Annabelle Perfect Seeds
Annabelle
Perfect Seeds
The first year of marriage is the hardest. Lovey always told us that adjusting to living with another person, no matter how much you love them, can be tricky.
But I think when you get married in three days, the first year of marriage is like that glorious first year of dating.
Your nerves prick when his hand brushes your leg, you count the seconds until you are together again.
You frivolously worry if you’ve texted him too much that day and play games with yourself: I’m not going to say anything back to him until he texts me twice in a row.
Or, I’m not going to look at all of his Facebook pictures again until I’ve finished this load of laundry.
When you’ve only known each other as long, that first year is magic.
So, it’s the second year, or, if you’re us, about eighteen months in, when the dew finally wears off and the grass loses some of its luster.
But I don’t think either of us could have acknowledged that that’s when we started to hit a bit of a rocky patch.
It is only in retrospect that I can even see the shift, the minor turn in the earth that gives you vertigo.
We weren’t fighting or anything. It was just that, all of a sudden, a relationship that we both knew was going to be endlessly thrilling became mundane.
Maybe it was that Ben was back working at a job that, to put it mildly, didn’t get his creative juices flowing like they once were.
When he wasn’t singing, I wasn’t his muse, and, quite frankly, I had a bit less time for musing anyway.
My new boss, Father Rob, affectionately nicknamed Priest Charming by his parishioners, had taken what was supposed to be a part-time job and made it full-time demanding.
I was more than a little intimidated walking into the church office that first day.
I loved the look of the Saint Catherine House, its aging brick and white picket fence, the idyllic little flower garden.
The impossibly tall ceilings inside, huge, light-filled windows and comfortable furnishings made it feel more like home than work.
But I didn’t have a firm grasp on my actual responsibilities, and my doctrine was a little rusty, since I hadn’t been a regular church participant since high school.
But I was excited to be getting out of the house and doing something, anything that felt like it had purpose.
Plus, it was a great way to take my mind off of not being pregnant.
“Oh my Lord, I’m so happy you’re here,” Junie said as soon as I walked through the door my first morning, my arms overflowing with homemade muffins of every kind.
That they were homemade by Emily could be our secret.
Junie rushed to hug me, squishing the muffins into my chest, and, as I laughed, Priest Charming appeared from around the corner, raised his eyebrows at me in surprise and laughed too.
“Junie, do we need to watch that video on sexual harassment again?”
That was the moment I realized that this job was nothing like I thought it was going to be. I had assumed Rob would be as stuffy and uptight as his clerical collar.
I had also expected to get right down to business, to engross myself in spreadsheets and contact lists and bulletin proofs. But, instead, Rob said, “Okay. Let’s get in the car.”
“Where are we going?” I asked, imagining myself at some poor parishioner’s bedside, solemnly holding the prayer book as Father Rob read him his last rites. So I was more than a little surprised when he said, “Strawberry picking, of course.”
I thought maybe that was some sort of first-day-on-the-job welcome or something, but, when Junie said, “Better you than me,” I realized that seemingly unrelated field trips must be a part of the job description.
As Rob opened the door of his Audi convertible for me, he said, “Don’t you love the first strawberries of the year?
I think strawberries instantly make it feel like summer. ”
I nodded. “I always say that. And not those grocery store, middle-of-winter strawberries either. Real, ripe, minute-old strawberries.” I put my seat belt on as he pushed the top down, and, though I was wondering how an associate pastor could buy an Audi convertible, I kept the thought to myself.
Instead, I asked, “Is there a reason we’re going strawberry picking? ”
“I’m sure there’s a reason,” Rob said. “I’m just not sure what it is yet.” He grinned at me.
“I’m confused.”
“Well, every night before I go to bed, I ask the Holy Spirit to put something on my heart that I should do that day. So every morning I wake up with a distinct urge to complete some task—sometimes mundane, sometimes off the wall.”
“So how do you know that it’s a message from heaven? I mean, how do you know it isn’t just the aftermath of a dream or a random thought?”
He shrugged. “Haven’t you ever just known, Ann?”
I looked at him sideways when he called me Ann.
It seemed sort of intimate for someone I barely knew.
But, then again, Rob didn’t seem like the kind to feel uncomfortable.
And, of course, I “just knew” all the time.
I instantly thought about Ben. “So do you ever get done with a task and think, ‘Well that was pointless’?”
“Oh, sure, all the time.” Rob pulled into a parking space outside of Patterson Farm. “But I never, ever think that about that first-thought-of-the-day task.”
Rob and I each got a Patterson Farm cardboard basket with its open top and wooden handle that fit right over your arm for picking.
It made me think of Lovey and how she would take me strawberry picking when I was little.
I would keep those empty picking containers, wrap my dolls in blankets and slide them into the baskets, pretending they were my own precious babies.
It was the first time I had thought about my empty uterus since breakfast.
About halfway down the first row, I said, “Doesn’t it feel sad just leaving some of these behind, or picking them, realizing they’re bad, and then throwing them back.”
Rob nodded and was quiet for the first time that morning.
Since I tend to ramble in uncomfortable silences—at least when they’re uncomfortable on my end—I continued. “I mean, they all start from the same perfect seeds, but then when they grow, some never even get to reach their full potential of being spread over pound cake with homemade whipped cream.”
My boss laughed. “Thanks, new Girl Friday.”
“For what?”
“You just wrote my sermon.”
And that’s when I realized that, though I might have stopped inspiring my husband, that didn’t mean I wasn’t still a muse.