The Big Changes

Everyone tells you that the first year of marriage is difficult. A lot of adjustment. A lot of change.

I had prepared myself for it. I don't particularly like change. Sure, I love to move the furniture around the house or dye my hair, but I don't like the big changes, important ones.

My family moved back to Lexington when I was in the 6th grade. This is the longest that we have every lived in one house. I also lived at home all through college. It was very convenient and a great way to save money. Plus, call me crazy, I am friends with my parents, and that great relationship means that they respect my space and autonomy.

So when it came time to move post-wedding, I was worried. This was one of those big changes. I had never lived away from home. I had gotten really comfortable in that particular home. My husband had even lived at my parents house for brief stints in college. It was kind of his home, too.

Yes, it helped that I was staying in the same city. Yes, it helped that we had purchased our condo the year before and I had spent a lot of time there, but this moving meant that I was really grown up. It meant that my home wasn't my parents anymore.

This fact really bothered me. Actually, to this day in my cell phone, I have never changed my parents house number to read anything other than home. Instead, I have made the distinction of Greene home and Condo home. I know that it is just semantics, but it made me feel better.

All of this, though had me worried. Was I going to like being married? Was this the difficulty that people talked about? Was this why the first year was so hard? This kind of adjustment?

Was it changing your name that made everyone so upset?

I was dreading the day that we returned home from our honeymoon. Really, I was dreading the next morning.---when I would wake up at my new home. Would I be sad? Would I cry? That would be embarrassing. It knew that it would make my husband feel terrible.

It was on that morning that my husband did one of the sweetest things that he has ever done. While I was still asleep, my husband left our house. I awoke to a sound that made me so unbelievably happy. My family dog, Kentucky Derby, was standing above me on the bed licking my face. He had brought the dog from my parent's house to wake me.

Perhaps my new home wasn't so different from the old one. Plus, why can't we have more than one place that we call home?

I guess that morning was a sign of the year that was to come. I am here to say that our first year was magical, unbelieveably wonderful. I'm not saying that it was perfect, that things weren't adjustments, but not really in the way that I had expected them to be. It was a year that will always remain precious and pure in my mind.

I'm glad that we had that year.

~warmly~
Katherine