Warning: Mushy Anniversary Post

A year today, folks. A year we've been married.

I could do the traditional wedding day pic, but I don't have them on this computer. So instead I give you each of us in a dryer at a little laundry mat in Italy. Why? Because this seems like an aspect of marriage to me: a little cramped, a little silly, not always comfortable, but good grief it's fun.

Especially to be married to Sam. When we were doing laundry and waiting for the clothes to finish in the washer, I turned around and Sam was as you see him here, just to hear me giggle. And giggle I did. Then I climbed in one of my own.

Lately my insomnia has been raging, so I stayed up most of last night working on a video for Sam - an extremely amatuer compilation of a bunch of pictures from the last few years and "our song" - Fiona Apple's version of Across the Universe. (Did I ever think we'd have a song? No, no I didn't. It just sort of happened, honest.) I figure no one would be interested except the two of us, but if you're dying to see it, type "Sam and Deja" into youtube and it should come up.

So that was my present to Sam. His present to me? The most gorgeous suede-bound journal I have ever seen. He bought in Florence when I was sick as a pig, and secretly harbored it all the rest of the vacation and kept it stashed since we've been home. Sneaky man. Anyway, it's softer than anything and the paper is thick and gorgeous with a cool watermark on every page, a sweet note from him inside, and on the front cover there's a red kitty. Maybe I'll post a picture. Anyway, it made me weep.

One more story to illustrate the state of my heart, as I feel compelled to do today.

Last week Sam got some great writing news; I mean really great. He won a cash prize and publication in a fairly prestigious literary journal that he's been trying to get into for years. It was particularly wonderful because the story is based loosely on, well, me. And our relationship. So it was a triumphant, happy moment for both of us. I love seeing him happy like that.

"You know how it makes me feel?" he said. "I'll show you how it makes me feel." And he opened his laptop, went to youtube, and had it play Frank Sinatra's song, "My Way."

I laughed and he took my hand and insisted we dance in our living room. I kept laughing because it seemed kind of silly, but it was also lovely. He kissed me ever so tenderly on the neck, more tenderly than I ever remember being kissed in my life.

And he said, "I couldn't have done it without you."

"Really? You really think so?" I said.

"Definitely not. I think you have to care deeply about something before you can write well."

I don't know how to explain how all of this felt, except to say that it gave me this heady sense of ownership. He is, in a way, all mine. And I am, in a way, his. And we seem to have stumbled upon this thing that we didn't think would work, that we had no hope would work except that we really wanted it to. And, against some odds, we seem to be doing it, building and strengthening and shoring it up, getting better and more in love all the time, finding out love is wider and deeper and stranger and more fantastic that we could have imagined. How sweet it is.

Sam. I love you. I'm looking forward to the years to come.