Darling, So It Goes
Scenes from our first year of marriage
I was sitting at the piano yesterday, playing whatever came to mind and heart, while Hitoshi prepared bacon and eggs. It was our first anniversary. I baked a fancy cinnamon apple bread and he was finishing up our brunch to celebrate.
I was lingering on a melody that came bubbling up—Can’t Help Myself—when I got tripped up on a certain chord. I was playing from memory. Did it go to the 1 or 4? Then I catch Hitoshi in the corner of my eye, holding up the number 4 with one hand with the oven mitt on the other.
This, my friends, is one glimpse into our marriage.
I move from Sandra’s tune into Can’t Help Falling In Love, that old classic I used to play in the nursing home. Hitoshi and I talk occasionally of our hopes when we are old, praying we are gifted long lives together: take my hand, take my whole life too.
In reflecting on what this year has given us, taught us, and asked of us, the good outweighs the bad by a long stretch. This is a limiting way to reduce our first year, as the bad and hard and ugly have been crucial to creating the good. And here is one gift of marriage: we go together, so they go together— the good, the bad, the hard, the beautiful. For as long as I shall live, I will keep trying to distill life into good and bad, either/or, this or that. And as long as I shall live, love says: to hell with that.
And so, hand in hand, we delight in celebrating our baby marriage growing and evolving. Here are a few memorable moments from our beginning year.
Zambia
Four months into our marriage, we flew 30+ hours around the world for a dear (very dear) friend’s wedding. Nashville→ Atlanta→ Paris→ Nairobi → Lusaka, ZAMBIA. We landed at midnight local time, then arrived back at the airport at 8 am the next morning for an in country flight to Livingstone to see Victoria Falls. We were packing it in, ok?
We spent that first day walking (crossing the border on foot from Zambia to Zimbabwe for better views of the falls) and enjoying staying awake in a foreign land with friends.
That evening before bed, I was journaling under a mosquito net. Hitoshi was in the bathroom. We were sharing a small cabin with our friend Nick, who was staying downstairs. All of a sudden, my stomach rumbles in that terrifying way. I put my pen down. I feel a… churn. As a quick refresher, to churn is to “stir or agitate violently”—but it subsides after a moment.
This can wait, I decide, and start my journaling again.
In reviewing my journal entry from this night, I see my penmanship move from deliberate and neat to halting and messy. I’m writing quickly. I’m also squeezing every muscle below my waist with fervor.
ok, well—my journal records. I stand up and I run to the bathroom door. I hear the shower turn on. “Hitoshi,” I am whisper-yelling, trying to ensure Nick doesn’t hear, “I need to get in there…now…”
It should be made known that Hitoshi had the option to leave the room, but he was ready and resolved to shower, and I had resolved to liberate the burdens that were churning in my gut.
The shower head was one of those rainfall square ones, and it should have been magical, but out of approximately 100 holes, only 7 worked. So in order to get an amount of water worthy of rinsing soapy suds, you had to hold your hand under the water for 10 seconds, collect a small puddle, and then douse yourself. This was a time consuming process.
I had the honor of witnessing my husband navigate this wonderful experience while I was reenacting a scene from Dumb and Dumber.
“This is one of the worst showers I’ve ever had,” Hitoshi exclaims.
“Is it because of me?” I ask from my view nearby.
“…that’s a part of it…” he replies, and we screamed laughing for days, weeks, and months.
Intimacy can be achieved in many ways.
Tuna Steaks
I tell a friend over coffee that Hitoshi does the majority of our meal planning and cooking. “You’re a lucky woman!” she exclaims. I feel this everyday in a myriad of ways, but the cooking has been a fun surprise of our marriage. It’s also been the crux of some of our biggest fights: two is exactly too many cooks in our kitchen.
The way we’d navigated this for many months was that he did the cooking and I gladly, gleefully, let him. It seemed like a good deal to me, because it was. One of my greatest flaws is allowing other people to do what I ought, can, or should. He expressed this to me, in so many words, that he was carrying the load and he was looking for a little more collaboration. This was true.
So one fateful evening I offered to make tuna steaks. I thought I had solved our problem: I put Hitoshi in charge of the side dish and I would handle the tuna. Had I ever cooked tuna steaks before? Absolutely not.
There are two kinds of cooks in the kitchen: those who read instructions and those that wing it. Guess which one I am?
In a classic mistake, I pour the entire sauce I created over the tuna steaks, when it called for half before cooking and half afterward. Before I noticed, my precious, thoughtful, attentive, kind husband pointed my error out to me. “Ah, no big deal,” I said casually, “I’ll just dump…” “No!” he interrupted. I believe I later accused him of being intense/rude/aggressive, but as I’ve noted before, he simply read the instructions, internalized it, and was trying to be helpful. I also later accused him of ruining all the fun of cooking, saying, and I quote, “I guess every party DOES need a pooper!!”
I abandoned my post. He found me on the couch, pouting, like the mature, self-assured woman I am. The fight could have been easily resolved, especially with his pursuit. I got up and finished the tuna. But I wasn’t ready to let go, not yet. I resisted, then I attacked, and the fight swelled in and out over a day and half, the way the tide rises and recedes from the shore.
I’m the fun one, right?
An Interlude
Forgiveness is a healing balm,
chapstick for a dried out heart,
a waterfall over a head holding
multitudes.
Forgiveness is a summer breeze
on a sweltering day (blowing
the sweat off the shoulders,
drying up all the pooled up piles
of pontification pouring out of hearts
in desperation to be heard, seen.)
Forgiveness is a light in the middle
of darkness, pointing
you towards home-
you see your love again clearly-
eyes full of stars,
windows of welcome.
Exactly How Long Does the Honeymoon Last?
Last month I listened to a podcast1 where a husband and wife were reflecting on their marriage. “The first ten years were hell for me” he began— “do you look back and think ‘what a great time?’ ” “Um, no” she responds without hesitation. They are both cackling now. “We never had a honeymoon phase. It was a… struggle. Good thing we were friends for 8 years first.”
I’m listening as I’m driving home from work, laughing out loud. I’m stopping at a few grocery stores to look for lactose free butter. I realize I’m delaying going home more than the search for butter. We’d had a big fight the night before and I was hurt and not ready to face the one I loved, the one who hurt me. It was comforting listening to their own stories from those first years of marriage.
The next day, Hitoshi and I are on a date to dinner and a movie. We’ve had conversations, repair, forgiveness extended from the both of us. The mood between us is tender and sweet. Over sweet potato fries, I recount this podcast story to Hitoshi.
“Do you think we had a honeymoon phase?” he asks me.
“I think we did, but it was early on…” I reply. We began reflecting on our movement from friends for 9 years into that fragile, sweet space of becoming something… new. We reflected on our first fights, some of those moments where we wondered if we were going to make it across the divide of our solitary states into the land of togetherness. We marveled at engagement and this first year of marriage, until we came to the agreement that our honeymoon phase lasted exactly one month, in our dating life. We cackled as we reflected on why that one month was so precious and infused with that romantic high, stuffing ourselves with fries and memories.
“I am coming to understand how love changes… how precious those days were and how precious these days are…” I’m searching for language for what love meant then and what it means now and how it is the same but very different. I can’t. So we smile and rise and grab hands as we walk to the theatre.
...like a river flows surely to the sea darling, so it goes some things are meant to be...
Deep End with Lecrae. Episode from April 2, 2026 “I Finally Sat Down With My Wife (and we talk about everything)”
So honestly and hopefully articulated. Moving glimpses into what makes a marriage not only work but also flourish. Well-done!
Love love love ❤️ so beautifully and honestly expressed ❤️😍