a lot. We’ve annoyed the hell out of each other. There have been plenty of times I think we both thought there was no way to make this work, we had made a huge mistake, and we needed a time machine to undo what we had broken. We’ve seen each other through the deepest despair. But we have also seen each other shine, celebrated one another’s wins, and worked together to raise two of the greatest, most wonderful people on the planet.
Would I suggest getting married at twenty-three? No, probably not. But if you do, I have a suggestion for you. I suggest you marry someone who will change your flat tire in the rain even when they’re furious with you, support you in including the Goodridge v. Dept. of Public Health* decision in your wedding programs, indulge your abiding love for roadside attractions, tell you they love losing arguments with you because it helps them see things from a different perspective, and work as hard as they can all the days of their life to make your dreams come true. I suggest you marry someone like Thom.
I love you, honey. Happy 10th Anniversary.
* Marriage is a vital social institution. The exclusive commitment of two individuals to each other nurtures love and mutual support; it brings stability to our society. For those who choose to marry, and for their children, marriage provides an abundance of legal, financial, and social benefits. In return it imposes weighty legal, financial, and social obligations....Without question, civil marriage enhances the "welfare of the community." It is a "social institution of the highest importance." It is central to the way the Commonwealth identifies individuals, provides for the orderly distribution of property, ensures that children and adults are cared for and supported whenever possible from private rather than public funds, and tracks important epidemiological and demographic data....Marriage also bestows enormous private and social advantages on those who choose to marry. Civil marriage is at once a deeply personal commitment to another human being and a highly public celebration of the ideals of mutuality, companionship, intimacy, fidelity, and family.... Because it fulfils yearnings for security, safe haven, and connection that express our common humanity, civil marriage is an esteemed institution, and the decision whether and whom to marry is among life's momentous acts of self-definition....It is undoubtedly for these concrete reasons, as well as for its intimately personal significance, that civil marriage has long been termed a "civil right."
