2026/48

Because of how the holidays fell this year, we had an extraordinarily long break from school, and decided to spend a lot of it with my family and friends in Maryland and the D.C. area, staying at my mom’s, where we took the art of charcuterie-board making and nightly presentations of the too-many-treats that were in the house to an extreme degree. I think a lot of you can relate coming out of the post-holiday daze, and perhaps agree there is a sort-of unconscious method to this madness. At first it’s all about enjoyment. But by the 8th plate of snacks, you don’t really see a way out. “So, let’s ride this all the way to oblivion!” you think, “Let’s see how much we can take.” Finally, making the dreary return to reality possible - even slightly welcome - you regain sense, and are ready to go home.

Home, where it is, oh dear, January. Where the living room is full of all the things we left there upon our escape south. Yesterday was a pleasantly sunny, if cool, day, and Aidy and Gabe played basketball outside without coats, Aidy getting all the way down to her short sleeves at one point, the whole scene tricking me into saying, “It feels like spring!” Because with the cleaning up and out we were doing, the readying for the week ahead, it really did. Then this morning came and it was 29 degrees and the beginning of a real, uninterrupted work and school week, the kind we nearly forgot existed; the sign of a good vacation.

I wasn’t in a particularly good mood coming back to it all, to be honest, and I immediately, aggressively really, leaned into a behavior pattern that I always tell my children and friends is not a good idea. And that is trying to convince yourself you are not feeling the way you are feeling. I tried particularly hard to convince myself of this because I made a casual goal - a deal with myself following my recent 48th birthday and ringing in 2026 - that I would try to have as much fun as possible this year.

I find that I’m sort of allergic to the modern idea of “having fun,” not because I don’t believe in it, god no, but because I tend assign that phrase this juvenile air. Like that when people launch campaigns to have more fun, what they mean is that they will, as a full grown adult, start going to the trampoline park or something. And I think about how I tried, not too long ago, to do a cartwheel, which seemed to dislodge my entire sense of inner ear balance and I almost needed medical attention. I can’t be expected to have fun like that.

But that’s not what fun has to mean, right? It can mean - and what I mean - approaching life, when it is appropriate, with a sense of curiosity and light-heartedness. A spirit of facing the world with a sense of openness, like no matter what mood you are in…what might happen?! Getting on with it, instead of getting mired in it.

That’s what I did with my bad mood this week: I got stuck in fighting those totally understandable feelings following our extended holiday adventures, when the truth is about these moods (and this is another thing I always remind my children) is that, most of the time? They pass on their own. If you can remember that you aren’t the feeling, and the feeling is just a feeling, they usually do. And pretty quickly! Like the eventual understanding that the charcuterie plates have served their purpose and it is time to move on, rest assured that the proverbial gray clouds, if not the gray January days (not yet), will pass. And when I remembered to get myself out of my head and the house, to write it all down here and let this be a communal experience instead of a solitary one, I felt it all lighten right up. No cartwheels required! Here’s to a new year.

an attempt at advice after 20 years of marriage

We visited Zermatt, Switzerland this past Christmas, and on our last day there, took the Gornergrat Railway all the way up to the top for stunning views of the Matterhorn and surrounding mountains. It was this gorgeous, otherworldly expanse, snow and craggy peaks everywhere you looked. Quiet, cold, peaceful.

(I should add, for full disclosure, that it was only Aidy, Gabe, J and I who went up. Nora chose, instead, to sleep in and have breakfast with my mom at the cozy inn where we were staying, a decision she says she regrets not in the slightest, even when Gabe reminds her - and her reminds her of this often - that she missed “the best part of our trip” and, possibly, the most awesome thing in the world, ever).

When we got off the train, a young man proposed to the young woman he was with, and I, as expected, quietly, but probably not quietly enough, freaked out. It was so incredibly perfect. I got a chance to talk to them when we all ended up in this tiny chapel they have up there, where I delivered my congratulations in a way that seemed (I think) relatively sane. I kept my exclamations of “this is the best ever” to just three. Or four.

Thankfully (obviously), they were pretty excited themselves, and when they learned J and I had been married nearly 20 years they asked if we had any advice. I sputtered and said what immediately came to mind: to keep going on adventures like the one they were on right then.

Which is advice I fully believe in. Going on adventures as a couple - whether it’s making your way up the Gornergrat, squeezing in date night when you’ve got tiny children at home, or simply shaking up the mundanity (like when J tried to institute something he calls “cookbook roulette” to amp up our nightly dinner game, which failed to launch when his first attempt landed him on a complicated lamb recipe) - has always seemed to me like one of the best ways to keep honoring the relationship post-wedding.

Twenty years of marriage, which J and I celebrated this year on October 8, seems to be one of those milestones where you are finally worthy of this sort of advice-giving, advice-giving being something I never feel quite worthy of. Maybe in part because there is something I’ve always questioned in this particular advice space. Ruminated over. And it’s the fact that I regularly hear people saying that relationships are hard work. They lead with that.

I nod resolutely in agreement. But I think, feeling kind of like a jerk if I’m being honest: well, mine’s not.

To be clear, I’d never dissuade anyone from working hard at something meaningful, it would be misguided of me to ignore the fact that there are some issues you simply can’t work through, and it’s naive to say that the often complicated, constant situations that couples have to handle don’t require intense effort. Like dealing with the wild twists and turns of this unpredictable life, or realizing last minute that your children have their bi-annual dental cleaning on a morning you both have scheduled meetings, now what?

But what I’ve valued the most about my relationship, now 20-plus years in, is that our marriage feels like the thing I have to work at the least. Being with J is the dependable, joyful foundation that makes the actual hard work possible.

And that feels like kind of obnoxious advice to give. So lately (and I apologize for getting a little convoluted here) I’ve been thinking about this concept, digging in. About how maybe it’s too cavalier to say that J and I don’t work at our relationship. Because maybe doing just that is ingrained enough in our every day that it doesn’t quite feel like it’s happening at all. The way I force us to air out even minor grievances immediately, when J is fully immersed in a huge plot reveal in this quite endless series of science fiction books he is reading. The way he does this thing we call “Justin’s famous clean up” where he tidies up the whole house in mere minutes, or how he recently listened intently as I unloaded a minor mid-life crisis on him about my creative aspirations and then provided thoughtful, practical advice.

The way we met at our mutual friends’ wedding, 23-years-old and it felt like lightning, despite the fact that I’d come with my serious boyfriend, a situation that needed some, well, figuring out (and many beers). I always get caught up in the serendipity of that story, the fatefulness. But it also required painfully honest conversations and weighty decisions. It required very good friends and very good advice.

We’re lucky, there’s that. But perhaps my take on relationship advice is a little more nuanced than I once thought. If someone asked me for my honest advice on a happy marriage - if I could impress one thing upon my own children about good relationships (when I’m not all swept up in the romance of witnessing a literal ice castle proposal with the Matterhorn looming so close it felt like you could touch it…if I took some time to be really thorough in my answer) - what I would say is: Be with someone who makes your life better by default, and be that person back to them. Who makes it all possible. Be a solid, supportive landing place for all the great things your partner plans to do. For their rough days and big wins. Until it becomes habit. I believe you can choose that setting. You can choose it, then choose it again, and again.

I didn’t say that to the couple that day, as we took in the views, as the bride-to-be cried and I tried not to, because, first of all, it would have taken me such a long time to verbalize, and we eventually had to catch a train back down (we missed our initial planned departure time, by the way, due to Aidy and I deciding to take one last selfie, which I felt was worth it; J did not quite agree).

I’m saying it now though, the more thoughtful answer to the question. If they’re out there, by chance, planning their wedding, or already a few months in. Yes to all the things everyone says: communication and honesty and respect. Yes to adventure, and yes to coffee in bed, which is perhaps the most unshakeable tenet of our particular marriage.

But most of all, when you can: let each other, each day, be the least complicated part.

Several mornings ago I came downstairs where J had been for some time. He’d woken up early and decided to get some work done while the rest of us were still in bed, uninterrupted solo time a rarity in this particularly busy stage. College decisions and discussing complex ideas with teenagers. Everyone’s so big, how are we even fitting in this house anymore? Everyone’s so grown up.

I entered the kitchen where he greeted me in his pajamas, handed me a mug, gave me a hug for no reason. I laughed and said, “what is this?” And he said, “it’s just life.” He makes the hard work easy.