The Little Things

Paula Courtney Brown

Marriage means commitment. Of course, so does insanity. -Author Unknown

Yesterday marked the anniversary of my tenth year of marriage. Ten years! How is that possible considering I am only 24 and I didn't marry Jerry Lee Lewis or Roman Polanski?

Anyway, I spent this day like I had always imagined it would be. I woke up to the sound of the ocean, the smell of the seawater and a gentle, sunny breeze blowing in through the white drapes cascading from the open windows. I was slowly coming into consciousness from my blissful slumber in one of those dark mahogany four-poster beds covered with a shimmery white canopy and bedding so fluffy and cool to the touch you felt certain you were sleeping on a cloud instead of anything worthy of being called a bed. The crystal blue waves were gently lapping against the private cabana that was practically floating right over the ocean...

Wait. What is that noise? Why is there a baby crying in Fiji? Who would bring a baby to paradise? Someone shut that kid up! 

Oh yeah. Crap. That's my baby crying and that's my husband snoring next to me. Our first exchange as husband-and-wife-for-a-decade went something like this:

"Happy Anniversary." (said in a yawn that sounded kind of like words)
"Huh? Yeah. You too." (on the way to the bathroom)
"Where's the coffee?"
"Go make it. I'll get the baby."

(It doesn't matter who said what.)

There was no paradise, there was no ocean, there was no breeze and there was certainly no floating hut. My tenth anniversary was nothing like I had imagined it would be. In fact, it was just like any other day. I had come to realize early on in my pregnancy that the dream anniversary vacation we had always talked about taking on the big 1-0 was going to have to wait, for several reasons:

a) We have a new little person that depended on us for his every little want and need. We also have a slightly older little person that depended on us for his every little want and need, mainly candy and the sheer joy he gets out of shortening my lifespan.
b) Even if I could drag my motherly instincts away, we would never be able to bribe pay someone enough to spend seven to ten days with 2 kids they didn't give birth to. With virtually no sleep.
c) Who am I kidding? Like we could afford this trip anyway. Newsflash: not only do kids suck the life right out of you, they also bleed your bank accounts dry, just for kicks. Take take take! When will these kids ever learn not to be so selfish? Nobody told me that having babies meant I had to buy things like food, clothes and diapers instead of Tahitian vacations.

I pouted for a few months and yawned at the thought of our anniversary and then decided to compromise. We couldn't go to paradise so we decided to do the next best thing: buy sleep.

We called in reinforcements in the form of a grandmother, packed an overnight bag, hit the highway (to Nashville), lunched, shopped, got a hotel room and slept for 72 straight hours. Ok that last part was a lie, but we did sleep quite a bit- then we woke up, went to dinner, came back to the hotel and slept some more. And it was, in a word, perfect. Besides the sleep, I actually got to eat a couple of meals at a normal pace without the fear of one or both kids having a meltdown and have a conversation or two with my spouse that a) wasn't shouted over the squawks of a baby or SpongeBob and b) didn't involve work, swine flu or the consistency and/or frequency of baby poop! I felt so twenty-something. I also got to wear clothes that nobody puked on. Bonus!

I guess that is what growing up and parenthood is all about- appreciating the little things now, looking forward to the big things later, and finding a way to make your husband understand that if you're not in Fiji on your 20th anniversary, someone (him) is going to be really, really sorry. And someone else (me) is going going to be really, really single.