“Never will I take for granted in this world your generosity of exploration, how you have listened to my body and found what you could do.”
~Joan Nestle, “Our Gift of Touch,” in A Fragile Union (144).

It’s my parents’ thirty-sixth wedding anniversary today, so it seems somehow appropriate to take this moment to make this particular announcement.

Hanna and I have decided to get married. It was one of those gradual processes that doesn’t really have an event of engagement attached to it — we talked about it, and then talked about it some more, until at some point it felt true. That at some point we would be married. Eventually.

And then, back in early April, I came home late from work one night to find Hanna reading in bed.

“Hey,” I said, “I’ve brought you a present.” It was a mint chocolate chapstick I’d seen that morning at Whole Foods that had made me think of her.

“I think we should get married when we go on vacation this fall,” she answered.

I admit, this wasn’t quite the response to the mint chocolate chapstick I was anticipating, but hey! I was willing to go with it.

At which point sleepy, comfortable, familiar, probably Not Safe For Work, kissing commenced.

these two mugs are getting married!

Happily, we’re in Massachusetts where legal marriage is a boringly normal option for us. Believe me, there’s a real thrill to be had from anticipating the moment when I can say phrases including the words “my wife” and experience precisely zero negative ramifications as a result.

Or, at least, if anyone does push back we have the backing of the law to tell them where to shove it. (Yes, I get a certain satisfaction from knowing this. No, it doesn’t make me a particularly charitable person.)

We’re getting married on September 14th. Our “to do” list for the wedding currently has a decidedly underwelming nine items, including three that are more properly related to vacation planning than the wedding itself. And half of them are already taken care of! There’s a lot to be said for going the minimalist route.

What strange things we humans do. I’m sure I’ll have more thoughts as the season approaches.

Meanwhile, I am so very, very thankful, every day, that Hanna has chosen to build a life with me. There’s no one I’d rather have here, at my center-space. No one outside my family of origin who so immediately and irrevocably meant home and safe as Hanna did. I know she doesn’t fully understand why I feel this way, or always believe it to be true. Yet she’s willing to take the risk anyway — and that makes her one of the bravest people I know.

Wherever we travel from here, I’m glad we’re a team. I think we make a pretty damn good one.