Becky Suder
By Rebecca Suder
My husband had no idea what he was getting into when he said, “I do” nine years ago.
I am what some might call a difficult woman. I want things the way I want them and when he walked into my place of business over eleven years ago, I knew I wanted him.
When I broke up with him after a mere six months, the boy was just not having it. I mean he followed me around that novelty toyshop. He harassed me, telling me how good things were as I re-shelved beer goggle sunglasses, Tiki mugs, and Harry Potter capes. He followed me out of the shop and walked three feet behind me all the way home. He called me. He tried to email but being less then computer savvy I never got his missives. I didn’t want anything to do with him. The magic was gone.
My roommate at the time who was and is a much wiser person then me, said these words and they are the words that put Mike and I together after all these years,
“You are a fool Becky. A fool.”
Twelve years later I now know that I hadn’t even scratched the top of the surface with him. If I’d left him then, I wouldn’t have learned the best part of him.
I would never have seen him in the middle of the night pacing the floor with our frantic four month old. I would have never heard a conversation he had with his stepson about following in his footsteps as a fireman. I would have never watched him hold his tongue month after month as he worked with my less than reliable brother Pete — who showed up on my doorstep two weeks into our relationship and never left.
I wouldn’t have swelled with pride when he became a fireman at age 35 and graduated at the top of his class.
I would have been a poor single mom with nothing to my name and without a good man to love me.
Sure I would have been able to date and dance and flirt with various boys for the past ten years but hell – I can do that with my husband and know that he will still love me when I wake up in the morning puffy eyed, bad breathed and pms-ing.
I loved him when I married him and what’s more I still do.
Is it all romance? Hell no.
Do we have sex daily? In his dreams.
Do we count on each other? Completely.
Do we share our triumphs and whine over our failures to each other first? Absolutely.
Have we resorted to getting each other the kind of anniversary cards that reference farts and the toilet seat left up? Pretty much.
So if you ask me if I think we will still be together in another ten years I would say,
“I do” , and I would mean it even more then the first time.
About Rebecca Suder