Our First Anniversary

This Sunday, my husband and I will celebrate our one-year anniversary. To celebrate, we are headed back up to the Wild Basin Lodge to spend the night. This time I have a belly much bigger than I did last year and we are full of a whole new kind of joyful and nervous anticipation for what’s to come in the weeks ahead.

I always wanted a very small wedding. I'm an introvert and am easily overwhelmed by being the center of attention. Andy and I didn't really buy into the wedding planning market and the need to spend endless amounts of time and money planning one day of our lives. We just wanted to be married and spend time with our families.

And so we had a whirlwind, 4-month engagement. We came across an amazing venue, the Wild Basin Lodge, which took care of many of the details and decisions for us. I bought my wedding dress the day after our engagement, and friends and family took care of a lot of the details that I didn't feel like I would be very good at. 

While I was certainly excited for my wedding beforehand, I was stressed about a lot of the little details. We had originally planned an outdoor wedding (yes, in the middle of winter), but there was SO much snow and wind that we decided to move it inside. The Thursday night before, winds were gusting at 80 miles per hour and I was sure that there would be no power on the day of the wedding. I wasn't even sure if our families would make it up the mountain.

And then the day of the wedding arrived. Our families made it. There was power. The final preparations are a blur in my memory. I kept getting updates on who and what had arrived: the flowers, the cake, the bagpiper, the officiant, the photographer. Suddenly the guests had all arrived it was just about time. Everyone left the dressing room except for my immediate family. I realized that I didn't know the last time that we had been together, just the original 6 of us, before we added in a gaggle of brothers-in-law and nieces. My parents presented me with a dime that had been placed in the shoe of the bride for good luck for many generations. With my sisters holding my train and veil and clutching my dad’s arm, we snuck up the outdoor stairs in the snow to make our grand entrance. I was shaking as I watched our families start down the aisle. Then my five nieces tromped out to fulfill their flower girl duties. The big wooden door closed in front of us. The bagpiper's music changed. The door opened again and we headed down the aisle. 

Even though the room was full of familiar faces, it was such an overwhelming moment that I could barely recognize who was who and where everyone was. We were both passed off from our parents to each other, where we stood for the rest of the ceremony: hands clasped and eyes locked. The minister read the names of our loved ones who had passed away or who were unable to make it, and it truly felt like the room was full of the most wonderful kind of energy I had every experienced: a swirl of love and of hope for our future together, standing on the shoulders of many strong marriages before us. It surprised me how moved I was by my own wedding: to say out loud the words that have been repeated by couples declaring their love for centuries and then to have it be declared that we were now husband and wife. I had tried to be so casual and nonchalant about my wedding planning that I had failed to realize how powerful my wedding would actually feel to me!

The memory of the day our marriage began is so strong and powerful in my mind and serves as a reminder of our commitments to each other and the love and hope of those who shared the day with us, both in body and in spirit. This year will bring yet another huge change, and I imagine that the moment that we meet our son for the first time will also be awesomely powerful. 

Here’s to a wonderful second year of marriage. 

The Space Between

There is a car seat in my living room, sitting in its box—unopened.

My friend Kari, a doula and prenatal yoga teacher, has said to me that the only two things you REALLY need before the baby arrives are boobs and a car seat. 

I’ve had the first item covered for a while….so…what happens now that I have the second?

I have about nine weeks left in this pregnancy. Nine weeks to finish getting all of the other stuff I should probably have before the baby comes. Nine weeks left of getting some amount of sleep, of me spending time by myself, of time alone with just my husband. Nine weeks left where my dogs are ridiculously spoiled, of spending uninterrupted time with friends, of feeling the baby move inside of me and imagining what it will be like to finally meet him.

This is an interesting place to be—one of obsessive list-making and online shopping, of excessive amounts of baths and heating pads, of anticipation, excitement, anxiety, and even some moments of calm. It feels like standing at the edge of a deep chasm. The rest between contractions. The space between.

This entire pregnancy has been a dance between dark and light—of quickly changing emotions, of a quickly changing body. Of going from laughter to tears in a matter of seconds, from calm to worry, or from comfort to discomfort in my own body, each time wondering with a sinking feeling, “Is this just how I feel now? Is this my new normal?”

And in all reality, whatever new dark place I have encountered, it has always subsided, whether in a matter of hours, days, or weeks. I have said this before, but I think pregnancy is like normal life turned up a notch. It is life—intensified. And from what I hear, the same is true of parenting. 

So as I make my way to this particular finish line, I hold the awareness that this is just the beginning of a number of new phases, each with their own dance between dark and light. There are things I will miss about pregnancy. And as anxious I am for the tiny newborn phase of life, there are things I will miss about that, too once it’s gone. Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project, started her whole project to become happier with the realization that “…the days are long, but the years are short.” And so I continue to ride out this space between phases of life, taking it one day at a time, one moment at a time….savoring the end of this chapter before the next one rolls in, aware of the uncertainties that lie ahead of me, trusting that it will all enfold as it should.