My something blue arrived a few weeks after my wedding day in the form of a box. I had run into to the Container Store and bought the most practical (read: ugly) storage box I could find—its color was somewhere between cerulean and powder blue—and temporarily placed all my wedding mementos in there. Things like our yarmulkes, matchbooks with our names and wedding date (oddly in the same shade of blue as the box), and a velvet bag filled with the shards of the glass my husband Ronnie stomped on, a tradition at Jewish weddings. (I’m sure I was meant to do something more meaningful with it, but instead it lives in the box.)
There’s our welcome letter to guests referencing the cicadas that had commandeered the entire city, countless Polaroids taken on the night of our rehearsal dinner (this was pre-iPhones, mind you), and little notes friends and family members wrote for our wedding day. “You must always remember farts are funny,” my oldest friend, Amy, penned on the front of a notecard. On the back it said, “Just kidding. That’s not all the advice we have to give. Our best advice: Even though it’s fun and wonderful, marriage is, indeed, hard work. So be patient with each other and keep your hearts, eyes, and minds in the game.” And our nephew, who wrote simply, “Hey, have a good trip!” and drew us a picture of a limousine, referencing our honeymoon.
Little did I know that 20 years later that sturdy (still ugly) box would become one of my most prized possessions.
The first time I met my husband it was a true blind date. We met on September 25, just 14 days after 9/11. I was scared and angry and wondering if life would ever feel normal again. So, when a mutual acquaintance decided to play matchmaker—Ron had just moved from Denver and I was living in an apartment in Washington, D.C., and working at The Washington Post—I figured I had nothing to lose. “Let’s just have some fun,” he told me over the phone, in a voice that still gives me goosebumps. And I agreed. One date led to another and soon he was spending a lot of time at my Cleveland Park studio, and we were starting to talk about our future.
When we got married in Old Town Alexandria on May 30, 2004, on a warm, overcast day—it was pure perfection. We probably made our parents nervous with our non-traditional plans, which included having our ceremony in a dance studio, the chuppah hanging from the exposed rafters of the industrial space. Afterward, everyone walked around the corner to Stardust, a quirky restaurant that had never hosted a big wedding before. We had no assigned seating, all our favorite foods on offer, and a rockabilly band. My bridesmaids had giant wrist corsages instead of bouquets. (Who knew one day I would be a wedding magazine editor.)
The box emerges yearly for each anniversary dinner.
But back to the box. As a self-proclaimed memory hoarder (let’s call it being an overly sentimental person), I had swiped everything from the wedding weekend, big and small. Things like a branded pen from the hotel and the Sheraton Suites notepad where I had scrawled the morning of our wedding, “Baby—I love you! See you soon…” There’s a few of our wedding programs where we explained all the rituals, listed our wedding party, and even shouted out our matchmaker. There’s a stack of all the sweet greeting cards, scrawled with good wishes and a few signatures of those no longer here. There’s a brochure from the bakery that made our white, two-tier wedding cake and cupcakes, Ed’s Country Bakery in Frederick where I grew up, along with my mom’s Post-it note about cost per serving and the delivery fee and a print-out of my sister’s maid-of-honor speech: “I know that even with different last names or a distance apart, we will always be very close.” (She was right.) There’s a CD of photos labeled “Honeymoon Greece 2004.” I also keep some of my favorite wedding photographs in the box for a quick dopamine hit—guests holding sparklers as they strolled from the ceremony to reception, my Grandpa Morris, who passed away seven months later, looking tickled at all the festivities, and us sweaty and deliriously happy after a night of dancing.
And perhaps the most prized possession—our handwritten vows scrawled in pen with certain lines crossed out as we both feverishly edited before the ceremony. Maybe they should be in a fireproof safe, but alas, they also live in the blue box.
The box spends most of its time in my closet, safely perched on a high shelf, but, like a weather-predicting groundhog, emerges yearly for each anniversary dinner. It’s been on a few overnights (Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia) but mostly it shows up at restaurants around Baltimore, as we’ve dragged it to Dylan’s and Marta and Alma Cocina Latina and Hersh’s and Woodberry Kitchen and Peerce’s. Plus, all the restaurants our relationship has outlived: Pabu, Orto, Parts & Labor, The Bicycle, and even Stardust, where we had our wedding. Our last visit there was in May 2006, when I was a four months pregnant with our oldest.
In the beginning, Ron would sheepishly carry the box into restaurants, almost apologetically. But now I’ve either worn him down or he’s gotten more nostalgic with age. “Don’t forget the box,” he’ll remind me every May 30. At dinner, we pull everything out and look at those invitations and cards and Polaroids and I always feel the weight of that velvet bag in my hand and can smell the flowers that have pulverized into dust over decades.
The honest truth is, Amy was right: Marriage is hard. It can be combative and loud and disappointing and exhausting, but it’s also happy and beautiful, with thrills and bliss and maybe babies (and/or pets) that somehow outweigh all the crap. There’s no way to know on your wedding day as you read your vows and take the first spin on the dance floor (ours was to Taj Mahal’s “Lovin’ in My Baby’s Eyes”) what’s ahead, but that’s life. Sure, we have hit many a speed bump, hurdle, and even a few dead ends, but we have also continued to laugh and learn and grow as a team.
It’s all there in that box. So, we dig through it every year like it’s a newly discovered time capsule. We talk about our first date (I’m not divulging the awful place he picked, but he’s gotten much better), when we tipsily decided to move in together, and when we got engaged in Boulder, all within the span of two years. (When we called our matchmaker to tell her, she said it was the second-best thing that happened that day. The first being her husband winning a Pulitzer.) We talk about when we went from being a couple to a family (Milo)—again (Willa) and again (Zeke and Gideon). I guess the blue box makes me happy because it represents the start of us, but also our current us.
Our wedding memories are mixed with the receipts from all our celebratory meals and the box also holds all our anniversary cards, with envelopes that read: “Eight Is Great,” “Nothing Finer Than a Niner,” “Fifteen Ain’t Nothing to Sneeze at!” and most recently, “Twenty Years and Almost Old Enough to Drink Legally.”
Not everyone has a box, but we’re all memory keepers, and how we choose to hold on to and share those moments is personal. Our life isn’t super glamorous, but when I open that box, the memories are vivid, and I feel a contentment.
We always end each anniversary dinner by re-reading our vows—both folded a million times and yellowed with age. By now we have each other’s vows memorized, and they are silly and sweet, and most lines still ring true, especially the one that reads, “You make me laugh more than anyone I know.” Those were a couple of naive kids on that Sunday evening in 2004, ridiculously in love but not yet understanding the weight of what marriage meant.
The box—like us—is now a little faded and worn, and while it’s almost filled to the brim, there’s still room for more. This has been a love well-lived, so my blue box tells me.