Celebrating 19 years of marriage

I was making coffee in the dim morning light when my husband walked into the kitchen.

“There’s one of those hopping spiders in the bathroom,” he said. “I couldn’t catch it.”

“In our bathroom?” I asked, hoping I had misheard.

“Yes.”

That’s how our nineteenth wedding anniversary began.

During the day, I tentatively crept into the bathroom a few times, waiting for a spider cricket to jump out at me. Yuck.

Life is full of jumping spiders—and other things that are much more stressful and problematic. Nineteen years into marriage, I’m grateful that I don’t have to experience them alone.

Over the past few weeks, we’ve seen a couple of the people we love lose their spouses of many years. I don’t believe I ever take our marriage for granted, but I’ve definitely been reflecting on how life can so quickly be cut short. Life is full of reminders that we don’t know how much time we have with the ones we love.

John and I didn’t have anything special planned to celebrate our anniversary. Fall is a busy time, and we are just finally finding our rhythm with the new school year. We will go out to dinner together sometime soon when it’s less rainy, and we’re less tired, and the children have less happening in the evenings. Maybe we’ll just look at each other one night at 6 p.m. and say, “Let’s go out to eat.”

But our day was special. It was wonderful just to celebrate the day in its ordinariness—reminiscing, laughing, and just being happy to have some time together.

We dined on homemade stuffed peppers and split a slice of tiramisu from the grocery store bakery.

Because our anniversary fell on Yom Kippur for the first time since our wedding day, John was off from work. He took one of the children to an appointment I normally handle—such a beautiful gift.

I gave him a football in honor of our “Johnny Unitas” anniversary since he was number 19 for the Baltimore Colts.

I marveled at how far we’ve come. Nineteen isn’t a milestone like 20 or 25, but when we knelt together in the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen in September 2004, we didn’t really know what lay ahead. We just knew we wanted to take on all the joys and challenges together. And so we have. Here we are, 19 years later, older, grayer, wiser, and still very much in love.

Marriage is about many big and important things, but it’s also about the little ones. And I happen to believe that the little, ordinary moments are the ones that matter the most.

Oh, and the spider cricket finally hopped my way, and I took care of it.

On to our 20th year!

Copyright © 2023 Catholic Review Media

 Print