Lauren B. Lentini

I’m not normally the most sentimental person, but today feels like a good day for a sappy blog post. Jerald and I were married 14 years ago today. We also met when we were 14 years old.

He likes to tell people we were high school sweethearts. Then I clarify that we broke up a lot. And that we hated each other for much of those four years. But we sucked at being apart, so eventually we stopped trying it. I think every part of the story is important, and skipping any of it means we wouldn’t be who we are today.

My favorite memory about our high school days is our second breakup. We decided to split (again) over the phone one night, and of course we had to see each other in class the next day. I put his high school ring in an envelope, complete with the chain on which I’d worn it around my neck—because it was tainted, I suppose. When I gave it to him in first period, he traded me for the A Perfect Circle CD he’d been promising to burn for me for a few weeks. (I’m really dating myself with this story, aren’t I?) I listened to it that night, only to find that he’d added a bonus track: our song (Third Eye Blind’s “Never Let You Go”). Talk about tainted! A few days later, I discovered the necklace that I’d included in my envelope dangling from my car’s antenna. I didn’t drive myself to school (I carpooled with the Bus o’ Love), so he must have gone all the way out to my house just to return it surreptitiously.

I love that we got to be stupid kids together, but we also had separate life experiences before we got married. No shade to anyone with the traditional high-school-sweetheart story, but it wasn’t right for us. We got back together the summer after I graduated college, and one of my favorite memories of that time was meeting him at the Waffle House halfway between our homes to discuss the amazing speech we’d just watched this relative nobody give at the Democratic Convention. (Spoiler: It was Obama.) When the campaign that had brought him back to Georgia ended, we weren’t really up for the long-distance thing, so we broke up again until I decided I was ready to move down to Florida with him.

Since he was working in politics at the time, we picked a wedding date that would always fall after election season, but lo and behold, the campaign he was working went to a recount. This isn’t exactly a recount we’re going through now (give it up, sore loser), but in a way it feels like coming full circle.

I want to commemorate the fact that we can still even look at each other after 14 years of marriage and eight months of pandemic. Somehow we’ve figured out two home offices and a daycare in our house, and it only sometimes feels like the walls are closing in. Well, I can only speak for myself. I’m not the easiest person to live with, and he does a much better job of taking care of me than I him. But he still bought me roses (yellow ones, just like high school) so I must be doing all right. I bought him a board game, so we can hunker down for the next wave.