Love is Not All

As long as we are traveling down memory lane, I thought I would share. Amy and my wedding was the most amazing, beautiful, breath-taking wedding you ever did see. (Amy was the key planner, so I take no credit.) It started at about 11 am. We got married, took a handful of photos (didn't want our guests sitting around for 7 hours as we posed on that one bench under that one tree at the SL Temple) and then had an amazing lunch, with great desserts and a program. It was a ton of fun, and we were done by about 4 pm. We wanted it to be short and fun and for us to really be able to wallow in the love of friends and family.

The program was the part of that afternoon that sticks out the most in my mind. We had tributes, or toasts if you will, done by some close friends and family. Our friend Chanel MCed (who else?,) our friends Becky and Reyna sang a beautiful duet, my little brother and sister gave me a gift of a decapitated mannequin head, two of Amy's good friends from college did a tribute, and our friends Chris and Lisa did a tribute as well. I re-watched our wedding video today and was stunned at how much hair I had, and at how many kind and wonderful things were said about us. Our life would be so different without our amazing friends and family. And as this pending move looms closer and closer, and we know that we will be moving further away from some loved ones (and closer to a few, fortunately) I count us lucky for every day that we have had to be surrounded by our "tribe."

One of the tributes that has really stuck in my head is what Chris read. It is a poem called "Sonnet: Love is Not All" by Edna St. Vincent Millay.

Love is not all: It is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain,
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
and rise and sink and rise and sink again.
Love cannot fill the thickened lung with breath
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
pinned down by need and moaning for release
or nagged by want past resolution's power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It may well be. I do not think I would.

I love this poem. And it seems appropriately fitting this weekend when romantic plans of rainy walks in downtown Portland and dinners at the Cheesecake Factory were traded for frozen Tony's Pizzas and Project Runway (seriously, how glad are you that Ricky and that hat are gone?) The reality of our lives is that it is filled with much more nose wiping and early bedtimes than candle-light dinners and rose petals. Our love has changed too, to include two little monkey boys (who are both hitting me right now, BTW) who have pushed both of us nearly to the proverbial edge this week with sleepless nights, and crying, and refusal to take medicine. Sometimes love is more about being the one who gets the cold enough water in the middle of the night for Jonah, or takes Noel on a drive just to get him out of the house so his life isn't ended prematurely, or being willing to sit through Max and Ruby one more time to calm the tears.

When I travel for work, I am sometimes reminded of how awesome I once was. I go out to eat and laugh at awesome jokes, and wear great clothes and go to movies. But I'm happier when I take Jonah to the Sinclair to get him a chocolate donut that he will only eat the outer edge of, or when I watch Noel do the Pinky Dinky Doo Dance, or when I cuddle with my wife on the couch and watch our stories.

Sometimes life takes precedence over love. But I wouldn't trade it away. I do not think I would.