On our third date—a boozy happy hour at Portland’s iconic Pope House Bourbon Lounge—R. and I started planning our wedding. Everyone tells you that “when you know, you know,” and once in a great while, that actually happens to be true. So, we talked about what we wanted and envisioned and hoped for our big day. I’m pretty sure almost nothing happened like we discussed, but shortly after our third-date commitment to eventually say “I do,” I started writing my vows in the Notes app of my phone.
Now, if you know anything about my history with phones, it isn’t great. There are a lot of drops that lead to malfunctions, cracked screens and waterlogged devices that need to be blow-dried, prayed over and marinated, for several hours, in uncooked rice. I also made the notoriously unpopular switch from Apple to Android phones many years ago. Needless to say, the digital version of my Notes-app vows were long gone shortly after our nuptials in 2017.
Prior to our wedding, however, I did transfer said vows to notecards. I’m a writer, so while I don’t mind public speaking and tend to deliver boss-ass (a technical term) eulogies and best woman speeches, I wasn’t about to memorize my vows. I needed to see those words in front of me if I had any hope of saying them the way I wanted to in front of a large group of our loved ones.
I didn’t keep much from our wedding, including the dozens of disposable point-and-shoot cameras we put on the guest tables and encouraged people to use to document the evening (sorry not sorry), but I would have bet money that I kept those notecards. I was proud of what I’d written, and I wanted to keep a memento of my vows. But alas, I was never able to find where I stored them.
Until now… Baby E. and I traveled back to Ohio after the New Year to celebrate my sister’s baby shower. I decided to stay a week (which turned out to be much longer—a story for another time) because it’s nice to have some built-in childcare, and my parents love seeing their granddaughter. I usually get a lot of writing done, which is another huge perk to the lingering-in-Ohio setup. This trip, my mom wanted me to look through an old box of my things that she had been saving (and that I didn’t know she had). The idea was to toss, donate or keep the items inside.
I looked through the contents of the box, and I honestly have no idea why my mom saved any of it. There were blank notecards, a ball of twine, a senior photo of a boy I do not know or recognize, hideous pieces of costume jewelry I used to love and wear, a gigantic stein a college roommate with a ceramics major made for me, a watch that stopped working back in 2004, books a stranger living in my body must have read and enjoyed at some point (including, but not limited to, a seaside romance novel, a comedy-of-errors romance novel and several books about death).
I saved my beloved eraser collection (I was, and still am, a weird child), some blank thank-you cards and a diamond necklace I got for being an awkward bridesmaid in my cousin’s wedding. I asked my mom to toss or donate the rest. But since Baby E. is now the age where she can’t stop getting into boxes (that’s a thing, right?), we left the box out for her to play in-slash-destroy. She had a good old time with the twine and beaded jewelry.
As she was whipping things around and throwing them over the edge of the box, I noticed some notecards with writing on them. The Bean had inadvertently found my vows. I pulled some from the box and the rest from her baby death grip and here we are. I have my vows to treasure forever and share with all of you.
Before I get to that though, I want to share a little bit about them. My intention was to play on the traditional vows that people recite in proper Catholic weddings that last approximately four hours and 45 minutes long. Instead of “for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health…” I took the sentiment and wrote my own spin. One thing to note is that although I did my best to order them in the way I delivered them at the time, the cards weren’t numbered, so I had to guess a bit.
Looking back on these, you’ll also notice that some things have not changed in the almost seven years since I recited them. Namely, that even in the height of our romance, I was still attempting to bully R. into being better at recycling. Maybe in another seven years, he will give me the gift of doing this task in a way I deem appropriate and not-annoying. It’s funny to see how much of what I wrote so long ago holds true today. But you’ll be your own judge of how well these vows match the version of our relationship that you’ve come to know through this newsletter. Drum roll, please…
Randal Christian Newman, you are my favorite thing. I couldn’t ask for a better life partner, and I feel so incredibly lucky that I get to spend the rest of our lives together. I wrote these promises throughout our relationship. I’m excited to share them with you on one of the best days of my life. And since you’re officially stuck with me, here goes:
From this day forward, I promise to support you in all of your interests and endeavors, even if it means living with 12 jugs of kombucha, 16 flavors of infused whiskey and more homemade Greek yogurt than any two people should consume—regardless of how much Indian food that couple may be cooking and eating at that time.
I promise to cherish you no matter how grumpy you get when your blood sugar is low, even it means enduring the insane fights you pick with me about abstract art. I promise to never stop being amused by our overwhelming catalog of inside jokes, even though we can’t remember how most of them started.
I promise to never stop thinking it’s super weird that you spit your used gum into the toilet and leave it there or that you line up recyclables 18 inches away from the recycling bin like a sociopath. I promise that no matter how bad things are, how hurt we might be or how many backpacking trip meltdowns we endure, I’ll never forget that we’re on the same side.
I promise that even if I go to bed angry, I’ll always remember the nights when we fell asleep holding hands or laughed until we passed out. I promise that I’ll never be perfect, but I also promised to never stop improving, to never stop moving forward. I promise I’ll work hard to be my best self for me, but also for you and for us.
I promise that if I ever hit the big time and am so rich that I have money to burn, I’ll always remember that you loved me when we had dinner dates on my bed because I didn’t have any furniture. I promise that if things ever get too serious or I’m in a mood where everything you do annoys me, I’ll recall all the times you dropped a truly great dad joke and made me laugh like an asshole.
Most importantly, I promise to always love you, even when it’s hard or inconvenient or not enough to make things better. I promise to love you endlessly, until the day we die and in our next lives, too.
Randal Christian Newman, I could not be happier nor more honored to be your wife. I love you.
With pleasure,
Yes, Misstrix