first...you get married

That’s how it all started I guess…marriage. I likely would not be living in such a lovely wooden box if a nice gentleman hadn’t been so patient with me for 12 years. Most days I have to remind myself that it really happened. I married Robert Collard. And…I couldn’t be happier. This little heart of mine had no idea how much it could love the person I swore I could never love in “that way.” Those two words soak almost every other page of my high school and college journals. Why I wasn’t able to love him in “that way” for so many years is simply beyond me. But, as usual, timing seemed to have its way and that little heart opened just enough one rainy May evening to let him in, in “that way.” Now, he and I live happily in a wooden box.

I’m assuming most of you recognize we do not, in fact, live in a wooden box. Yet, it feels like we do much of the time. Even if it were a wooden box I wouldn’t mind because it’s quite cozy, but the trouble is our wooden box is not solitary. We live in a tower of wooden boxes. A few nights ago I was domestically slaving away in the kitchen (sans an apron, which would have given my domesticality that much more of a domestic flare) and, as husbands do, Robert was hammering in the other room putting a shelf together (husbands love tools and putting things together, so I’m told. Robert’s fitting the mold quite nicely even in just the first few weeks). At this point we were not quite accustomed to our towered-wooden-box-living and failed to notice it was 11 PM on a weeknight, a notable time for sleep for many. Robert was lovingly hammering the wooden shelf directly on the wooden floor, directly atop the ceiling of the wooden box below. I guess our wooden box neighbors could only stand so much and five minutes later…knock, knock, knock. “You want us to stop hammering on your ceiling? You feel like your brain is about to explode? You can’t hear yourself think? Trying to sleep perhaps? Sorry, we’re just not used to this towered-box living.” Most of the world is sleeping at 11 PM, but we…we were making dinner and building shelves.

This wooden box is our home. The sink that’s too small to even lay a dish in flat forces me to have to remind myself that I am actually a wife and not just playing house, but I still love this wooden box and all it’s ridiculous quirks (including the old milk box in our wall beside the front door. No longer used for the prehistoric exchange of milk for bottles with the milkman, this contraption will soon be our primary receptacle for food storage). Three weeks in, a $35 floral couch from D.I. and a lovely wooden shelf later and it’s finally feeling like a real, live home.