Listening to Sarah McLachlan’s, Fumbling Towards Ecstasy, takes me back to the beginning. It really was the soundtrack to that trip, and maybe our lives. 

They were sitting on the couch at his mother’s house. They had no couch of their own to speak of. They had nothing at all to speak of, besides the baby girl between them, and yet they never stopped talking, laughing.

They had planned a weekend trip up to Tahoe. A getaway of sorts, for two teenagers with a baby, who had never made it anywhere farther than the bedroom.

They were watching Ricki Lake, like they did everyday, and a commercial came on.  She looked over at him and said, “When we get up there, do you want to get married?”

He looked at her and said, “Are you serious?”

“Yeah, why not? I mean, we will already be up there,” she casually responded.

He said, “Yes,” and they held eyes and hearts thinking of everything that was between them in that moment.

The commercial break was over and so was the moment. They were sucked back into Ricki and her guests, listening to them tell each other, “Sit, sit down. That’ll work for you,” committing that line to memory and making it a part of their own vernacular.

They drove up to Tahoe in a grey Hyundai Excel passed down to them, like all of their worldly possessions. With the sun-roof open and the warm breeze on their faces, Sarah Mac sang about everything they were feeling. They turned the tape from side one to two and back again the whole trip. Nothing could be more right.

They believed it was them against the world. Empty hands and wallets made full with their love and passion for each other and their baby girl. They said “I do” and “I will” and knew that their love was enough.

Seventeen years have passed since that day.

Seventeen Years.

There are days when I long for the naïve eyes to see things that same way. There are days when I shake my head at those fools. Someone should have told them to listen to Sarah more carefully.:

“Hold on
Hold on to yourself
For this is gonna hurt like hell.”

But they wouldn’t have listened.

So, they went on their way. And they made six more babies.

They lived and loved and laughed and cried. They had failures and successes and failures. In that order.

They wondered why it was so hard. They looked at each other and they forgot. So many things. The reasons why.

Their eyes became jaded and their hearts became calloused.

Their hands were filled with things that looked more like failures and disappointments than love and passion.

They stopped talking. Unless it was loud. Or about things that were safe and didn’t matter much.

They saw each each other from a distance, the weight of their mishaps blocking the view of eyes and faces they once knew as well as their own.

They listened to people. People who were full of their own bullshit. “We just want you to get better. We want you to have what we have,” they told them. And they looked at each other and wondered why they didn’t have whatever “it” was.

They joked about how seven kids and no money is what kept them married. But behind the smile were questions about whether it was really true.

They felt lonely living in their noisy, full house.

They felt misunderstood, unloved, and disrespected.

It was sad, really. Because they never stopped loving each other. But they didn’t believe that it was enough anymore.

They didn’t know how to get back what they lost. They didn’t know how to hold on to each other instead of the feelings of failure and resentment.

Then one day they decided to try to remember all the things that used to be true about them, about James and Tasha. Who they were and what they were about.

They knew that they could not be those carefree kids who decided to get married in the middle of a Ricki Lake episode.

But maybe they could see past all the shit between them. Maybe they could see each other. Again.

They held eyes. They remembered. Their love and passion for each other and their seven babies.

They started to talk about things. Real things.

The life that they had shared.

The shit that they had endured and overcome. How instead of breaking them, maybe it had just shaped them.

Into what, they were unsure. But they decided to try to find out.

In the background, they heard Sarah Mac, reminding them again what it was like to fumble towards ecstasy.

“Your love is better than ice cream
Better than anything else that I’ve tried
And your love is better than ice cream
Everyone here know how to fight

And it’s a long way down
It’s a long way down
It’s a long way down to the place
Where we started from

Your love is better than chocolate
Better than anything else that I’ve tried
Oh love is better than chocolate
Everyone here knows how to cry

It’s a long way down
It’s a long way down
It’s a long way down to the place
Where we started from…”
~Ice Cream, Sarah McLachlan, Fumbling Towards Ecstasy

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Happy 17th Anniversary to my husband, whose love is better than chocolate, better than anything else that I’ve tried. May God give us eyes to see each other clearly and love each other better over the next 17 years.