Held together by love (and a lot of nails)
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| The farmhouse table, 9 years in. July 2026. |
On the occasion of my and my husband's first wedding anniversary, I wrote an essay about his quest to build a farmhouse table for our backyard, and my
"Here, my biggest takeaway from our first year of marriage crystallized in a hefty, wooden, substantial way: the joy is in the teamwork. I can fuss and schedule and manage all I want, but we are strongest when we work together. I'm saying this out loud to you because this lesson is not easy. I do not always heed it. I am often bad at it. But when we hit our stride ... man, are we unstoppable.
So with that in mind, I'd like to take this moment to say -- Happy 1st Anniversary, Nature Boy! Every time we sit and eat and laugh at the gorgeous table you built, may we remember it is held together by love.*
* And lots of nails."
But as we now celebrate our 10th anniversary—a decade, a lifetime, an epoch!—I am sorry to report that the table is donezo.
Who knew that an enormous wooden table subjected year-round to elements that include but are not limited to rain, wind, snow, hail, heat, mosquitos, termites, bird poop, insect frass, flying squirrels, and toddler meals would start to disintegrate sooner than expected?! Who knew that a tabletop made from reclaimed pallet boards would slowly rot, leaving gaping holes that we plug with cardboard and elegantly conceal beneath a tablecloth?! Who knew that the tree roots beneath the table's preferred spot in the backyard would continue to grow and heave up the soil, unbalancing the legs and forcing us to re-situate the table every time we host?!
Clearly not us.
When Nature Boy (a moniker that has, like the table, weathered and softened over time) carried over the first broken pallet board earlier this summer, my first thought was, "How much more obvious does the metaphor need to be?" Everything breaks down over time, with even the most beloved, cared-for items subject to the march of years and vagaries of circumstance. Why should marriage, which is by far the most complex, absorbing construction I have ever undertaken, be any different?
I say "construction" because every day of our ten years together has brought with it some degree of building, maintenance, or repair (sometimes all three in the same day). For us, parenting has been the relational equivalent of four-season weather, exposing the rickety boards and hidden termite holes more quickly than we might have discovered otherwise. And while the ground beneath us hasn't shifted dramatically with personal challenges such as job loss or illness, unforeseen global and national events (pandemic! rise of authoritarianism!) are throwing us for a loop and prompting a constant reevaluation of our individual and family values and our choices of how to embody them.
I won't lie and say we've never had a tablecloth day where we choose to paper over a marital issue with ice cream and an episode of Taskmaster. And some days feel like we're dragging our relationship all over the place trying to find firmer ground from which we can pause and reflect, because our individual fault lines haven't disappeared; we just know better now where they are, and it turns out they occupy a fair bit of real estate.
But for all that, we always seem to find the energy and the will for another day together, and that's the assurance that keeps me upright. For we are held together by love, commitment, and an increasingly obscene amount of nails.
P.S. We have no idea yet if we'll try to fix the existing table or build a new one. Lest my mother anyone reading this reflection panic, I do not consider this decision as part of the metaphor for our marriage.
Prayer #422: Everything's a Metaphor for Marriage
The driver's seat position (flexible, bespoke)
Faded ghost signs (evocative, persistent)
Rock scrambles on steep trails (unpredictable, humbling)
Bouquet of homegrown zinnias (exuberant, fleeting)
Near-finished chocolate mousse (decadent, satisfying)
The good bones of an old house (sturdy, repairable)
Rerouting GPS (unexpected, unfinished)
God of union, be with us in our difference. Be with us in our likeness. Be with us in our quest to bear your image, united.
Amen.