Cupcakes and icing for dinner
And other things I've learned about what makes a good marriage
It’s Sunday evening around five o’clock. We haven’t had dinner and have no plans in that direction. I’m sitting on the couch in the living room reading a book, which is typical. Jeff is wandering around the kitchen, probably setting up his coffee for the morning.
“I sort of have a craving for cake and icing for dinner,” I say.
Jeff goes on getting ready for Monday morning, crossing from one room to the other. I go back to my reading. A few minutes later, he’s in the living room. “Cake and icing for dinner sounds good,” he says.
An hour and a box caked mix later, we’re sitting contentedly on our kitchen couch, each with our cuppa, a book, and an iced cupcake. The cupcakes haven’t cooled enough, so the icing is melting a little bit, but neither of use cares about that.
This, I think to myself, is how you know you’re with the right person. You find yourself eating cupcakes with icing for dinner.
Today, Jeff and I have been married for thirteen years. Thirteen years ago tonight, we gathered in a building down the street that’s now a closed brewery, but at the time was a sort of art center. There was no air conditioning and the day was a little hot, but by evening it was fine. My parents walked me down the aisle. My nieces read a paragraph from Wendell Berry and our daughter read from The Velveteen Rabbit. People walking by on the street outside stopped and peered in the big window right as we were saying our vows. Everyone laughed. Our friend and former student (now designer of my young adult book cover) played a couple of songs. I was ecstatic, beaming as I walked down the aisle.
Then we ate dinner, moved the chairs and had, what I still believe, is one of the best parties of my life. This is how you begin the spell for a good marriage or relationship—with a kick-ass party. Not a wedding necessarily. But definitely a party.
How do you know when you’ve found the right person? I don’t get asked this question a lot, which is a good thing, because I have no idea. I lucked out. After a long history of really hideous, borderline abusive relationship/not-relationships, I took a terrifying leap of faith. I tried something different. What would it be like to be with someone who actually seemed into me? Go figure, it worked.
But given how little we knew each other at the beginning, it feels like mostly luck. I can’t tell you how to pick the right person at the beginning. I can tell you how you know you’ve chosen wisely.
You know you probably made the right choice when your person is unfailingly enthusiastic about every increasingly strange idea you put before them.
“I think I want to spend endless hours alone writing so that I can try to publish things and, in the process, make myself totally miserable,” I say.
“Yeah, that sounds good,” Jeff says.
“I think I want us to go to Paris.”
“Like, eventually?”
“No, like next month.”
“Okay.”
“I think I want to become a witch.”
“This is good. Will you start dressing like Stevie Nicks?”
“I could?”
You know you made the right choice if you never run out of things to talk about. A friend said this to us when we were sitting at a bar a few years ago. “Don’t you two ever run out of things to talk about?”
We looked at each other. Shrugged. No, not really.
The other night, we sat on the kitchen couch (a kitchen couch is probably also an important ingredient to a happy family life in general) and had an extended conversation about the history of race as a social category and the role of science therein. We have a long and ongoing debate about whether art should be judged or consumed based on the morality of the artist themselves. But we’re just as likely to talk about the effects of the transfer portal on college football or whate to have for dinner (cupcakes and icing, clearly).
But also, you’ve made the right choice if when you come home from teaching, which is an interaction-intense activity, and your person is perfectly happy to make you a cup of tea and let you lay on the kitchen couch reading. Some of the happiest moments of my marriage are just that—me on the kitchen couch and Jeff in the back room, playing baseball card games (it’s a whole thing and too complicated to get into). Together and apart, which is the way all relationships work in the end.
You know you’ve found the right person if you fight. If you argue sometimes. If a couple never argues or fights, someone (or both of them) are a ticking time bomb, storing up all that anger and annoyance until it explodes. No one can live their life fully with another human being and not be annoyed as fuck at them at some point. Or, I don’t know, maybe you can, but if you don’t even care enough to be annoyed by someone, what’s the point of it?
You know you’ve found the right person if you fight well. If you both apologize easily and quickly for being an asshole. This is one of those skills I find you get better at with time and practice.
You know you’ve found the right person if you don’t have to explain the anniversary present you bought for both of you, a tabletop ping pong kit, so you can convert your dining room table to a ping pong table sometimes and play, without keeping score.
You know you’ve found the right person when even after thirteen years, you can’t help but smile when you see them walking down the street toward you from a distance with that bouncy, arm-swinging gait. If you know what the most authentic version of their laugh sounds like and you feel a whole-body delight every time you hear it.
There a lot of reasons why I had those bad relationships/not relationships for so long. I believed at the time that to fall in love with someone was to lose a part of yourself. It was to give up your freedom. Marriage was an ending, not a beginning. That’s how all the stories go.
You know you’ve found the right person when you feel freer than you did before you met them. Like you can go soaring if you like, because there’s someone rooting you to the ground, helping to find your way back home. You know you’re with the right person if instead of losing a part of yourself, you find the space to rediscover all the parts of you that were lost along the way. You know you’re with the right person if that beautiful party was just the beginning of the very best part of your life.
Great things I read on Substack this week:
at for all his ideas about how to make science and academia better, including his new idea for science houses.
This beautiful piece from at on lessons for hard times.
Great books I read this week:
The East Indian by Brinda Charry. Picked this up randomly on the new book shelf at my library. Such an interesting account of early colonial history, from the perspective of a young man from Tamil (in India) who finds himself working as an indentured servant in Jamestown, Virginia. This is the best book I’ve read that demonstrates how the evolution of slavery in its eventual form in the United States was not inevitable. In the beginning, African people and English people were both indentured servants. But when they begin to find common cause—African and English and Irish—that’s when slavery begins to take shape as a way to make sure that Black and white people don’t realize their common interests. Divide and conquer is the oldest trick capitalism has and its still going strong 300 years later.
I just started A Spell in the Wild, by Alice Tarbuck, as I lean fully into becoming a witch and I’m already loving it. The book follows the calendar and begins in September and it is September, so I’m feeling some definite fated vibes here.
Love this! Happy anniversary :)
What a fine tribute to your marriage. Happy anniversary. Glad you found the right someone. Truly believe you're right about the party. A good party is my plan for my departure also.