Vachon Imagined

I was set up for it.

The whole marriage thing.

I would sit in the balcony of a Baptist church, peering over the railings and imagining the people below me. I could see it all.

How beautiful I’d be.

My dress—the bigger the better. The Princess Diana, you ain’t got nothing on me dress.

That one.

I think my prince was there somewhere, but he hadn’t entered from stage left yet.

For now, it was just me, my tiara, the people cheering, and the music.

Oh, did I mention the music?

Oh, the music.

Think symphony meets angelic entrance, and somewhere between those two things you’d find me.

The myth.

The star.

The legend.

Which is funny, because this was not the life I was leading.

Not even close.

The life I was actually leading was the fun of dysfunction and the Archie Bunker of comedy. It was the life I didn’t want to be living.

And this?

This was the life I should be living.

Beautiful.

The prince equally as charming.

Dashing.

Never missing a step.

Always paying for dinner.

Treating me like the queen I deserved to be.

Rescue me.

There’s only one little glitch in this story.

I’m not a queen.

My name is Vachon, and I was named after a Mafia family on Hawaii Five-O—the old one, not the new one. The book-’em-Dano of the 1970s, with better hair. I said what I said.

Vachon was a last name. V for Vachon—French, because apparently even a Mafia family needs a little sophistication.

My mother got pregnant out of wedlock.

The horror.

She was a Southern Baptist, after all, and this was apparently somewhere between tyranny and tea that wasn’t sweet enough on the scale of things a Southern woman could be expected to endure.

Because if you don’t know Southerners, let me tell you something:

They take their tea seriously.

My mother and father were complete opposites.

My dad bounced from school to school in search of—well, when I figure out what he was searching for, I’ll let you know.

My mom?

Everything had order.

There was no bouncing.

No bouncing unless it had a mapped, fully checked and rechecked, straight-line way of getting itself back down.

One had a plan.

The other?

What plan?

Let’s just dance.

And drink.

And perhaps make a few decisions after midnight that are best left out of the family newsletter.

That kind of dance.

And, as you might imagine, there was a lot of fighting.

A lot of:

No, you don’t get to be that way.

Be my way.

And they tried.

They really did.

For thirty-two years.

Until one day my mother was lying in the sun, about to turn fifty, and apparently the sun gave her enough clarity to say:

Nope.

That’s it.

I’m done.

Which brings me to marriage.

Because marriage, as it turns out, is somewhere between:

I love you

and

Would you please not leave your fucking toenail clippings on the bathroom floor?

Especially after you’ve said this 1,785,987 times with absolutely no measurable change in behavior.

Marriage is:

I promise I’ll cook your meals every night and wear your favorite lingerie while I’m doing it.

And then him coming home to prepared food while you’re throwing laundry at him and helping with homework.

Rotisserie chicken is on sale again this week.

That’s marriage.

But marriage is also the fighting.

And the remembering.

The remembering that you love someone no matter what they do.

They can be complete idiots.

They can leave toenail shavings on the bathroom floor.

They can be anything but a princess.

And still, somehow, love is there.

Because true marriage, without its doctrine, without its certainty and image-holding, without the fantasy, isn’t about finding the prince who never misses a step.

It is discovering that the person standing in front of you was never required to be a prince at all.

Or a princess.

True marriage is learning to see the person beneath the role.

The person who forgets.

The person who irritates you.

The person who fights with you.

The person who buys the rotisserie chicken because it’s on sale and comes home like he’s just won the lottery.

The person who is messy and beautiful and ridiculous and human.

Because no matter what a person does, they are still life.

They are still love.

And that is what love actually does.

It doesn’t just teach you to love the prince.

Or the princess.

It teaches you to love the one buying the rotisserie chicken on sale like it’s Christmas morning.

The one with the toenail clippings.

The one who drives you completely fucking insane.

The one who was never the character you imagined entering from stage left.

Because somewhere along the way, the music changes.

The tiara comes off.

The dress gets put away.

And you discover that the great love story wasn’t about becoming the queen you thought you were supposed to be.

It was about realizing that there was never anything wrong with being yourself.

How could you ever be yourself and still be loved?

Well, this is where Jesus was saying something much bigger when he talked about two becoming one.

He wasn’t giving us the marriage contract or projected image we sometimes imagine today.

He wasn’t saying, Marry me and complete me.

Or, Marry me so my financial needs are met.

Or, Marry me so I never have to feel lonely again.

He was pointing toward something much stranger and much more beautiful:

Love me when my financial needs look like a toilet hanging off its hinges.

Love me when I’m an asshole.

Love me when I’m sick.

Love me when I’m confused.

Love me when I’m immoral.

Love me when I’ve completely forgotten who I belong to.

Love me when I’ve forgotten who I am.

Because to become one isn’t to find the perfect person who finally completes the person you have decided yourself to be.

It is to understand that beneath everything we do, beneath every role, every failure, every triumph, every ridiculous human mess, there is still life.

Still God.

Still love.

And there is nothing we can do to separate ourselves from it, no matter our marriage status.