Tomorrow is our anniversary. Nine years. Sounds like a long time but it doesn't feel like any time at all, and yet here we are together, three kids later still plugging away, happy as clams I guess. I'm not sure if we married just out of love or maybe with a bit of good business sense. I married a man who is every bit as driven by success as I am. With our kids being so young, sometimes success is measured by how much you can provide for their happiness without taking any happiness away from them. Some people say that men marry women who are just like their mothers, and girls marry men who are like their daddies. For my husband, that couldn't be less true.
My father is a drunk. He's been a drunk my entire life. He's also a lawyer, and usually when he's drunk he either sits around watching TV or he's mean to my mom, after all a lawyer's great at arguing. I learned a lot about using language as a weapon from him, some of it I wish I didn't know. He's not a discriminator so he is mean to everyone, but my mother was the only one who was contractually obligated to put up with it. After 18 years she decided it was enough. He is the best example of who not to marry and was always my template to compare future suitors to, if they didn't fit, they're in. My father was a lousy parent, an only child, and a great cook. Some of the time he was drunk on the couch he watched Jeff Smith "The Frugal Gourmet" cook on TV. I still have one of this cookbooks in my house. I won't make anything from it for my kids, too much like feeding them the poisoned cool aid.
When I met my husband, he said he was looking for a wife. Just like that. No pretense about it. He doesn't beat around the bush much. Since I lived about 200 miles away from his hometown when we started dating, I asked him why he hadn't found anyone there. He said that he'd dated a couple women and that he could tell right off that they weren't the one, so he didn't ask for a second date. Apparently he could tell right away that I was the one. I could say the same about him.
Other than a wife, all my husband wanted was kids. At least two. Even after the birth of our first son, he was stuck on having at least one more baby. This drove me crazy thinking that just myself and our son weren't enough for him. When my daughter was born, he seemed complete, happy. Our third baby was just icing on the cake. He is a wonderful, doting father, never mean to the kids, happy to teach them anything he knows from tying their shoes to playing the piano. He only drinks occasionally, or socially, just at bbq's where the other dads are having one. He couldn't be a further comparison to my father.
My mother once told me that I would know I was ready to have a baby when all I wanted to do was be a mommy. Because once you're a mommy, there's nothing else in the world that matters as much. I believe her. But my father said that he wanted a family once but now all that matters is how much he can drink. And all my husband has ever wanted was to be a family, and now he is preoccupied with other things like work, but nothing matters as much as his family does. And that's just perfect for me. Happy anniversary babe.
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