There are easier ways to spend nearly three decades than being married to me.
I say that with self-deprecation, not false modesty. I know who I am: a woman with a life full of plot twists, medical detours, rustic Airbnbs requiring a tetanus booster, and the kind of travel luck that turns a simple flight to Memphis into a tour of every airport east of the Mississippi.
And somehow, I married the one man who seems built for all of it.
Twenty-seven years ago, we stood together—young, earnest, unprepared—and said yes to a life we couldn’t have imagined. And what a life it has been.
This is the man who loves a good deal so much he can find a flight so inexpensive it practically comes with bonus layovers. The kind where you land in a place you didn’t know existed, change planes twice, and eventually—eventually—end up in Memphis. It’s his version of TJ Maxx treasure hunting, and honestly, I admire the enthusiasm.
This is also the man who accompanied me to an Airbnb so aggressively “rustic” I’m still not convinced we didn’t accidentally film the opening scene of a true crime documentary. He walked through the door, looked around at the serial-killer décor, and said, “It’s fine.”
Bold. Unfounded. Admirable.
This is the man who voluntarily attends 5 AM hot yoga for reasons unknown to science or God.
I do not understand it.
I do not pretend to.
But I respect that he has this mysterious, sweaty inner world.
And here’s the part most people don’t see:
This man survived a misdiagnosed appendicitis when I was almost nine months pregnant with our son—an appendix that ruptured, turned septic, landed him in the hospital for two weeks, and required three months of home health. We survived with grit, stubbornness, and the kind of exhaustion that deserves its own chapter in the medical literature.
August 2024 tried to take him out again.
We were supposed to be moving our daughter into her freshman dorm, but his intestines had other plans. They twisted themselves into a surgical emergency, and he lost seven inches of his colon and spent another week in the hospital.
And because August apparently believes in sequels, almost exactly one year later he returned for a Nissen fundoplication—which, for the uninitiated, is basically when surgeons take your stomach and wrap it like a burrito around your esophagus to stop acid reflux—along with a laparoscopic hiatal hernia repair.
(At this point, August should be reported for harassment.)
But through all of that—through ruptured organs, twisted intestines, surprise surgeries, and endless hospital rooms—he kept showing up. For me. For our kids. For our life.
And I have shown up for him, too.
Because that is what we do.
That is who we are.
He has been the constant—my constant—through cancer, through motherhood, through cross-country medical pilgrimages, through grief and joy and college drop-offs and every unpredictable turn life has thrown at us.
I joke that our lives are made of dumpster fires, and sometimes they are.
But this is the man who never once backed away from the flames.
He climbed in with me.
He helped carry the parts worth saving.
And he stayed.
Twenty-seven years in, I’m still grateful I get to do this life with him—imperfect, hilarious, messy, resilient, ours.
Happy anniversary, Jeremy.
Thank you for choosing me then.
Thank you for choosing me still.
Absurdities and Fires 