I'd seen what it had done to my mother, and I had no interest. Besides -- I had a career, and a life. I was interesting, dammit! I had places to go! I was going to be famous, or at least celebrated in some small circles. Marriage would slow me down.
At first, I was going to be an underwater archeologist. I dove on wrecked ships, took classes off the coast of Maine, was sure I was going to live a life of adventure at sea.
Sadly, I couldn't find anyone to finance that, so I was going to be a regular archeologist, or I'd go into creative writing and pen my best-seller.
Surprisingly, no patrons arrived to fund that quest, either.
But someone agreed to give me pizza and beer money occasionally, to add to my student loans, if I got a reasonable degree where I could make, like, an actual salary after graduation. So I chose journalism -- there's no money in it, but I could still write, still have adventures, still go off on exotic quests for a story.
My goal was to live in Europe, chase men for fun but never actually catch one, write enough to make money for beer and pizza and drink in the intoxications the world had to offer.
I ended up a copy editor in Galveston, poor beyond my worst imaginings. My rent was $300 a month, and with a car payment and student loans, I ate lots of pea soup, worked at a newspaper at night and waited tables during lunch hour. Not the fantasy I had hoped.
I had dated a guy for years in college, and it pretty much confirmed the worst ideas I'd had about marriage -- if I got married, it would be all about him.
The guy I had dated was a perfect match for me -- a journalist who loved reading, politics and a good debate. He'd had a troubled childhood, too, and we could compare notes on who had the worst parents. He'd talk for hours about his ideas, his plans, his goals, his fears, his thoughts. Then he'd ask what I thought of his ideas, his fears, his plans and his thoughts.
He decided to go off to law school, and we dated long-distance for a while. I think. He might have sort of dumped me before he left, and since subtle isn't my strong point, I might have ignored it, thought we were dating long distance, and then had hysterics that he was sleeping with someone else while he was gone, even though he was dating me when he came home.
Drama, fights, drama, more thoughts, more ideas, more talk about the relationship. Blah, blah, blah.
So I joined a dating service, determined that I'd go out on a few dates to get over the last guy.
The dating service was FUN. A year before the internet hit, you actually had to go to a room to watch videos of guys, and pick out guys you'd like to date from the man library. Hundreds of guys who had paid a ton of money to find a nice girl -- lined up like books on a wall, waiting to be chosen.
First time in, I had 11 guys who wanted to go out. I decided the best way to move on was to say yes to all 11, and by the time I'd worked my way down the list, he'd be a thing of the past.
The first date was a short guy with no manners who said he hated camping and the outdoors and adventure.
The second guy was a creepy musician.
And the third guy was Mark.
Why was Mark at a dating service? He was six feet tall, good-looking, owned his own house, was an engineer and had never been married. He'd never even lived with anyone.
Every bell and whistle went off -- why was this guy not taken? We went on one date, for lunch, and I liked him, but he was a little tame. He didn't know what the internet was and didn't have a computer. I was the web editor for the Galveston newspaper. He didn't know anything about politics. He didn't read the paper, except to follow sports. He'd lived in one house the entire time he grew up, and went to one elementary school, one middle school, and one high school. I'd been to 28 schools.
He was cute enough, though, that I agreed to another date.
And you know what?
He wasn't full of thoughts or ideas or poetry or plans.
Mark just did things. When we went on a date, the evening was planned. He had a restaurant picked out, a place to go after dinner picked out, he picked up the tab and was funny and nice and polite.
Not earth-shattering. Not knock-me-off-my-feet wonderful.
But he got another date.
And he set up a date at the beach, and he brought a bottle of champagne and some fruit and a picnic basket. And there was no drama. And there was no debate, no politics, no competition.
When I finally went to his house, I checked the freezer for body parts.
His carpet had fresh vacuum tracks. He owned his own house, landscaped his own yard, and vacuumed? This was a different breed of creature altogether.
My father had liked poetry, Shakespeare, literature and modern art.
Mark did not read anything except texts on engineering.
He was an Eagle Scout who liked to camp. I didn't know what an Eagle Scout was, though I was mildly impressed when I looked it up.
He had done enough drugs and partying in college that I wasn't worried that he was too rigid, but had stopped early enough that I wasn't worried that he a loser.
He liked dancing, going out to dinner, crawfish boils, going to New Orleans for Mardi Gras, loved to travel and was great in bed. Really, what else was I looking for?
Turns out he was at a dating service because it was part of his plan: Get an engineering degree, find a job he likes, work hard, buy a house, and when he turns 30, find a wife. Of course. Why not?
Except I didn't want a husband.
I wanted someone to play with, maybe a companion for a Europe trip, maybe even a friend, but not a husband. Never, ever.
But every time he asked for a date, I said yes.
We started dating in February, and by July, he was a part of my life. I'd started thinking differently about everything. Maybe I didn't want to pick up and go to Europe. Maybe I could just, you know, wait a while.
The thing that fascinated me the most was that he didn't talk about things. He did things. His hot water heater broke, and he didn't call someone to fix it. I watched, horrified, as he took out a saw and cut the pipe away from the wall, and then went and got a new hot water heater and installed.
You can do that?? By yourself? Is that legal??
By October, something had shifted.
I had a talk with my best friend, Christy.
She and I are pragmatic when we are together, and hold nothing back.
"Are you happy with him?" she asked.
Surprisingly, the answer was yes. I didn't know it, but I was falling in love with him more every day.
"Can you find someone better, who can make you happier?"
No. Maybe, if I kept looking, I could find someone who could make me as happy, in a different way, or who would have different strengths and different flaws, but no, I could never be happier.
"Then what are you waiting for? He's not going to wait around forever -- he wants to get married, you've found a great guy -- go for it."
We got engaged on Thanksgiving, and he took me to Paris for an engagement present. This serious, non-nonsense engineer went with me to the Eiffel Tower, and to see can-can dancers, and we ate snails, laughed for hours, and wasted beautiful winter mornings in bed.
And on April 7, 1997, I did what I couldn't believe -- I got married.
We had one year of unbelievable happiness, a year that seemed like it couldn't possibly belong to me, that no one had ever loved anyone this much, or ever been this happy, and surely it was going to end soon in a fiery crash or death or an affair, but I was going to enjoy every second of it.
Eleven months later, one of my best friends, Julia, died at age 29, and I was wrecked. A month after that, Mark's father had a stroke that left him paralyzed and unable to speak. Mark's father had retired early to take care of Mark's mother, who was dying of cancer -- they were both in their early 60s. We took care of Mark's mom, who died on our second Thanksgiving together.
But we made it through, and I got pregnant with Sawyer, and we were still young and still dreaming of traveling and adventure. We took Sawyer to Italy when he was nine months old, we ate dinner outside on deck, and we still went dancing for fun.
And then, in a three -week span, my nephew, who was 11, came to live with us, Mark's father died, I had a miscarriage and Mark lost his job.
We were lost. No income. An extra child. No new baby. And Mark was lost without his dad.
But you know what? Mark does things.
He doesn't talk about things. He got up, found a job in Virginia Beach, packed us up, started work at a job he hated and persevered. Meanwhile, my mother and sister went to jail. They made our lives miserable, they made my nephew miserable, but we stuck it out.
We lasted three years up there, had another baby, got my nephew on a good path and Mark decided he couldn't work at that company a day longer.
So he flew to Austin, a city he'd always loved, and went to all the engineering companies and said, "I'm here and I"m looking for a job. What have you got?"
And a month later we were in Austin, at a job he loved.
And then we realized, slowly, that our beautiful new baby, this gorgeous, serious child, was not developing the way he should. He was miserable. He was mute. He was, whether we wanted to admit it, autistic. For the first time, our marriage was difficult.
It's hard to talk to each other when there's a screaming child in the room. And there was always, always a screaming child in the room. He didn't sleep. Ever. And when he was awake, he screamed.
Mark and I were on edge, we were grumpy, and we were not feeling the love. We were tired, we were frustrated, and our dreams for our children didn't include a mute, miserable child who would never be an independent adult.
And because I had learned from Mark, and because now I knew, I didn't talk about how to fix it. I just did it. I went out and did research. I found things worth trying. We started a gluten-free diet. And within months, Sander was on the right track.
Since then, we've had another miscarriage, another baby, and our nephew has grown up and joined the Navy. He's served five years, and he's coming home in July.
But Mark and I are still here. We're still married.
And we're nowhere near the same people we were fifteen years ago.
Our dreams are different, and in some ways, smaller.
I don't want big adventures, or to be famous, or to go off around the world on my own. I want my kids to be healthy. I want to do a good job educating them. I want to see what it's like to raise my daughter, now that I've raised three boys.
Mark no longer writes bad poetry for me, and he doesn't bring home roses every Friday night. Instead, the laundry is done, and so are the dishes.
Anything broken is fixed. Anything out of place is put right. I can't imagine picking out his clothes for him, packing his suitcase for a trip or making doctor's appointments for him. I don't even know where he keeps his boxers or his socks.
He arranges his business trips around Boy Scout meetings, gets up with Scout in the morning, brings me coffee in bed on weekends and takes my car to get its oil changed. I've never had to register a car, pay a traffic ticket or fight with an insurance company. That's how Mark shows that he loves me, and it's better than any poem I could imagine.
Mark's turning 50 next year, and we're hatching plans for a trip somewhere fun. Our boys are healthy and happy and, frankly, amazing. It's the best thing ever to watch them grow up.
And our toddler, Scout, makes me smile to think of her, and she loves her Daddy with a fierceness and a passion that makes my heart ache.
When we got married, my uncle took me aside and said, "If you and Mark end up getting divorced, it will be YOUR FAULT. You found a great guy, and he's good to you, and he loves you and he'll never cheat on you and he's about as good as they come. Don't fuck this up."
And, funnily enough, I agreed with him. The best thing about being married to Mark is that we both think we're the lucky one. I can't believe I met someone who can put up with me and who still likes me. He can't believe he met a girl who, well, I think he's still amazed he met a girl, period. I'll take it.
I think, in the end, my friend Christy was right. After 15 years, I still can say that I couldn't be any happier.
What else could you ask for?
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