Tag Archives: Baby Daddy

Marrying for love may be a bit risky, but it is so honest that God can’t help but smile on it.  - Josh Billings

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I remember the conversation clearly.

We were sitting in his basement apartment, only weeks from the wedding, and we were scared. We were scared of what happens to love, to marriage, to a person after too many years of cereal slurping and bed sharing.

I asked him, “Would you ever cheat on me?”

Austin was quiet. He knew it was suspicious to answer too quickly. He knew it was okay to be honest.

“I hope not,” he said grimly.

Today is Austin’s birthday. Last year I wrote a little post on the 28 reasons why I love him. It was nice.

Today I was thinking about number 29. I was thinking about how there are relationships where you are honest and then relationships where you are honest. I was thinking I’m glad to have the latter.

Last week we talked about things we’d never do. Of course we’d all love to say we’d never cheat or lie or steal or drive to McDonalds at 2am just to get french fries–but humans are flawed and, I believe, capable of anything. 

I watch some couples in love and just pray their storms aren’t too strong because fairy tales have a shelf life and as history has taught us, time has a habit of wearing on promises. All those nevers and always start to look daunting in the light of day. The whole business is an indeterminable risk.

The thing about love is that after the endorphins wear off, it’s really about showing up. It’s about showing up every day and trying not to fail. It’s about putting your best foot forward, and when that doesn’t happen—hoping your other has enough grace left to say “it’s okay.” It’s about recognizing that we’re all capable of great lightness and great darkness, and figuring out how to navigate the light.

Happy Birthday to someone who keeps showing up, finding my light, and loving me one day at a time.

We persevere.

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I got engaged when I was 18 years old on a cold day in December to a boy I would never marry. He was my high school sweetheart and everything a girl could want; smart, sweet, handy with jokes. He was the guy you elect class president, the guy you take home to your parents. He took me to the beach and put the ring in a shell. I was shivering and expecting it and very, deliriously happy. It is a good memory.

Three years later we said a final goodbye after a series of very un-final goodbyes. I had been awful to him for a very long time. He should have walked away and he did. I was filled with so much regret that I wanted to die. I almost did. It is not a good memory.

I graduated college a few months later with honors and the realization that I should not have majored in English. I was depressed and hopeless in an unflattering way. I drank too much, ate too little, and dated people I didn’t actually like. At one point I woke up at 3am underneath my car in a driveway that was not my own and thought, “I need to get it together.”

Meanwhile a stranger in the class above me messaged me with a booty call disguised as “friendly hello.” I rolled my eyes and laughed with my friends. He was cute but I didn’t know him and had other things to do like get drunk in plastic baby pools and attend poetry readings.

Then one night when I was bored and probably lonely, I decided to write back to the stranger. I was aloof and cool and tried not to act interested. All I knew was that his name was Austin Baer and he’d moved a few states away. I had nothing to lose.

For three months we proceeded as casual online friends. We never spoke on the phone and there was never any mention of romantic intentions. We simply wrote back and forth about our days and the weather and music while I slowly got my life back together. When he finally did ask me on a date, I was cautious but excited. We went to a Format concert in Washington DC with a group of his friends. I changed my outfit ten times before I left. I’m sure the concert was great, but I don’t remember any of it. I can only remember my hands. I never know where to put my hands.

A few months later I packed up my car and moved from Virginia to Pennsylvania to continue our relationship. I said it was for “employment opportunities” but everyone knew it was for a boy which was weird and embarrassing. The whole drive there my brain was stuck on repeat. Don’t let this be a mistake. Don’t let this be a mistake.

We took things very slowly. I learned he hates Christmas placemats and Sufjan Stevens. He learned I hate carrots and loud chewing. Seasons changed and so did we. We fought, we made up. We moved, we changed jobs. Most importantly, we fell in love.

Then one pale Christmas Eve, I opened a jewelry box he made and inside was my great-grandmother’s ring. It was three in the afternoon. I said yes.

I know it’s not kosher to compare, but I’m going to anyways. I’ve been proposed to three times and this time was different. This time there was no grand gesture or drama or tears. This time I was not deliriously happy in the way you are when you’re 18 and think love means never going to bed angry. Instead, I was happy in the way you are when you’re looking at your future and you know it’s right.

I am not one to gush and neither is Austin, but I will say this: I love him. I love him because he is tall and smart and has dark eyes and tries hard at things. I love him because he is not perfect for me.

We’ve been married for four years now, and if there’s anything I’ve learned–it’s this: Marriage is not just a spiritual union. It’s taking out the trash and folding the other person’s underwear and asking if they’d like the last piece of chicken. It’s saying you’re sorry when you’re not really that sorry and biting your tongue when they are slurping their cereal and you just want to scream.

I know the hardest parts are yet to come, but I have to hope that our foundation is strong enough to withstand the worst of storms. I also know that love, in all its ambiguity, grows and changes for better with time. As always, Mark Twain says it best: Love seems the swiftest, but it is the slowest of all growths. No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century.

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When I first met Austin he was a graphic designer. He was working the night shift at a big company creating ads for a coupon book. It was not glamorous but it paid the bills and he was satisfied. A year later we both changed jobs and ended up working for the same non profit. I was in the executive suite and he was their sole graphic designer. It was a pretty good gig; full creative control and paid classes to improve web design.

Soon after our job change we got engaged. I was happy, he was happy. We looked at houses and made a half-hearted attempt at planning for the future. Mostly I just wanted to stop hiding the fact that we were basically living together and bunk up already. My head was not in the next 30 years but in the coming May.

Then things changed.

Early that spring something started to grow in Austin’s brain, kind of like a tumor. A little tumor that said, “I can’t do graphic design for the next 30 years.” It was weird. Finally he confessed it one rainy afternoon in April, a month before our nuptials. Basically he said, “Would you mind if I was a doctor?”

My first guttural reaction was an overwhelming YES PLEASE. My mind flashed to a big house, a big yard, and being able to stay at home with our kids. Financial security? I’ll take it.

Ten minutes later, after a conversation about the logistics of actually becoming a doctor, I wasn’t so sure. 20 minutes later I was trying my hardest to find a different route. What about a physician’s assistant? A nurse practitioner? What if you just worked at the hospital, like a receptionist? What if you just stayed a graphic designer and volunteered in a clinic on the side?

I was desperate because I realized if he went to medical school, our life as we knew it was over. It would mean quitting our jobs, moving to Virginia, finishing prerequisites, studying for the MCAT, paying for the MCAT, applications, application fees, moving, moving again, interviews, more interviews, waiting, rejection, not buying a house, not having money, not having freedom, moving again, moving away from our friends, going further into debt, and renting for the next decade. It would mean our cozy little life in the city was coming to an end.

And so it did. Three years later and here I sit with a 1 year old in the middle of a sleepy town while my husband studies all day, every day about intestines and flesh eating bacteria.

It’s not so bad, mostly it’s just different. Instead of 9-5, it’s as soon as he can wake up until he’s too tired to study anymore. Instead of TGIF! it’s “How much can I expect to see you this weekend?” Instead of, “Honey, I wonder if you’re dilated!” it’s “Can you please lie down? I need to practice feeling the inside of a vagina.”

Just last night I was complaining about a weirdo ingrown hair on my leg and it wasn’t a minute later before I was half passed out while he operated on me with a dull knife. LEAVE ME ALONE.

It’s a long road, one that many of us are on being married to a student. With the decrease in jobs and an increase in 20 somethings with nothing to do, graduate students are becoming as common as mason jars at weddings. They’re everywhere.

Being married to a student means sacrifice. It means waiting. It means patience when they’re still not home at 10 and understanding when they need to leave a party early to study. It means not freaking out when the bank account reaches absolute zero or when they forget to plan something for your anniversary because it’s test week. For us, it means 3 more years of school and then 3-6 more years of residency. It means living on loans and government help and not buying that dress at Target. It means a lot of time alone.

It also means sucking it up and realizing a lot of people are married to other people with hard jobs. Farmers work long hours, business owners work long hours, investment dealers work long hours (probably?), lots of people work long hours, odd hours, and hard hours. You know the mantra, we all have our crosses to bear. I don’t need to tell you.

Truthfully, most of the time I keep my mouth shut about Austin being in med school. Otherwise I run the risk of hearing, “Doctor? You guys will be rolling in it someday.” Which always prompts an unnecessary conversation where I overexplain our current debt situation and how we probably won’t have any sort of money until we’re in our mid forties. More importantly, anyone in medical school (or any grad school) knows that if you’re doing it for the money, you’ll never make it. The energy spent to dollars made ratio just isn’t worth it.

What about you? Did you marry a student? Are a student? Does your lover work long hours or weird hours or come home in the middle of the night smelling like another person’s blood? (This hasn’t actually ever happened). How do you make it work?

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