Changes

photo credit: hypertypos

My husband and I dated for less than three months before we decided to get married.

Two weeks later I was Mrs. Bilbao.

No, I was not pregnant. Yes, I was and still am desperately in love with him.

My engagement period was almost nonexistent; I never got to live together with my prospect of husband; I never even spent more than two months of my life away from my parents.

The changes I went through swept by me with both the spontaneity of a summer breeze and the strength of hurricane Dolly.

One week I’m kissing mom and dad goodnight and the next I’m making dinner for my husband and I.

One day I am Laura Marte and two weeks later my planet name is turned into an unknown town in Spain that I can never relate to.

One month I wake up at 95 degrees, lizards running all over the walls, and birds chirping in the garden by my window. The next I’m awoken by the squirrels fighting over a nut and snow falling in loud thuds on the wood ceiling.

And further on, one night I hang out with my friends at the disco or a party and the next I don’t have any friends at all to hang out with.

But name, location, weather, and even friends network changes are only secondary in the marriage process.

The first and most important thing that we had to adapt to is that from the moment we said “I do” all our actions would affect both of us.

Everything from the house we were going to live in, the furniture, the food, where and when we were going to work and study; our family, neighbors, domestic chores, sleep time; birth control; finances; whose career would come first; getting a pet or not; even what soap, shampoo, and detergent we were going to use.

Those first three months of having to stay inside the house 24/7 were the real fire proof for our marriage.

For starters, I am a morning person and he is a night person. Meaning I was in bed by 9:00 p.m. (blame the time saving; back home the sun is up at 6:45 a.m. and down at 7:00 p.m. all year long) while he kept working in his computer until 12:00 p.m. or more; I could be up by 7:00 a.m. while it took a bulldozer to drag him off bed before 10:00 a.m.

I recycle everything and he says it is a waste of time because glass and cans will go back to Earth anyway and the pollution generated to recycle plastic is also destroying the ozone layer. I keep recycling anyways.

I mess the kitchen so bad when I am cooking I wish I could set it on fire every time we clear the table. He can prepare a complete meal with just one pot, a spoon and a knife without spilling a single grain of sugar; it will more than likely be hamburgers, tacos, or hot dogs though.

He is allergic to the dance floor. I live for the music.

I could go on and on, but the mother of all discrepancies between us is that I love hanging out with real people and he is more than happy chatting for hours with his online friends of the alternative energy forum.

“Honey, I’m just socially impaired” he admits.

Thanks to my open attitude I have been invited to birthdays, lunches, barbeques, potluck parties, graduations, receptions, dinners, dances, and all sorts of parties.

I can count the ones he attends with me with the fingers of my right hand (and there are some leftover fingers). Each time it has been hell for him to walk by my side and force a crooked smile while checking his watch every five minutes. He’s like a bored kid who wants to go back home as soon as possible to watch the Sunday cartoons.

But all these differences and many more melt away in the everyday life whenever we see each other in the eye after a long day of work and school. There is some invaluable secret about cuddling up in silence for half an hour and tell each other some apparently banal things like how did the day go for us.

On the weekends I wake up before him and just let him sleep away. And as soon as he hears the “click” of my bed lamp going off at night he turns off the computer and climbs to bed.

I do my big mess in the kitchen, but the result is food so good to him that he has assured many times he is so glad that God set us up together. This is understandable, for all he had to eat were hot dogs and burgers before meeting me.

He has learned to recycle for me and puts away all the little plastic and cans so that I can take them to the recycling center.

I can go out on my own and visit with my newfound friends and neighbors; have a girl’s night out; go swimming, dancing, eating, etc. and when I get back home he’ll be glad that I was having fun.

He shows me his latest inventions and little wires and stuff that I don’t understand at all and I exclaim in awe that I’m so proud and happy that I married the smartest guy in the world.

He sees this blog and my other writings and says he is so glad I’m pursuing my real career.

“I am happy when you are happy” is what he says.

And I think that should be the base of all marriages.

In fact, it should be the base for all relationships.

Just love people for what they are.

Don’t try to change them.

photo credit: Torsten Althof

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