Happily ever after...

I remember being a little girl dancing around in my "shimmy shimmy coco bop" dress, a halloween outfit I wore until it was far too small to be darling, and dressing up in my Grandma's costume jewelry. Those were the days when being a grown-up meant wearing lipstick and carrying a purse. The multiple re-enactments of Barbie & Ken's wedding came a bit later, but were still filled with the wide-eyed imaginations of a child who knew very little about real life. Eventually high school came and went, and growing up meant getting a car and staying out late with friends on Friday night. Once home from the mission the star of the imaginary wedding went from the boy in Hebrew class to the boy in California to the boy in the apartment downstairs to the left (then to the one on the right, and then back to the one on the left). Though the face changed, the dream of roses and happily ever after lived on. Reality set in when I graduated from college, still single, and being an adult now meant a full time job with health benefits and a 401K. Eventually tall, dark, and handsome entered the picture, but somewhere between "I do" and "please pass the hot sauce" I seem to have missed the rest of the fairy tale. There's no yellow cottage with a white pickett fence, porch swing, and daffodils. There's no singing animals washing my dishes and no swelling music each time we kiss. Instead there's a tiny apartment, a sink that often backs up, and morning breath. Being an adult still means a full time job with health benefits and investment options.

Matthew and I are two weeks shy of 6 months of marriage. There have been some huge changes requiring an extraordinary amount of faith and patience. There are also a number of things that have stayed unremarkably the same. It's not exactly the life I imagined back in the days of Barbie, but it is real and I think that's better. Besides, who says reality and happily ever after are mutually exclusive? There may be messes to clean and disturbing noises from the apartment next door, but there's also the cuddle before falling asleep and listening to Matthew sing in the shower. Being an adult does mean paying bills, but there's also cute purses and Friday night dates. Perhaps we are living the fairy tale after all...