Megan Stielstra's Blog

A year ago this past weekend, Christopher and I got married on the beach. The weather was perfect. There were wonderful people. There was Maker’s Mark in bulk because apparently, while everyone was getting dolled up before the ceremony, Jeff—my man of honor—walked into the kitchen where the caterers were setting up and yelled, “MY GOD THERE’S ONLY A HALF BOTTLE OF BOURBON LEFT!” (apparently he and some folks had taken all of it skinny-dipping the night before). No matter that there were three cases of champagne and nearly an entire vineyard ready to pour—there was no way we were going to get through the next four hours without the f’ing Maker’s Mark people! And so the caterers went out for more, crisis averted, and later that evening he walked me across the beach to my tall, dashing, grinning Almost-husband and as the people we love looked on, our friend Lott (freshly ordained at http://www.spiritualhumanism.org), married us as the sun went down.

It was pretty goddamn perfect.

It still is.

I’m not saying that every day is me in a pretty dress and Christopher in his fancy suit, both of us barefoot in the sand—but isn’t that the point? That I can sit here in sweatpants watching my husband cook mac’n’cheese and think, “I am so crazy about this guy, sometimes I can’t even breathe.” I think that when he comes home after stupid hours at work, talking in HTML and Flash and these languages I can’t speak. I think that eating the chef’s tasting menu at Copper Blue, watching him drink wine and joke with the waiter. I think that at the dog beach, as he tries to trick Mojo into the lake, or when he plays Zelda, or when he puts telephone books on the bar stool and stands on it to reach the smoke alarm (which I’ve set off cooking sausage too hot), or when he runs out to get me Vernors ‘cause my throat hurts, or when he naps on the couch, or watches me tell stories, or watches the acrobats at Cirque Shanghai, or whacks the piñata at my birthday party or puts in earplugs before bed so the sirens on Lawrence won’t wake him up, or those moments when he’s walking towards me from a distance and, in the split second before I recognize he’s mine, I think, “Shit, look at THAT guy!” and when he sits at the computer, working working working for this life we lead, him and me and all our plans, everything that will happen in our second year, and our third, our tenth and on—all of it is the same kind of perfection as that day on the beach last year.