Yellowstone / Two Year Anniversary

It’s almost 10PM on October 5, 2020 and we are on our second leg of our journey out to Yellowstone.  Like an 80 year old woman, I’m sitting in my plane seat with an Icy Hot patch on my back, elastic waste pants, and compression socks pulled up to my shins.  Except instead of eighty years old, I’m seven months pregnant, and I’ve officially begun traveling for comfort instead of style. 

“This might be your best outfit yet”, my husband had snarked on our too-close-for-comfort layover.  I begged him not to take a photo, and he complied––for now at least––but probably only because he knew we were already rushing to our gate and this was not the time to get me fired up.  He was carrying 20+ pounds of equipment, and I was carrying 20+ pounds of baby weight while we managed to hustle onto the plane right before they closed the doors. 

Exactly two years ago at this time we were wearing aprons covered in semolina flour, surrounded by pounds and pounds of fresh pasta in a very messy kitchen.  We were prepping over a hundred servings of food for our wedding the next day despite everyone telling us we were crazy for wanting to cook our own food for our guests.  But we were drunk and we were happy, and we were getting married the next day.  

Our wedding was perfectly unconventional and perfectly us.  Throwing tradition to the wayside, we helped one another get ready, we personally greeted our guests, we had cocktail hour first, and we entered our ceremony together––arm in arm–– to complete the circle of friends and family who surrounded us.  

Timelines be damned, we let the weather and our energy dictate the speed of the day, and when bellies started to grumble, we fired up the trays of fresh pasta from the night before.  Our aprons went back on, and we served everyone else dinner before filling our own plates, partly with the intention of being gracious hosts, and partly in case we ran out of food then at least everyone else would have gotten some beforehand and we could eat some leftover pizza (#iwillgodownwiththisship). 

We danced the night away and rejoiced in the feeling of invincibiltiy that swept over us.  For two people who didn’t spend their childhoods dreaming about the perfect wedding, it is sort of lovely that both of us still look back on that day as one of the happiest in our lives.  

When I look back at the pictures from that day, I feel like we look like babies.  In many ways we were, even though two years is such a short amount of time.

We had no idea at the time, but our worlds were about to be turned upside down when we would arrive back from our honeymoon pregnant, but in for a world or hurt.  It would take weeks before I would finally get a concrete diagnosis, but we found out that the pregnancy was ectopic and after two failed rounds of methotrexate, I would go on to rupture on Christmas Eve out in the mountains of Colorado.  We would spend that Christmas morning in emergency surgery and quickly realized the depth of both the human experience and our new marriage.  

2018 still continues to be the year of our “highest highs and lowest lows” despite 2020 giving it a fair fight.  But when I think about where we are now, both literally and figuratively, I can’t help but feel so much gratitude and hope.  Yes, I am cramped up in our little plane seat surrounded by masks and attendants with gloves on.  It’s a strange world we live in now, but I am able to float my thoughts inward as our baby hiccups away in my belly.  “Why are those hiccups so damn cute” I think to myself, knowing how much I hate having the hiccups.  

In some sympathetic way, I rub my stomach as if it will make those hiccups go away, even though I selfishly don’t want them to stop.  Something about the third trimester makes me want to savor these moments, and I begin to get nostalgic about our two years of marriage all over again (it must be the hormones).  

In many ways, this baby feels like a miracle even though I really don’t like that word.  Getting pregnant again was never guaranteed and I really do believe that everything we went through in 2018 has sweetened this experience even more.  

We will spend our anniversary in Yellowstone tomorrow shooting an adventure elopement and I honestly wouldn’t want it any other way.  Yes, we are technically working, but when your work is this epic it is easy to think of it as a celebration, because it is.  We will be celebrating the opportunity to work and document the most important moments of other couples lives while celebrating our own formative years together.