A June wedding. How cliché!
When picking our wedding date, we looked at all the other things on the calendar which happen in the course of a year. It seemed the major events (read: birthdays and major holidays I care about) fell in the months between September and February.
My parents had married just a few days before my Dad’s February birthday, and the proximity to Valentine’s Day created quite a busy and expensive month for them. I didn’t want to follow in their footsteps.
June was as far away as we could get from other festivities without creating a new month, and I wanted to make sure we had ample opportunity to have romantic weeklong vacations every year without massive scheduling effort. Marriage is work, and I wanted to make sure to build in space for rest and play too.
It all went exactly according to plan until we had a kid, which, per family tradition, arrived in that Fall-Winter window like everything else. Yay us, keeping June clear for just the anniversary! But one thing we forgot when we picked that June wedding date is how when you become a Dad, Father’s Day is suddenly far more personal and generally takes up half a weekend. So our June wedding anniversary shifted toward a Father’s Day celebration. Okay, cool, cool, we can manage.
And then we wrecked it further all on our own by giving birth to our second child… not in Fall or Winter but in June. So now there’s our wedding anniversary, Father’s Day, and our son’s birthday, all within a week of each other.
You know what else happens in June when you have kids? End of school year parties, award ceremonies, and graduations. But we didn’t factor any of that in because honestly when I met my husband, I’d been told I couldn’t even have kids, so why would that have been on my mind?
This year is the biggest June of my life.
Even more so than that all-consuming June of 1996 when my husband and I said I do. We have Father’s Day, our milestone twenty-fifth silver wedding anniversary, our youngest’s graduation from high school, followed by his super important eighteenth birthday, our firstborn’s long-awaited completion of his program at Hong Kong University and subsequent leaving of the nest and moving abroad without us. Don’t forget my husband recently started a new job and we are still surrounded by boxes from our move a short time ago. The chaos is next level.
Every single thing this month is special and important and memorable and meaningful. I wish I could take this one month and live it three separate times with a focus first on the major accomplishment of somehow remaining married for twenty-five years, then a second time where we just take the whole month to celebrate our youngest son, a baby who had heart surgery at four days old who just exploded into adulthood strong and healthy and gorgeous and graduated, and then one more time again where we spend the whole month pouring all the last minute wisdom we can into our firstborn, memorizing every conversation and funny story before he leaves for a new life in America.
I wish this was possible, just this one time.
Alas, I’m stealing sleep, letting laundry pile up, eating out for almost every meal, and cancelling other plans just to fit it all in… poorly.
My husband and I did a two night staycation last week at a super fancy hotel where we were upgraded to a suite larger than our flat. It’s not the week away my newlywed heart envisioned all those years ago… we haven’t had that since the Time Before Kids. But two nights is better than one, and certainly better than none. And to be frank, I felt guilt taking two nights away while there is just so. much. going. on. But I knew we had to keep it a priority when my firstborn expressed shock that we were indeed going away for a couple nights despite all the entries on the calendar.
This, I told him, is actually a gift to you and your brother. When your Dad and I invest in our marriage away from all distraction and make sure we are really connected and on the same page about life, the universe, and everything, it benefits all of us in big and small ways. You’re welcome!
I haven’t finished what I intended to publish for this week — an exploration of current events involving freedom of the press in Hong Kong and what that means to me and my writing in particular. Instead I got up extra early to quickly type this out and say to you: enjoy a little break on my behalf.
Stretch your legs, go get a treat. I’ll be back shortly!
Yes! So many couples put the kids first and then when they grow up and move on with their own lives - the couple realizes they are living with a stranger. Happy June and all the great things happening!
So crazy. This is a crazy busy month for sure!