“Are you sure?”
A lot of my hometown friends and family asked me that when I told them I was getting married. Valid concerns. I was a roustabout who’d just jumped into his first real relationship after a scarring multi-coast break-up. I’d even been “engaged’ a couple of times before, until I very much wasn’t.
This time, though, I was sure. In fact, I knew I was marrying Anne Marie a couple of months before either of us said it. She’d been living in Pittsburgh, while I was stuck back in Wheeling, and one of us would drive to the other one every weekend. She invited me to drive with her and her brother to a family wedding in Savannah (Spring Break ’07, WHEW!). It could have been awkward, but it wasn’t. Her family was very welcoming to me, and there was plenty of booze and beaches on Tybee Island to keep us happy.
The night of the wedding, out on the roof of the reception hall, we talked about Pittsburgh. The plan had been that when we got back after the trip, I’d go apartment hunting and find a place so I could move closer to her. Through the course of the conversation, we realized how freaking stupid that was. I should just move in. Eventually, before leaving that roof so Anne Marie could barf in the bushes while I chatted with her mom, we decided that we’d both be happiest together, as a team, moving forward.
So, when we made the engagement official a couple of months later and people started asking the question that started this diatribe, I didn’t have any trouble answering. I was sure, and still am sure, that the only way forward in life is with her by my side, pushing me, laughing with me, holding my hand.