Scene

5am. 

3-year old opens the bedroom door and whisper-yells, "I need to go potty! Mom! I neeeeeed to go potty! Mom! MOM!" as he stands immediately adjacent to the hallway bathroom. 

I whisper-yell back, "Ok. Go potty." 

Him: "OK!" Exit to potty. 

Fin

The 3-Year Wall

Sunday mornings are very therapeutic.  One of us goes downstairs and sets out a breakfast for the boys, the other sets up PBS Kids video streaming.  And then we get an entire morning - 6:00am - 9:00am to talk.

This morning I was hand-waving about how I can't quite pin it down but there's some impending mental breakdown or disturbance in the force or something that I see coming.  Something's just starting to feel weird here.  Was it all the stress and bursts of frustration and fear that came with this crazy COVID-y year?  Is it this latent problem I have of feeling that I no longer am welcome in a culture that I grew up being told was the only place I'd ever belong?  Was it because Harmon's has been completely out of Clausen's Dill Pickles for four weeks in a row?  What was it?

And Paul, in his imminently Paul way (I don't know how to describe this), responded simply, "It's the 3-Year Wall."

"The what?"

"You know.  The 3-Year Wall.  We're coming up on the wall."

"The...what?"

And then he goes on to point out that our entire adult lives (and pretty much my entire LIFE life) we've never lived in a place longer than 3 years.  We've actually never lived at a single address for longer than 2.5 years before.  And in July, we're going to cross that 3-year line here in Utah.

And so everything feels weird because everything in us is saying that it's time to leave and try something completely new.  Time to start giving everything away and researching bike paths and "best restaurants" in wherever-we-go-next.  Time to start the emotional distancing to spare us too much pain when we have to say goodbye.  Time to go.  But instead, we're....not.  For the foreseeable future.

"Yeah, I feel it too.  Even at work." Paul went on.  "I keep thinking, 'Well, what now? What next?'  And I think it's even stronger because of tenure coming up.  I don't have a life template after that.  It was always, 'Just make it to tenure.' but I didn't think about what to do after that.  Not that it's all bad.  It means I can do anything I want really.  But it's strange.  So much time and freedom with no obvious structure."

"Yeah!  And!" I jumped in, "Like, my whole life template was basically to go to BYU, graduate/get married, and have kids.  But now, we're not having any more kids.  And so, what's the template for life...for...for I mean the majority of my life?  The rest of my life??"

We thought about all this in silence for a while.  

A very enthusiastic bird sang on our windowsill.

So! I said.  We'll make a plan.  AND here's what we need to do first: we need to figure out the distinct cultural regions of the United States...

Twelve and a Half Years

 

There was a whole plan, you know.  

From the first time we heard that one of the biggest celebrations in Denmark was your 12.5 Year anniversary, we started to make the plan.  

It was going to be St. Patrick's Day 2021.  

I knew exactly what kind of green gown I was going to track down (as much as I hate shopping for clothes, I was going to actually try for this one.)  

Paul was going to get his first brand new suit in 20 years.  It was going to be custom, tailored.  Whatever he wanted to make it.

We knew we weren't going to get the Danish treatment on the whole thing - it's not part of the culture here.  So no half-arch garland on our door (though we have the perfect entryway for that right now), no neighbors and family banging on pots and pans to wake us up in the morning.  We wouldn't open the window in our pajamas and robes and wave and say "Thank you for coming!" and give everyone a showy kiss.  We wouldn't invite everyone in to have donuts and hot chocolate or tea to warm up.  As cool as all of that would have been, I knew that was probably too much to ask there.  

But, we still had an Americanized plan.

We were going to send out real invitations in January.  With real RSVP cards.  

And we were going to invite 15ish of our closest friends and family to have dinner at Sundance, on us.  

And we would make some appropriately grand entry and everyone would cheer and we would eat really great food in a beautiful place all together.  And I'd give this amazing speech and wouldn't even cry a little bit.  And people would tell fun stories about the existence of Paul and Heidi, the couple.  Maybe I'd actually get over my phobia and play and sing something for the first time in 15 years - but only if it would actually be good and not at all cringey.  

But what no one else would know was that, the two of us in our suit and dress, we had found some beautiful spot on the mountain somewhere and married ourselves all over again right beforehand.  That would have been the real event right there.  But just for us.  And a really, really impressive bouquet.

So there was a whole plan, you know?  

Well, the world decided that we just weren't going to hit St. Patrick's Day 2021 right on the nose for a big party.  That's alright.  We'll postpone - it's the fashion to postpone things at the moment.  

And maybe it will still end up being exactly like we planned - just in 6 months or a year.  Maybe we'll change it up completely because we'll already be fudging the date.  Maybe we'll just go to Costa Rica.

But I at least wanted to note today, since it's been on our mental calendar for years and years.  

Here it is!  Happy 12 1/2 Year Copper Anniversary to us!  

We'll order some delivery Indian food tonight.  With mango lassi.