What Romance Looks Like at 12 Years of Marriage

There used to be coffee and hot cocoa dates (because up until last fall, I didn’t drink coffee). There were flowers. Pearl earrings. Homemade steak dinners (cooked by Fence, of course, because back then, I didn’t cook, either). Decorated dorm doors for birthdays. Mixed tapes (we are old enough to have made mixed tapes for each other). Wishing on shooting stars. Dances. Late nights talking and staring into each other’s eyes… Romance and love. And then it was marriage, and the sugary sweet flutters in your stomach gradually transformed into a deeper, harder, but also still romantic kind of love.

Fence and I celebrated twelve *amazing* years of marriage this weekend. We have known each other for 16 years, been together for close to 15. And this year, romance looked like this:
A sunset walk (at the end of which we overheard another couple commenting on working to get labor started, obviously thinking our walk was meant to send me into labor. Am I that huge? I have 7 weeks to go.)

Mass at the cathedral, with just us, after a night away.

Coffee at a great local downtown coffee shop. (I drink coffee now, and this place has a delicious caramel vanilla espresso latte cafe better than Starbucks any day coffee.)

Walking downtown a bit…and then…

School supply shopping sans kids.

Oh yes, we did.

Fence offered, knowing that taking all five kids on errands ranks low on my list of most enjoyable things to do.

At first, I thought he was a bit crazy, offering that on our anniversary. Then I realized not only was the idea practical, it was a truly, loving gesture. He knows how crazy it can be taking kids on errands, saw an opportunity for helping me avoid that, and offered to make it happen. Be still my heart. This man knows me and my life and still wants to make things easier for me, even when it meant spending part of our alone time on school shopping.

The romance! Our marriage is full of it, it just isn’t the sappy romance of movies and pop songs. This is the romance of our marriage, our youngish, growing-old-together with a large family, true love. It is the romance of deeply knowing each other, and anticipating needs and how to help. It is the romance in which we have inside jokes and made-up words. It is the romance in which the little things really are the big things, the things which cement us together in love more each day.

Ah, wedded love. It has changed in 12 years, but I wouldn’t trade any of it.