last night,
after three and a half long months
and several paint jobs later,
adam & i finally started putting our dresser together.
it had been a long time coming
and we were sort of tired of stepping all over our clothes and shoving them in bags in the closet.
i guess you can say our priorities have been elsewhere.
it's funny how difficult it was
and how many times we had to take it apart just to flip a piece around the right way
and then screw it all back together.
we worked silently
occasionally giggling when one person would trip over a drawer
or when we realized we had the wrong pieces,
or the time i somehow lost our only screwdriver somewhere in our apartment
after, literally, not moving an inch for 2 hours?
(it was under a pile of clothes, demonstrating even more fervently the need for this darned dresser)
adam & i are going through all that typical stuff everyone tells you that you go through in the first year of marriage.
you know... toothpaste caps and towel folding methods, among other things.
and here we were thinking that we could just skip it all because we've known each other for so long!
"what little fools we were!" we will say as the years pass by.
marriage is hard work
and with all of the very stressful things we are facing as individuals at this stage in life
it's no picnic some days.
both of us were yawning with aching palms by the time 1 am rolled around
and we realized we couldn't finish because of the hammering involved in the last steps
and our desire to keep neighbors on our good side.
nobody likes a noisy neighbor, you know.
the whole time i had it my head that we could have just bought a dresser that was pre-assembled.
we would have spent much, much less money
and saved a lot of time that was spent painting it at my mom's house in brief installments.
we could have thrifted something and neither of us would have tripped over jeans as many times as we have.
we wouldn't have argued about which screws the instructions were referring to.
we would have hammered our fingers or had to leave the room when things got a little too frustrating for each of us.
we could have saved ourselves a lot of trouble.
but there was a moment where we put it all somewhat together
and gazed at its incompleteness in complete silence
and felt good.
real good.
like "we did it and here it is" good,
and the work was rehabilitating.
i could certainly try to think of an alternate word for "good"
because many consider it to be a word with little meaning these days.
i'm sure there are spicier words waiting in the wings there,
but i mean it.
i mean it in the hearty way a father tenderly hugs his daughter to tell her she did a good job.
i mean it in the way they say it in old movies, beautiful, articulate accents in tow, saying "you're a good, good man."
and i mean it in the way someone spiritedly responds to the question "how are you?".
i wanted to kick myself for ever taking work for granted
because it is such a healer.
turpentine ain't got nothin' on work.
there's no cause i'd rather be bruised for than a cause involving my husband
or our marriage
or our life together
or anything that encompasses our marriage.
i've realized things are good
and they will always be good
because frustration in the name of love
is still something done in the name of love
and that will always be worth the world.
so,
things are good.
there are so many good things to live out.
like being married to someone you love for, like, ever.
or like finishing frustrating dressers with that person.
that, too.
xo.
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