You Can Live Without a Pinky, But Why Would You Want To?

The wedding formalities were never for me. I did not even pick the bridesmaids dresses or color of my wedding, and as I have said, I would have been very happy with the Elvis situation.  We renewed our vows at 15 years, after I decided to orchestrate a surprise backyard wedding, with all the romance that he deserves- he is the romantic, not me, but I am fantastic at the gesture.  Shit.- I might be the romantic.

I invited our family over for a surprise backyard wedding potluck, via text message, same mode of wedding invitation as before- since I am sentimental. Everyone who was invited knew about the backyard wedding, but my husband was totally surprised, even after I planted trees in the corner of the yard in the shape of an alter.

Family all arrived, and said nothing about it, through delicious food, drinks, they did very well to keep this secret. After corralling everyone to the backyard, I stood upon our firepit thanked them for coming and proposed to my husband, letting him know if he wanted to accept my proposal he had about 15 minutes to put on his kilt, grab the poem I asked him to write for our anniversary, and remarry me.

He said yes.

My renewed vows to him are as follows: 

Point 1- We need to get the logistics out of the way first.  When we got married the first time, I was anti-cold medicine, that has changed, I promise to give you cold medicine if you ask.  Further, I promise to care for you when you are sick, including throwing up, even though you whine and moan, and it makes me a little sick too, I promise to do my very best to nurture and care for your aches and pains.  I also promise to try not to laugh at your minor injuries, at least in front of you. And I can’t promise this for the kids.

Point 2- when we first got married there was an agreement that you do trash and car stuff and I do laundry.  I have taken out enough trash, and gave birth to your two most beautiful children, who quadruple the trash and laundry, so I propose, you do laundry too.  We do it together for the rest of ever.  If you accept this proposal, say I do, and we will proceed.

Now that logistics are out of the way, I have chosen to expose my vulnerability and verbalize the mooshy gooshy stuff in front of you good people.  I love you for your humor, for your resiliency, loyalty, and your strength.  You overcome any obstacle, and grow from our shared  experience.  I love you for your directness, your endless love, and your open mindedness.  That we can speak openly together whether we like it or not and collaborate on outcome.   I love you for loving and nurturing our children, hard work to provide, and grilling (cheeseburgers in particular).  They love you, and we make a great team,  I love when  I get to be the good cop, thank you.  I also love being the bad cop, so also thank you, it’s fun to change it up.  I love you for your understanding and accepting the parts of me that are only better known to myself.  I love when we still make out like we did in Hillcrest. Tawny didn’t want me to say that, apparently it traumatized her, high five?    I love your intelligence.  I love arguing with you.  I love the challenge, never boring.   I love our love of literature, symbolism, and John Steinbeck. I love agreeing with you and talking a mess on others.  I love sleeping in the car when you drive, unless there is traffic, too jerky.  I love going out to eat and we hold hands across the table and look into each others eyes because the kids are not there.  I love it even more when the kids are there because they think it’s gross, super funny.  I love sitting in silence with you,  because I actually can read your mind, and mostly I agree. 

 You are the love of my life, you ground me and give me strength.  I told you once I could live without you, and that’s true, but I don’t want to.  I want to sleep beside you while you snore like a bear, and fart like one,  keeping me super warm in the winter.  You are the Dustin Brown, Kopitar and Doughty on my LA Kings. I am the Laura to your Petrarch, and you are the Patrick to my David.   You are the Godzilla to my Mothra. You are the secret ingredient in my spicy ketchup.  I want to kiss your face, even when there is food in your beard.  I want to be your heart and your home.  I want to support any and all of your hopes and dreams…. it would be my pleasure to join you on any adventure.  And everyday with you is a new adventure.  

I give you this pinky ring, because you can live without a pinky but should never want to.  The pinky helps you to hold on, I hold onto you. You are my grip on this world. It is a skull because, you know why- but… our love is everlasting, we have lived here before and will again.  Death does not do us apart, I will always find you.   I promise to continue to  love, care for you, on the best day, worst day and every day in between.  I promise to always call you out  on your shit, and hold you accountable.  I promise to have humility, if I am wrong, I will stand on a chair and announce it, and will apologize.  You should clap to positively reinforce it.  I promise to continue to find the joy in all the little things, as we do now.  I promise I will still do most of the laundry.  I promise to you in this life and the next, I will see you, and celebrate all that you are.  I promise to you my plan is that we get old together, enjoying the family around us now and the family yet to come.  You are my best good friend. Namaste.