Six Years

So Seb and I turned around yesterday and discovered ourselves almost beyond our seven year itch. We are beginning to see that we may actually make it beyond what has become our long running joke. What will year seven bring us? Can this mythical couple make it that far? You see, yesterday was our six year anniversary. We celebrated it casually in front of the fire with our feet up, a bottle of champagne poured in crystal anniversary glasses and an array of tasty treats spread out on my favorite gaudy ceramic fish tray that I'd gleaned seven years ago from a rich old lady's garbage in Veyrier, much to Seb's horror.*

When I think of our marriage I have this image in my head of the rain. A blinding gray, drizzly rain and a home movie shot from inside the car recording the flapping of the windshield wipers beating off the slush from the window of our tiny Corsa. Who gets married in January anyway? I wanted to show my family where I was and what the lake looked like, but it was clouded in a mist so deep we may as well have been in Ohio. We were all alone except for our witnesses, my friend Bea and her husband Ben who'd been asked because they were the only people I'd met so far in France. We were licking our wounds from the scuffle, yet another one, between Seb and his parents. They didn't want him to get himself into something he might regret and they told him so. They didn't know me really and who can fault them. I was a little older than their son, already divorced and not only not catholic but not really anything you could find in a religious dictionary. They couldn't pin me down and that bugged them. I guess it still does.

We were a little shell shocked ourselves from our rapid fire courtship. I'd only known Seb a year and a half and I'd been living in France with him for exactly one year, minus the fleeing back home in July to "think things over more clearly." He followed me back and I was glad he did. Home no longer felt like home. Home was in France where I didn't speak the language or understand the culture. And home unfortunately was in the arms of a steely, blue eyed stranger I'd met in a café over a spilled water pitcher.

It's never easy living in a bi-cultural marriage. Things ordinary couples take for granted are often explained in exhausting detail to try to understand each other a little better. It often ends with an abrupt "oh never mind." The language barrier feels insurmountable at times. No matter how fluent you become the communication wall will always be there, not quite letting you relax and be yourself with one another. Arguments and explanations are tiresome. Nothing is ever easy and you try to imagine how really wonderful things could be with this person if only it would be a little easier, If only you were from the same world. These are our daily conclusions anyway. But as we sat by the fire last night and talked about the last six years, we came to another kind of conclusion. Six years has taught us that although it's very difficult being in our situation, and although we spend a hell of a lot of time backpedaling, we have seen that beyond all of the problems and struggles there lies a wonderful world filled with a thousand possibilities no ordinary couple ever gets to experience. We know it takes more work, but we also know that if we love each other enough, if we two can get past all the nagging doubts, emotional upheavals and worrisome differences, almost anything is possible and those things are really, really wonderful in a better than average sort of way.

At least that was our conclusion last night by the light of the fire.

*This has now become his favorite piece of pottery too and he insists on using it at every opportunity. By the way I also got my ironing board from the same woman's garbage. It's a really nice one but it weighs as much as three cinder blocks.