Two important things happened on this date in history:
1)The Scissor Sisters performed their first show
2)I walked into Surin, shook hands with a stranger at the bar, and within five minutes knew that I would marry him. (If he wasn't a psycho killer.)
Shane doesn't believe the part about me knowing within five minutes, but it's true. Within a few weeks he met my parents. My Dad didn't look up from the Yankees game. "Figured he was just another one," Dad would say later.
This is the first picture we took together that night, at a Cancer Center event (and yes, we look much different today):
It happened.
And then this happened.
Shane and I are incredibly different. I tell stories for a living, and he explains nanoparticles to grad students. He's an introvert who likes nothing more than curling up on the couch with a book on Roman history, while I'm an extrovert who likes nothing more than being surrounded by a room full of friends, usually talking (loudly).
Sometimes our differences seem like a gulf. They are pretty staggering at times. Sometimes we don't even like each other very much. But we meet in the middle. We disagree about what "the middle" is, mope a bit, and cross to the other side, or at least wave.
We know each other's scars, the jagged areas where we've gotten hurt and healed, left with imperfections on and below the surface. I say that though we got married under Vulcan's bare bottom in 2004, I feel like I only got a real taste of marriage in 2007 when I saw him in the shower after his surgery to remove kidney cancer.
He's seen me through some doozies too: my anxiety during Nate's first few months, more than a few serious stress-related illnesses, deaths of people close to me. Not to mention the *typical* stuff: supporting me as I run from daycare to airport to God knows where next for my work, all the while I wonder if I'm on the right path.
There's a Wilco line from their song "Reservations" that goes, "Oh I've got reservations/about so many things/ but not about you."
That's how I feel this September 21. But the song that most sums up where we are now is this one by Ingrid Michaelson.
Happy Anniversary Shane Street. Thanks for taking me the way I am.
A gulf is better than a chasm. One can sail across a gulf.
Happy Anniversary, babycakes!
Posted by: Shane | September 21, 2010 at 08:59 PM
Great thoughts, well written, Erin.
Posted by: Dad | September 23, 2010 at 02:42 PM