Old Married People

“I got a text with a heart in it!” I told Marnell the other night.  (It was from him.)  “That was really special since we’re old married people and don’t do romantic things anymore.”

“Old?” he said.

“I mean old as in, we’ve been married a long time. And I was just thinking that I haven’t done anything nice for you for awhile.”

(Forgive me. I know if you’ve been married for fifty years or five years, you’re thinking, eight months?? These people know nothing. I’m sure you’re right.)

“Is it that we don’t do romantic things or that life is so crazy we can’t do many romantic things right now?”

He’s logical like that.

Now, I do enjoy being married. Before I got married, I thought it might be a burden to have someone with you ALL the time. It turns out that not only do I enjoy it, but I can barely stand to be by myself anymore.

After living alone for four years? Is that crazy or what?

“I think I’m having a small identity crisis,” I said to Marnell one night.  I can’t remember for sure what we were talking about, but if I had to guess, it was probably me lamenting about gaining weight.

“Just a small one?” he asked.

“Hey!” I said. “Anyway, it’s not like you can order them by small, medium, or large like you do at a fast food restaurant.”

We next imagined what would happen if we pulled into a McDonald’s drive thru and said, I’ll have a medium identity crisis, please.  With fries.  

It’s little things like this that I’m fond of in marriage. Laughter. Prayer and “I love you” before falling asleep.

I also have a routine of attempting to slap him when he teases me or says one too many puns. (Dr. Dickson used to suggest this approach when I would ask him what to do with an unworkable patient. “Have you tried radical slap therapy?”) But I usually don’t get too far with the therapy in this case, because one or both of my wrists gets caught in mid air.

The other night when we were trying to catch up on sleep, I said, “Okay, we must be sleeping by 11:00.”

It was 10:53. Six minutes later, Marnell was praying.

“It’s 10:59,” I hissed.

He was almost finished praying anyway, so I decided it wasn’t sacrilegious.

He quickly finished, then said, “Do I have time to tell you I love you?”

Which took way longer to say than just saying “I love you”, so I think I tried to slap him again.

Anyway, this evening for the first time since December 2, he’s in another state. I am going to crash on my Laurel Street couch (if they are still reserving it in my name) with my Laurel Street buddies. It’s not quite the first time I’ve been there since December 2, but it’s been much more scarce than in times past. I am really looking forward to that, and I hope Marnell has a splendid time baching with the guys again, doing a favorite pastime of helping run sound at a convention.

“Are you going to call me?” I asked him last night.

“Probably, if I don’t forget about you,” he said.

It was really late because we had stayed up too late having great conversations with family, but I think I made a sleepy slapping motion.

Have a great night, everyone!

P.S. If anyone tries ordering an identity crisis in a drive thru, please let me know the results.