Four Decades

On choosing the same person ten thousand times

I met him forty years ago. We were almost nineteen. We worked at the same company, went to different colleges, and existed inside the kind of summer that feels like it belongs to someone else once it is over. I knew almost immediately. Not because I was young and foolish, though I was young. Because there was something about the way he looked at me that did not feel like performance. The way he made me feel. The way he challenged me. The way he was not afraid to go against the grain. He was handsome and intelligent, and I recognized him the way you recognize something you did not know you were looking for.

I did not know then what I was agreeing to.

I did not know about the hard years. The ones that hollow you out before they build you back. I did not know we would lose Meghan. I went silent. He went numb. People said the wrong things. Well-meaning people. It was worse anyway. My neighbor planted flowers for me on the days I could not open the blinds. The open blinds had been our signal to each other that I was ready for our walk together with the dogs. She kept planting. I did not know about the miscarriages, the quieter losses. I did not know we would become, at certain points, two misfits holding onto each other in a world that still does not know quite what to do with us.

I did not know any of that. And I chose him anyway.

When Meghan died, he made me homemade pesto and fresh bread. That was my food for what felt like months. He could not fix what happened. He knew that. So he made sure I ate. He prayed. He showed up in the ways that do not get eulogized but hold everything together. We grieved differently. We supported each other the best we could. We held on.

I got to watch him become a father. The patience. The showing up. The particular way he loves our sons, authentic, the kind of real that does not announce itself.

Forty years is not one choice. It is ten thousand small ones. Staying in the room, believing in a better day when the evidence is thin. Two people dividing up the impossible and showing up for each other at the end of it, tired, still there.

We are in a hard season right now. There are days when this is survival, plain and simple. Days when I have to remind myself that this cannot be as good as it gets, that we are digging out and not digging in.

On those days, I think about the girl who was almost nineteen and certain. She knew something. She did not have the words for it yet, but she knew.

He still challenges me. Still not afraid to go against the grain. There is still something about the way he looks at me that does not feel like performance. It never has. Forty years, and I still notice it. The humor that arrives at exactly the right moment and occasionally the wrong one. The way he prays is as he means it. The way he makes sure everyone eats, everyone breathes, and everyone laughs before the day is over. He does not save things for special occasions. He treats Tuesday like it matters. It makes him nearly impossible to plan a celebration for and completely worth celebrating.

We are in each other’s corner. Have been for forty years. When the world has not been kind, we have been kind to each other. We stick up for each other. Still.

The anniversary of our first date falls in June. We will not make a large occasion of it. There is too much to manage, too much still being sorted. But I know the date. I have always known the date.

I met him four decades ago, and I would do it again. Not because the road has been easy. Because he is who I chose, and I understand now what choosing costs, and I would pay it again.

There will be better days. I am certain of this, the way I was certain of him. Some things you just know.