Ideals

Sometime ago,we had our first wedding anniversary.
It passed like any other monthsary. We went to jamie's italian and worked up an anticipation greater than the actual meal. Oh, and we woke up at church camp.

Some of these choices would never have been ideal.
My ideal anniversary would have been over a surprise staycation with the best steak meal. But life happens. And we grow. So there we were, serving at youth camp and playing avalon all day and night with thirteen-year-olds, wishing each other a happy anniversary in a sprawling room in jb.
It couldn't have been better.

My ideal wedding would have had white painted trees lining the stage, performance lights, and other such white props. Instead, ET and Fiver died. We got our house ready. I scrambled through a first semester at Lasalle. Life happens. We grow. So I gave up the white-tree dream, and let it all go so that I could transit into marriage painlessly. My last day as a single woman was spent at Billy Bombers with my parents, recounting our thanksgiving, taking it slow on purpose.
It couldn't have been better.

My ideal man would have been a melancholic poet. But life happens.
So instead, I married a man who has not one shred of melancholy in him, nor poetry. But he is all sunshine.
And I look at him falling asleep every night and think that I have inherited somebody's precious child.

Life happens, and we grow.
We learn to let things go. We learn to stop idealizing, and start appreciating.

Like when I decided that it was more important to play board games with k's family comfortably, than to sit there in my sweaty makeup and contact lenses for three more hours. The letting go of vanity. Or should I say, vanity let me go. But that deserves a whole other chronicle.