Twenty Years

When we met, I was only 24 and she was only 23. We were both new to Minneapolis and each lost in our own ways. We were so different.

I was from Kansas and she was from Portugal. She spoke impeccable English but didn't get any of my pop culture references. I was words and stories and loud laughter and she was quiet and analytical and had the most adorable smirk.

We were a little bit of a mess at times. We were so young.

Twenty years have passed and we are different versions of ourselves, better versions.

I know, without a doubt, that I am a better person because of her.

It sounds sentimental and it is but it is also a truth born of work. We are not perfect, individually or together. There is no secret or special magic. We've made it this far simply by wanting the best for each other, by honoring the most vulnerable parts of each other, by stripping away illusions.

I will always be the girl who is more likely to write her a poem than make her a pot of coffee and she will always be the girl who makes the pot of coffee rather than writing me a poem.

Somehow, it works.

I hope it keeps working for years to come.

Mixed Nuts

Every Christmas, my mother would buy mixed nuts and put them in a fancy bowl with a nutcracker and picks and our family would crack and eat nuts all through the holiday season like the squirrels that we were. When my mom died, I inherited her fancy bowl, nutcracker and picks and vowed to continue the tradition. So, for the past 3 years, I have made Luisa buy the mixed nuts and I have put them out in the bowl during the holidays.

The kids love them! They love them so much that they crack a million nuts a day and leave a trail of broken shells in their wake and I end up yelling "PLEASE DO IT OVER A PLATE!" or "WHY ARE YOU MAKING SUCH A MESS?!" until I finally scream "NO MORE NUTS!" I don't remember the nuts making such a mess when I was a kid and my mother was more of a neat freak than I am so I can only assume that, like everything else, modern nuts have gone to hell.

I know you are wondering why I am talking about holiday nuts in July. Well, last Christmas, Luisa bought two bags of mixed nuts but there was an entire bag leftover because of the aforementioned screaming and eventual moratorium on nut cracking. The leftover bag of nuts was still sitting in the pantry in March and Luisa and I had the following conversation:

Vikki: I'm going to dump this bag of nuts out in the yard for the squirrels.

Luisa: What?! You can't do that! Then, you'll attract more squirrels!

Vikki: Have you seen how many squirrels are out there?! I'm not going to attract MORE just buy dumping some nuts.

Luisa: They will become dependent upon us and then we'll never get rid of them.

Vikki: It's one bag of nuts and we'll never be rid of them anyway. There are already millions of them!

Luisa: No. We should just throw the nuts away.

Vikki: That's wasteful! I refuse to throw them away.

Luisa: I don't want you feeding the squirrels!

And so began the Great Nut Stand-off of 2012 and the bag of nuts remained in the pantry.

Luisa left for DC last Thursday and I have been solo-parenting since then and the house is messy and everything feels chaotic and, when that happens, I like to throw things away to create the illusion that I actually have control over something.

So, on Monday, I spied that bag of nuts and smiled gleefully as I ripped open that bag,  marched outside and dumped them out for the squirrels. Finally I would be Queen of the Squirrels!

I am happy to report that there has been no swarm of squirrels as Luisa predicted. There aren't any squirrels hanging about with little handwritten signs asking for food.

This means that I was right and she was wrong.

I seized victory in the battle of the nuts!

Unfortunately, I was so right about the squirrel thing that all of the nuts remain exactly where I dumped them.

And it has been raining a lot.

And now there is a gigantic pile of wet nuts in the yard.

But a victory is a victory, right?

Luisa comes back on Friday. I am currently writing a victory speech that concludes with a humble request that she pick the wet nuts out of the garden. I have a bad feeling that my winning streak might be short.

Nineteen Years

Earlier this week, Luisa and I were lying in bed contemplating the fact that we have now been together for 19 years. With my head tucked into her shoulder and my arm thrown comfortably across her chest, I asked, "All those years ago, did you ever think we'd make it this long?" Her answer came quickly - "No."

I smiled and said, "Yeah...me neither."

I met Luisa when I was 24 and filled with all sorts of romantic ideas about love and relationships. I expected poetry and rose petals strewn across my bed. I wanted to feel that we were destined to be together. I felt we should spend large portions of our day staring into each other's eyes. I thought that I should be able to act like a total whack job and still get the girl.

Basically, I wanted to be the adorably quirky star of my very own lesbian romantic comedy.

But life isn't a romantic comedy. It doesn't unfold from a script and there are no guaranteed happy endings. The truth is that you build a life with someone a day at a time and hope for the best. Sometimes, it works out and sometimes it doesn't.

I wish I had some trade secret to share. I could tell you that love, respect and hard work are the keys to maintaining a long-term relationship but I know some relationships end despite all of that. So, I don't have answers.

What I do know is that, somewhere along the line, I learned a few important lessons:

Poems are lovely but I really want someone who is willing to tie a giant volcano to my car without complaint.

Clean sheets are just as amazing as rose petals.

Staring into each other's eyes is boring. I'd rather have a well-crafted cocktail and a smile.

You have to be nutty in moderation to keep the girl.

 Sometimes, our kids ask us if we'll be together forever. We both know that the easy answer would be "yes". After all, we have done pretty well so far. But, neither of us ever make that promise. We say that we love each other and hope to be together for a very long time. We know we can't predict the future. Our 19 years together have proven that.

So, Happy Anniversary Luisa! Thanks for the volcano thing and the clean sheets and for enduring all the crazy things I do (though I am disappointed that you scratched out "live rattlesnake" on the Target list earlier today).

Tonight we celebrate!

(And yes, I did make the reservation even thought technically that falls under "business" which is your domain but whatever.)