An Ode on an Anniversary

The one I’ve been writing for twenty years, with William & Wilco

In 2002 I was a newly sober 24-year-old with only the barest idea of how to be an adult. I had a fresh masters degree that I’d earned despite crippling addiction, an apartment I paid for with my parents’ help, and a job I’d gotten by walking into a temp agency and taking whatever they offered. I attended 12-step meetings nearly every day as part of my social life. It was around this time I went cold turkey from cigarettes and lost my mind for a month. You could say, I was young and filled with hope.

I also had a big crush on an older guy I worked with, probably the most interesting person I’d ever met. He was from Wales, had a fantastic accent and excellent taste in music. We’d traded mixed CDs which I played on repeat, analyzing every lyric. He had even shown up at one of my local girl-and-her-guitar gigs. Many promising signs. And yet he hadn’t asked me out.

So I called my parents. He’s older, I said. And we work together.

My mom held the phone away from her mouth and I could hear her ask my dad:

She wants to ask out that older man she likes, that Dr. Flitter.

How much older? My dad asked.

He’s 42, she said. There was a long silence.

Well, my dad said. Doesn’t mean it can’t work.

It was rare during those days that I asked my parents for advice. The moment felt big, for reasons that weren’t entirely clear at the time. But I had their blessing. And so I called William and said, don’t you think it’s time we go out on a date?

You daft apeth, he said.

On our first date we went for sushi. We were both so nervous we hardly spoke. Afterward we went to the old Sit & Spin in Seattle, the now defunct laundromat bar, to see his friend’s band. Sometime during the set he leaned into me gently. It was so pure. I started to fall in love.

Our second date was Valentine’s Day and I’d never been to such a fancy restaurant. The menu was all in French. He asked if I wanted to order a bottle of wine. It hit me suddenly that this was a grown man and I was a recovering addict with barely a year sober. I didn’t know anything about normal adult life. I couldn’t even read French! The moment was so overwhelming I ran from the table crying. In the bathroom of the restaurant I stared at myself in the mirror repeating affirmations like Stuart Smalley.

Get it together, girl. You can do this. You are good enough damn it.

When I went back to the table I had to tell him the truth. He was still looking at the wine list. You need to know, I said. I’m an addict and I’ve been sober for about a year. I can’t drink wine.

He looked at me for a moment. Then he closed the wine list and set it on the table.

That’s ok, he said. We’ll just order something else. He was so calm and unbothered. He smiled. Something in the way he looked at me made me feel normal. This was such a rare feeling at the time. At work I was pretending to be normal, but every night at the 12-step meeting I was faced with the reality of myself. I was freaky. I’d spent years haunting the shadows in the land of the hungry ghosts. This man was grace and charm and intelligence. Hang around with people who are living the kind of life you want to live, my sponsor would say. I didn’t know if I could be as cool as William, if I could leave the shadows to hang with him in his fancy world of smart sunlight people, but I was certainly going to try.

This moment of calm acceptance, of ease and charm, played again over and over in the early days of our relationship. He opened doors for me and brought me flowers and took me on trips. Every time we left the country I cried. In Vancouver, in Wales, in Scotland. It was always overwhelming. I had to keep reminding myself that I was worth being wooed.

In Paris he proposed to me at the top of the Eiffel Tower. That night I started crying and couldn’t stop. Aren’t you happy? He asked. Of course I was happy. But they weren’t tears of happiness, either. It was fear, overwhelm, gratitude, sorrow, joy, confusion. I had a lot to cry over. And I finally felt safe enough to do it.

This month we are celebrating our 20th wedding anniversary. And not to put too fine a point on it, but William is still the best. I will spare you the paragraphs extolling his virtues. He’s human, too. (I’m pretty sure.) But his awesomeness and my luck are just two details here.

What I want to say is that Love showed up and I forced myself to open to it and that was a moment of clarity I couldn’t have manufactured on my own. It was God’s grace. And William is an atheist, dig that. No one is out of the circle of Love. We are all a bit freaky and we are all out here with tears that need crying and grace comes for us. It’s here right now, somewhere, if you look for it. Somewhere in your life right now is some glorious blessing you have not earned. And here it comes anyway, shining bright for you across the table in the fancy French restaurant.

I can only say that I have refused to let it go, this Love and grace. This blessing. After 20 years it means more to me than ever. And William has refused to let it go. And so it continues. The ever-unfolding love and grace of the Holy carried faithfully by two unlikely people who are committed to its endurance.

Amen, blessed be and may it ever be so.