Annus Mirabilis
Tonight, Regina and I ate a slice of the wedding cake that's one day older than our marriage. Like Regina, the cake was made in Houston, but unlike her—and much like Harrison Ford in the fourth Indiana Jones film—the cake has spent a considerable amount of time trapped in a freezer. We moved the cake on two occasions since our wedding last year: first from the astroturfed reception venue to our unusually nice apartment, then from the that same apartment to our suburban house.
The cake remained frozen, occasionally moved to make room for Trader Joe's frozen dinners or grocery store pie crusts, and it has spent the better part of the last six months buried under a myriad of single-purpose ice packs purchased for the purpose of treating some intractable pain. Though the cake has been hidden under several layers of foil, a medley of ice packs, and now unidentifiable stew-like leftovers, it has never been forgotten.
In all of the excitement of the past year, we talked about the cake pretty often. We looked forward to our first wedding anniversary as a potent reminder of the excitement of our wedding itself, and the cake would be a trusty copilot in reliving a marvelous year. And, to be candid, we were also looking forward to making some space in the freezer.
Our wedding day had approached perfection, as weddings and indeed marriages ought to. The vaunted wedding moments came to fruition, certainly—like seeing the back doors of the chapel open to reveal Regina, radiant and good—and we shared moments of the pleasant awkwardness that has shaped the arc of our love—like the hilarious business-like handshake we shared at the altar when we forgot what human beings are supposed to do with their hands on the most important day of their lives.
A reception at a BBQ joint with hundreds of sexually aroused turtles swimming nearby, a first dance to a couple of songs stitched together in GarageBand, a series of toasts that were so unrelentingly loving that Regina and I cried, so fortunate for our family and friends.
As good and curious Catholics, we'd prepared for marriage in both the official way—watching a series of videos, filling out a spiral-bound notebook, and chatting with a priest—and in the way that I'd previously tried to learn to juggle, that is, by reading books. It turns out that this is the one similarity between juggling and marriage: Reading about it only takes you so far. Oh, there's one other similarity: I'm still learning how to do both of them.
On the day of our anniversary, Regina and I flew back to Texas after seeing my grandmother in St. Louis. By chance, one of Regina's co-workers and her husband were on the same plane, so we all waited for our luggage together. They had been married by the same priest at the same parish a few months after us, and we joked with them that they'd soon have all the wisdom of marriage that ninety additional days had granted us.
So here it is.
I have learned that marriage is a little city. Like a city, its success depends on things as powerful as the values it holds and as miniscule as making sure someone takes out the trash. It requires upkeep and constant attention. It's filled with surprises if you spend time exploring. It's much greater than any of its individual components. It's small enough to feel comfortable and large enough to contain an entire life. It's best when there's a church at the center of it.
After the flight this past Sunday, our anniversary, we completely forgot about our plan to eat the cake. It wasn't until today—looking out at our frozen lawn—that we remembered the chocolate cake that had waited as patiently for us as we had for it. So we carefully sliced out a piece this evening.
The cake wasn't good. I mean, it was good—about a year ago. But tonight, it betrayed us. So we tossed it out. And neither of us was disappointed.
The goodness that marriage has brought us is not well represented by our wedding cake. The cake seemed to remain the same, but it had changed. By contrast, Regina and I seem to change, but we are always the same. The gift of marriage is not novelty and excitement—that's the sort of love that flares out. Instead, the joy of marriage is constancy: A perpetual place for renewal in the company of a spouse and God, who gave us marriage as a sacramental reminder of unity in the midst of division, of permanence in a world of flux, of life in the face of death.