Thirteen

It's hard for me to think of myself as a person who does anything for 13 straight years, including being married. But, apparently, I am a person who does that...and so is Baroy. Our 13th wedding anniversary was on Tuesday, St. Patrick's Day.

[What? It was the perfect date for two Jews to marry. Before the 'wedding season,' so much cheaper. Took the whole 'color scheme' decision right out of my hands...we even signed our marriage license and our ketubah in green ink! And, most importantly, the place we wanted didn't already have a wedding planned for that day. Sold.]

It was last Sunday, amidst the bustle of serving food to all 18 members of our Sunday gang, that Baroy looked at me and said, "We haven't even thought about our anniversary and what we're going to do, have we?" And I looked back at him with pleading eyes. "If you love me, your present to me will be that we won't do presents or cards or ANYTHING, because I just...can't...right now. It's too much. There's too much going on."

"Done," he said. And so it was...aside from the his-and-hers Facebook status updates announcing our pleasure at finding ourselves still married, still happy, 13 years later.

We're hoping to get out to dinner one of these nights soon. It's hard, though. I'm not quite ready to leave Em to watch N for several hours at night; we do an hour or two during the day on rare occasions, but that's it. And the thought of paying for a babysitter sort of takes all the momentum out of us to actually do this thing. So we'll wait for a convenient night, one where one of our friends (TC waves at Susanna, Ambre, Deb) is home and wouldn't mind an extra couple of kids. Or we'll just not get around to it. Which is OK, too. Because, really, aside from feeling like other people would think it's a sign that there's something wrong with our marriage for us to care this little, to make this little of an effort...it really doesn't bother me.

After all, our marriage was never about candlelit dinners at a steakhouse. It's always been about making a home together, raising our children, just being. It's always been about dinners in a well-lit, warm, spicy-smelling kitchen...which is exactly how we commemorated it. Thirteen years from the day we took vows to do just this.