(As a Wife) 8 Months

Also including On Marriage in a Rented House

I am a Wife.

There is a horror in such a thought that I had never believed would take hold of me. In the same breath, there is also some sort of glory—perhaps it is not that I am now a wife, but that I am now Grown. I have been waiting to be Grown, as many people have, and perhaps it is only terrible in its glory as I have realized that I’m Becoming—I am Becoming within my skin, I’m Becoming within the grey walls of the small house where I live with my husband and our cats and our dog and our garden and the neighbor’s dogwood tree draped o’er our driveway and above the pale oak floors in need of new polish and the shell-rich soil beneath our feet, with the hand-me-down kitchen table and cameras and tools and plates and blankets, I am making and I’m doing and I am still breathing.

Here within the walls of my own home, I am learning, and I am learning to understand.