What's Your Secret?

Back in December, my husband, Dan, was grocery shopping and somehow got into a conversation with the cashier. If you know my husband at all, you will understand why Dan "getting into a conversation" with anyone is a revelatory event.

But get into a conversation he did, and during the course of this small talk, he mentioned that we would soon celebrate our sixteen-year anniversary.

"What's your secret?" the clerk asked.

"What did you tell her?" I asked Dan later that evening.

"I don't know."

"You should have said, 'Well, I'm doing the groceries for my wife.'"

I was only half joking. During the holidays, when I'm running from winter program to music gig to Christmas concert, the fact that my husband grocery shops is a big deal.

Also, he wraps all our Christmas gifts, partly because I don't have time, but mostly because I am pretty awful at it.

This year, I didn't decorate for the holidays once again. I think Dan felt sorry for the lack of festivity in our house. I came home from work one day to find our living room decorated with stockings, our snowmen woodcarving, a "Merry Christmas" sign, and a live wreath on our front door.

I guess what I'm saying is, if you want to be married for a long time, help out your wife.

We don't have kids of our own either. I don't mean to say children make marriage harder. They are just another variable. Dan and I have less variables than most in our marriage.

We do have the cutest nephews though, and we're more than happy those variables came into our lives.

Other times, Dan surprises me.

Like this year when I said my former student was dancing in The Nutcracker again, he responded with, "I kind of like The Nutcracker."

So my husband willingly spent the evening at the ballet with me.

Dan didn't get me a Peloton Bike (#popculturereference) for our anniversary and imply something awful along the lines of "exercise more" or "lose weight." Instead, I received an anthology of Jane Austen's novels for our sweet sixteen.

I do nice things too. Dan's gift was a Nintendo Switch with Luigi’s Mansion 3. (It doesn't hurt that he can play this while I’m pursuing my theater hobby.)

We had dinner at our favorite Italian restaurant, the same restaurant he took me the night he proposed. I got carded during dinner, and that didn't hurt my spirits either.

Then we saw Star Wars! All of the new iterations have been coming out around our anniversary. Perfect timing!

The next morning, Dan said, "I already want to see it again."

Instead, we ran in the Christmas Fun Run with my school group, another fun anniversary tradition of ours.

We did see Star Wars a second time a few days later during our trip to Sun Valley. We are totally the Star Wars generation.

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