24 hours from right now, I will have been married for 7 years.
Today, however, is an anniversary of something else. Call it the first lesson on real love given from the woman a single sleep away from becoming my wife, and I her husband:
Less than 24 hours before Sarah and I got married, 7 years ago to this very day, we completely changed the plan for the wedding we’d had for almost a year.
After enticing 24 of our friends and family members to adventure with us East across an ocean, North across a country, and then West across an island, we then called a wedding audible. Now, instead of a drive up a winding single-track Scottish road into a Fairy Glen, we’d all be trudging through a valley carved between the Black Cuillin mountain range. We’d be all crossing a river and a bog, knee deep in heather and moss, fern and grass gone russet in preparation for the Winter that felt only moments away.
Another lesson on love, taught from the one who has taught me more than anyone else, and I call it the very first wedding gift she gave me.
Always trust your heart, I suppose she’d call it if I forced her to, or perhaps let the universe guide it. Maybe even Be brave enough to change your mind.
However she’d summarize it, the lesson would be this, and it would be simple.
Being with someone almost 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for 7 straight years probably sounds to some like a prison sentence. To others, it might sound like some unholy test from a reality show probably invented by the creators of Love Island. To us, it’s just normal life. It’s just what it’s always been.
To me, I’d have it absolutely no other way.
I can say with a certainty that only comes after this much time with a single soul, that almost everything I know of love, of life, of real and lasting joy, I have learned from my time with Sarah, from walking beside her, behind her, and witnessing the way she lives. The way she loves.
Lessons on love are not a thing to be turned into some listicle, not something to be bullet-pointed, numbered, or transformed for virality. Lessons on love are sacred things, made so by the unbelievable tenderness of those who do the teaching. So too with these, so too with her.
Patience, I guess above most things. I watch in awe as she demands nothing from those she loves, as she allows for the timelines of others with something that borders on a Buddha-like grace and quiet resolve. There is no rushing through an interaction with my wife, there is no forceful push to end what you are speaking of, to how long you need her. Patience too, maybe mostly, in her willingness to ask for, as she’ll never demand this either, what it is she needs. Patience in the waiting of years to live the life she knew she wished to live so the living of it would not possibly harm another. What a thing to witness, what a lesson to absorb.
Loyalty that borders on ferocious insanity too, and imagine she would agree. If she loves you, she loves you all the way, and there are not halfways with her loyalty to you. To say she’d be a shovel-in-hand type of person should you ever need a body buried is to undersell the depth of her conviction in love, for I don’t believe she’d need a shovel at all. The body would be gone before you knew it needed burying, she’d risk everything to make you not have to do the digging.
Passion too, though it decorates itself in many colors. In the way she tells a story, in the “biffff” sound effect that finds its way into every dramatic turn as she describes it with her whole body as though actually absorbing the impact of the moment. Passion in the way she kisses, in the strength in her fingers as she holds your hand. Passion in the gasp as she discovers a view of some indescribable beauty, a sip of a coffee of perfect roast, a bite of a croissant expertly layered with perfect Irish butter between each fold and press. Passion I shall not speak of here too, as it is ours and ours alone. As there are no halfways in her loyalty, there is no part-ways with her passion, and watching her learn to express it has been a singular joy in my life.
What of curiosity, and what of it when she is married to probably the most insatiably curious person on the planet? What can she teach to me of what I imagine I already know so much of? Everything, it turns out, as to truly love another, you must never stop being curious about them. How she leans into the things I wish to understand, how she lends an ear to the words I never stop speaking, eyes to the dark holes the rabbits of my brain have never stopped falling down. I think of the exhaustion that must internally creep for her, but never seems to make its way to the external surface when my autism slows me on every walk to investigate every single living creature, when my mind opens itself for pouring every single night at 10pm or later as we shower and I speak of 10,000 things that sat inside me all day. Curious, she stays, and aims it at the curiosity I have in such excess.
I watch her navigate a life, I watch her circle back to those who have harmed her, those who were slow to accept the love she found with me, those who voiced opposition to her taking a new path, and I again am in awe. Forgiveness, then, or perhaps name it Grace. I do not understand the reservoirs of these inside her, though I’ve been swimming in them for almost two decades. Each time I think my feet are somewhere near the soft floor of her seas of grace, I sink further, I feel nothing but water between my toes. She allows, and while an argument could be made that sometimes that allowance is too generous, she never once sees it as such. So swiftly she forgives, so soon she’s ready to show up again, and again, for those who might not deserve it in truth. This is her grace, the ocean of tenderness she gives out though so seldom receives it in turn.
There is kindness in this, though not the type that disguises itself in it as some elaborate ruse. Many are nice without being kind, always seeming so wonderfully open and helpful, these mayors of nonsense and false connection. Always a promise, though you learn it later to be hollow. Sarah is the promise and the delivery that follows, the idea that love is showing up when you say you’re going to show up, it’s helping when you know help is needed, whether it is asked for or not. Every single thing I know of kindness, has been displayed so effortlessly in her, and I do not understand how she never runs out.
I think back to those 24 hours before we said our vows into the mist and heather, before we kissed under a rainbow over a bridge built across a river that Myth says gives you eternal wisdom, though the egos of modernity have shifted that gift to one of beauty. I think of the final night we slept not being officially one thing, not being husband and wife, and I remember my sleep being a peaceful one.
I remember the wind outside the windows of the Sligachan Hotel, I remember the rattle of those old panes, the rainfall that pelted the glass and then fell away for a perfect sunrise only hours before she’d walk across that peatland to me.
I remember the quiet grace she carried across that bridge when I turned to see her for the first time, the explosion of green in the dress she surprised me with.
I remember every moment from that first waking on our wedding day to waking this day beside her, running my fingertips across her naked back, and waiting for her to stir.
I remember every lesson, every gift, and still cannot understand the balance of this universe that decided I’d earned them.
7 years ago tomorrow a life together officially began, or at least the measuring of it. In truth, I think it’s been forever, in a thousand different bodies, a thousand different times.
All I know of love, of life, of real joy, I have learned from her.
Happy Anniversary my only love. Thank you, for everything you’ve taught me.
I love you all.
Be good.
Everything I know
of love, of life, of real joy,
I have learned from her.
