Seven Years

He goes out to get eggs and comes back with flowers.

I feed the babies and make Eggs Benedict.

He hangs some fresh washing on the line and starts another load.

“Seven years ago, eh?” we both say.

Today on this lazy Sunday morning we cast our minds back to a not-so-lazy Friday morning when we were getting ready for our wedding. I glanced at the clock and mused, “Around this time on the morning of our wedding you phoned me from your Mam and Dad’s house... to remind me to empty the cat litter before I left the flat!” we laugh, harmonised. We still marvel in the fortune that brought us together: born within 40 miles of each other but growing up thousands of miles apart, something brought me back to where I’m from and brought us together. We’ve always known that together we were like a huge jigsaw puzzle – first we found the corners all those years ago, and then started working on the edges of the frame together. And the picture in the middle is a beautiful thing. So today, we’re seven years worth of puzzle, him and me – somehow, and incredibly, we fit.

He puts down his knife and fork and recalls, “I went to get my hair cut! The barber asked, ‘What are you up to today, mate?’ and I said, ‘I’m getting married.’ The barber said, ‘Married! I’ve been married three times!’ and I thought I was going to get a harsh talking-to, but instead he says, ‘...and I loved it every time. Would do it all over again if I could.’” He laughs.

“I wasn’t nervous at all, that Friday morning. I’d slept like a baby the night before,” I tell him.

“So did I,” he interjects.

“And then someone knocks on the door and it’s the florist delivering my bouquet, and my stomach starts flip-flopping.” I can still see/smell/feel the fat petals of the white roses, in their simple, elegant hand-tied posy, laying in wait in a grocers cardboard box alongside its four smaller sisters; bridesmaids posies for my girls.

Jason looks up from the middle distance, amused: “Can you imagine what would happen if someone told us, that drunken night, that ten years later we’d be like this? Celebrating our anniversary with breakfast, while one of our sons watches cartoons and the other naps upstairs?”

This baffles me. I can hardly believe it except it’s entirely true – there’s the evidence: one with tousled hair, pyjama-clad, in a cross-legged bundle in front of the telly on the living room rug; the other cosily swaddled, dozing contentedly in his Moses basket.

(I sometimes wonder if there is a direct correlation between the scrumptiousness, yumminess and gorgeousness of my children and the strength of the bond between their parents. Does every set of parents do this?)

That drunken summer night that made us realise our corner pieces were of the same picture. Pints of cold cider, walking aaaaalllllllllllll that crazy-long way back from the pub and OHMYGOD he’s holding my hand. Then he makes me take off my shoes and he throws them into the road. I still don’t know what THAT was about and neither does he. And best of all, tingly kisses on the journey next to traffic lights, under bridges, outside newsagents. Who knew?

Love. It’s a silly little word really, for the weight it carries. But I love you today on our anniversary a lifetime’s worth of times more than I did seven years ago. Thank you for your precious heart, and our perfect boys. I adore you and love you madly and there’s nothing more that makes sense to me in this whole, wide world than being a jigsaw with you.

(Me wins.)