My husband and I married 10 months after we met. I was 28, he was 32. We had been single, and living alone, for a long time when we combined our households. He likes to say that I combined our households by getting rid of his but that’s not true. I kept…hm, what did I keep? I’m sure there was something. Oh well, moving on.
When you live alone for seven years, you grow accustomed to the control you have over your space. Granted, loneliness is a factor, but the control is nice. Adding someone into that space so late can be a tall mountain to climb, at least for a control freak like me.
It didn’t take long to learn that my husband has a peculiar habit. If he’s watching TV, he has a blanket on his lap. It doesn’t matter if it’s January 1st or August 1st, the blanket is there. Therefore, I keep an antique box near the sofa to hold the necessary blanket stash. The trouble is, he can find the box to collect a blanket, but not to return it! AUGH!
It sounds funny now, but it didn’t then. My husband had the habit of standing up from the recliner, allowing the blanket to fall to his feet in a semi-circle, and stepping out of the blanket to walk away. It didn’t matter if he was going to the refrigerator or to Germany, the blanket remained on the floor. Anyone that has known me for more than five minutes knows that this was enough to make me go ‘postal.’
So what did I learn from this blanket?
On December 23, 2001, less than a year into our marriage, my husband left for Afghanistan. I was in my 11th week of my first pregnancy. Welcome to the Army! While the four months was a short deployment, all things considered, the timing and circumstances made it the longest separation in the history of marriage and mankind, as far as I was concerned. New to military life and fully hormonal, it took nothing to start the water works. Those days were tough.
Sitting on the sofa one day (probably crying), I looked over at the recliner and realized that there was little I wouldn’t give to see that dumb blanket lying on the floor in its annoying semi-circle, and with that I learned, keep the little things little because the big things in this life are going to be Big.
So eight years later, I’m happy to say that the little things are still little and the big things don’t seem so big either. You see, when you give each other permission to be imperfect and you learn that being together is mountains above being apart, you can find true unity in marriage. My husband is my very best friend no matter how many miles separate us, and no matter how many miles separate us we’re always together.
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