It all began with a cup of tea.
He wanted one.
And so did I.
We were the only ones.
Earlier, on that cold walk through the night to the student flat where a group of us were meeting for a DVD, there were questions about peanut butter (isn’t that what Americans eat?), and secret smiles, and I thought he must be very young.
I was in Scotland.
The world was green, and there were castles, and though I could hardly understand a word of what he said, my red-haired Scottish loon from the village on the sea,
on the pages of my journal I swore I could marry that boy.
And, more to my amazement than anyone else’s, I did.
We moved to Scotland, and life began.
It began. It didn’t end.
Not like the movies or the books, where it ends with “I do.”
No, that was the beginning.
And I went to teaching and he went to working. And meals were cooked, and floors were swept, and a baby came. And although it happened, every few months, that I’d pinch myself and wonder how little me ever ended up there, in the Highlands of Scotland, most of the time it was just life.
And while life was happening, it also happened—as it happens to us all, I think—that somewhere between the tenth time washing the dishes and the hundredth time making the bed, between the hundredth night up with a crying baby and the thousandth time wiping a toddler’s face, that I began to wonder.
I wondered if this was right.
Because this was not how happily ever after was supposed to go.
Castles and Scottish mist aside, I wasn’t supposed to be tired all of the time, and the housework wasn’t supposed to take so long. I wasn’t supposed to get lonely, and we weren’t, no we weren’t supposed find within our hearts such moments of hate that with our words and our eyes and a turning of our backs we would wound each other. Leave each other bruised, starved, and with our very hands widen the cavern between ourselves and God and between each other.
And yet we did.
And the days were dark.
We could have walked, either one of us, in search of our real life. Our real fairy tale. And though we didn’t feel it, we chose to believe it when we heard that the grass is always greener where you water it.
And even yellow grass, or even brown and dry, can become green. But you’ve got to water it every day.
Even when it’s the last thing you want to do.
And you can try to be happy with it just being all right, or so-so, but I’ve got to ask you, like I asked myself, don’t you want the very best?
More than anything, I love to talk of those first days.
The first dance. The first giggle. The first time I dared to touch his shoulder with my head.
Because I know I must remember who he is. Who he really is, deep inside—that boy I first met.
We’re the same people, he and I, deep, deep inside.
Oh, sometimes we’re both still so angry, we’d like to do a whole lot more than spit. And it takes a whole lot more than a little grace to make it through.
But love is not self-seeking.
And real love gets a little less sleep, a little less time for what we want, a little less of what we most love to eat, to make the other person happy. To give them joy. To make them strong.
Never underestimate the power of a smile. The power of a kind word.
Like water to grass, they are spring rain to the soul.
No, life doesn’t end with “I do.” That is where it begins.
For you and your Mr. Darcy.
For me and mine.
Avonlea x
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Happy Little Sigh
Homemaking Inspiration from Literature
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“Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person’s ultimate good as far as it can be obtained.”
~ C.S. Lewis
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