Love and Marriage
NOTE: We have actually now been married seven weeks but I wrote this post over the course of the last two weeks so not everything is accurate time-wise.
I’m writing to you from our new home in Sydney. Within the last six weeks I got married, went on a honeymoon, and moved to Australia, so I guess you could say a lot is going on with me.
Six weeks into being married. We’ve done an unimaginable amount of logistical organizing since our wedding. We packed up all our belongings and shipped them across the world. We planned and went on a honeymoon to Rome, where we ran around most days looking at things. We came back, packed up again, and got on a plane to Sydney. We bought furniture and household goods and moved into our new house. We called movers and plumbers and electric companies and the city council. We opened bank accounts and rented a car.
We’ve been busy.
But as I write now, I feel mostly calm. Phil is at work. I’m at home, sitting on our new (second-hand) couch, looking at the IKEA coffee table and bookshelves (empty) that I built, listening to the ambient sounds of the washing machine and dryer coming from the kitchen (where these things are kept). I’ve swept up all the little crumbs, I’ve wiped down the counters. The many pounds of cardboard and garbage we’ve accumulated from the many, many products we’ve bought have been picked up by special collection.
After six weeks of almost nonstop, celebratory hecticness, things are falling into place.
And all I can say is: I am so happy all of those amazing, wonderful, once-in-a-lifetime events are behind me.
Yes. Weddings are fairy tales. Dreams. A perfect, wonderful, amazing day. You’re radiant, beautiful, glowing. It’s the best day of your life. You’re a bride. You’re a princess. You’re gorgeous. You’re marrying your soulmate. You will never be happier than on this day. It is the highlight of your life (so far), the pinnacle of your sojourn on earth.
The perfect day.
And honeymoons are long, blissful, wonderful days of celebrating your love. Togetherness with your new spouse, 24/7 closeness, affection, good food, beautiful scenery. Vacation, travel, joy, perfect Instagram photos, wrapped up in each other, living on cloud nine, never wanting to come down.
The honeymooners.
Except sometimes the process of planning and celebrating a wedding is stressful, and sometimes little things go wrong, and sometimes when it’s over, you are so, so happy it’s over.
When good brides go grouch.
And sometimes you accidentally book the very wrong kind of honeymoon, not the kind where you get to relax in a beautiful place and simply enjoy being together but the kind where you’re rushing around to one crowded tourist trap after another and at the end of the day, all you want to do is escape from your vacation.
Look, our wedding was beautiful and perfect. That doesn't change the fact that weddings require A LOT of energy. It was a very long and hot day of one thing after another, and it was absolutely exhausting and I never want to do it again.
I’m in this Facebook bride’s group (if we’ve spoken in the last six months you’ve definitely heard me talk about it, as I find it one of the most fascinating studies of humanity I’ve ever discovered) and you should hear how devastated/depressed/down some of these girls are after their weddings are over. They’ve spent the last 2-3 years (gah!) planning their perfect day down to the tiniest detail of what color shoes the flower girl is wearing to the rehearsal dinner and it’s all over in 12 hours and now what? Now they’re just hanging around a Facebook bride’s group talking about their weddings, giving advice on weddings, still totally embedded in this wedding culture even though their weddings are now years in the past. They can’t let go.
I don’t want to give unfair judgment. A lot of the advice of past brides is really invaluable to new brides, and I posted in the group lots of times and appreciated the responses I got. But now that my wedding is over, when I see a post from the group in my Facebook feed, I just scroll past (unless, of course, there’s that delicious “ANONYMOUS” heading that often indicates a juicy read). I’m simply no longer interested in wedding stuff. I’m SO RELIEVED it’s over. Many of these girls would relive their wedding days ad infinitum; this is the stuff of my nightmares.
I’m over weddings. Now I’m into something new: marriage.
Our rabbi told us early on in the wedding planning process, “This isn’t about having a wedding. This is about being married.” That resonated with me because from the beginning, I never got fully whisked up into the wedding/bridal mania that seethed around me after getting engaged. When, over the past 10 years, I imagined getting married (which I did, often), I didn’t fantasize about a white dress and a chuppah. I fantasized about cuddling on a couch, watching TV with my husband.
Like Liz Lemon, of course I dreamed about being a bride. But I'm a realist.
Jenna: You never pretended to be a bride when you were a little girl?
Liz: I did! I just never romanticized it.
(Flashback to Liz’s childhood.)
Young Liz: This is my husband Saul Rosenbear, and this is his son Richard, from a previous marriage.
I get why many women would rather be brides than wives. When you’re a bride, you’re special. You’re a queen. You’re the star of the show. You are the center of the universe. Your social media is full of parties, friends, pretty new dresses, exotic locations.
Queen!
When you’re a wife, you do four loads of laundry in a row and there’s no entourage around taking photos of it for Instagram. The most photogenic thing that happens all day is when you set the table for dinner using colored napkins.
This is what social media is for, right?
But I love it. In fact, I’ve never been so excited about laundry in my life. We’ve been in our new place for a week without a working washing machine. Last night I finally got a plumber in and today, I’m working my way through the towering pile of clothes and towels that had accumulated around us like snow drifts. It’s so satisfying.
I mean, I’m also just an inherently domestic person, so it makes sense that homewifery would come naturally to me. (FYI, I am not planning on remaining a housewife; I am indeed looking for a job.) I’ve always loved nesting, and I basically have the soul of a grandma: my hobbies include knitting, sewing, baking, and puttering around the house. So these weeks of settling into our new place are very enjoyable for me. Not only that - it’s kind of the first time I’ve been able to just sit down and breathe in like, a year. Last year my life was moving at hyperspeed through so many phases and places and emotional states. I was traveling the US, then I was in Sydney, then I was moving to New York and starting a new job. Then I was getting engaged and planning a wedding while quitting that job and starting another new job. And throughout all of this Phil and I were trying to figure out where we’d be living next year, and once that was figured out we were organizing our Australian visa and searching for apartments and contacting shipping companies and also planning a trip to Israel and our honeymoon. Then we got married and ran around like headless chickens for three weeks and then finally heaved up on the shores of Sydney again, shellshocked, jetlagged and facing the biggest change yet.
See? I bet just reading that paragraph stressed you out.
There was a panicked moment during our honeymoon where I hyperventilated to Phil that we hadn’t had a single moment to relax throughout this entire process, that our constant movement was going to take an emotional toll, that we would essentially eject into a totally new life without a second of self-care to cushion our landing. He said, gently, that once we got to Sydney, we’d be able to relax. “But you’re starting a new job like, right away,” I pointed out. “Yeah, but you’re not,” he answered. He suggested I take some time after the initial madness to just decompress, unwind, chill.
So that’s what I’m doing. The first week was insanity: walking every day back and forth between our hotel suite in the CBD (Central Business District) and our house in Woolloomooloo, a suburb of Sydney within 15 minutes’ walking distance of the shul (which is in the CBD), borrowing cars, meeting movers and taking deliveries, shopping nonstop. We cleaned the entire house and kashered the kitchen. Then when Phil started work, I started too. I built side tables, coffee tables, bookshelves, beds, and dressers. I walked to the local grocery store daily. I cooked dinners of varying quality and nutritional value with our single pot and single pan.
Our new house is called a “terrace,” which is what us ‘Muricans would call a townhouse. It has two floors, three bedrooms and two bathrooms. The downstairs is “railroad style,” meaning there’s a series of rooms that flow into each other in a line: the front hallway to the lounge (a.k.a. living room) to the dining room to the kitchen, and then to the mini backyard, just the right size for a cozy sukkah. There are little balconies off the guest and master bedrooms.
Home.
It’s cute, and sweet. Not too big and not too small. The perfect size for our first home. The kitchen is nice and spacious, with lots of counter space and cabinets and two sinks (one is technically a laundry sink, whatever that means). We’ve got big windows and sliding glass doors to let in the light.
We officially moved in a week after we arrived in Sydney. That morning, before going into the house, we sat in the car for a moment and looked at each other. This was it. Our final move. Our final major transport. We had waited f-o-r-e-v-e-r (at least that’s what it felt like).
We held hands, and invoked a few little blessings for our new home. The moment had arrived. After months - literally months - of constant packing and unpacking for trips, moves, hotels, and flights, we could finally, really, fully live in a place.
Let me just stop and think about the amount of things we had to pack and unpack for. In fact let me list them for you. Starting at the beginning of June and ending in mid-late July (six weeks):
Packing for my move from my NYC apartment back to Long Island.
Packing for our flight to Israel.
While in Israel, unpacking everything I’d left there, sorting, discarding, donating.
Repacking every item we had for our flights back to New York. (Four suitcases, two carry-ons.)
Packing for wedding weekend and after-wedding accommodations.
Organizing and packing (this was a big one) EVERYTHING we were shipping to Australia. (20 boxes.)
Packing up Phil’s stuff for the move out of his NYC apartment.
Packing for our honeymoon.
Repacking, with souvenirs, for our flight home.
Unpacking our honeymoon bags and in fact unpacking every single remaining bag and box and drawer that we owned, in order to
Pack for our flight to Australia. (Six suitcases, two carry-ons.)
Half-unpacking then half-repacking at our Sydney hotel suite.
Unpacking at our new house.**
**This is only about 10% done at the moment as we still have 20 boxes of stuff on the way.
Keep in mind that half of the things that got packed - stuff from my apartment, stuff from Israel, for example - stayed packed for weeks while we were busy with other things. Can you imagine my life - never able to find the piece of clothing I wanted, wondering what had happened to that thing I’d carefully brought back from Israel, hoping that other thing was *somewhere* in my room, searching through stacks and stacks of CRAP to try to find an item I badly needed, hopelessly assuming it would somehow turn up. There were at least three instances where I tore maniacally through my room looking for something that now remains forever lost (my Israeli ID card, for example) or was miraculously discovered later (five very expensive soup bowls).
My life was chaos - pure chaos. It was, to say the least, stressful.
Thank God. These are all good things. Packing for trips that we’re privileged to be able to take, packing for our wedding and honeymoon, packing for an exciting move - all good, great, wonderful things. But also very stressful. And I was Sick And Tired of living out of suitcases.
Some people are built for constant movement. Some (my parents for example) might say I’m more wanderlusty than most, considering my history. That’s fair. But right next door to my inner sense of adventure lives my deep love of nesting. It was time for one to step back and the other to step up. I am very happy to have arrived at this more peaceful place.
In fact, Phil and I are very similar that way. Last year, we would often fantasize about having our own big, clean kitchen, filled with our nice, matching, well-scrubbed pots and pans, where we could cook and eat like grown-ups rather than cobbling together hasty meals in our respective shared apartments filled with generations of left-behind cookware, unmatched, grimy cutlery, and limited counter and fridge space crammed with the increasingly stale and rotten detritus of multiple residents. We rhapsodized about the comfy couch we would buy, the projector we’d use to watch movies, even the rack we’d get to neatly store pot lids. We were both so excited to build a real, grown-up home together.
When I lived alone in Israel, I nested too. Trips to IKEA, little touches here and there, creating a tiny, clean, ordered living space filled with cozy comfort, pops of color, and DIY decor. It was the only good thing about living alone. But even within the pleasure of living in a world I had made myself, it was inherently unsatisfying. I would sit on my couch, night after night, watching TV to give myself the illusion of other humans in the room. I would eat my meal for one and wash my single dish. I would wish I had someone to turn to and remark on whatever it was that came into my head. I talked to myself sometimes. My pretty little home turned into a pretty little prison. I would open the door at the end of the day and be home, and there was a feeling in the room of one big sigh. Well, I’m here. Now what?
It’s almost two years since I dismantled that tiny apartment and flew away. If you had told me that within less than two years from the moment I got on a plane I’d be a rebbetzin in Sydney, Australia, I probably would have slapped you in the face.
Yet nothing about this strange new life of mine feels very strange.
Being married to Phil, so far, is the easiest thing in the world. It’s only been six weeks, but it feels like much longer (in a good way). Because, like every part of our relationship, it feels completely natural and right. There was no shocking adjustment period, really, no major mental or emotional shifts that had to take place before we could accept each other into the fabric of our lives. It feels like this is how it’s always been, how it’s meant to be. And it’s not like we lived together before our marriage, or even saw each other every day; we didn’t. Everything about this is totally new. Yet it feels completely familiar. It doesn’t feel like settling down into some different, confusing life; it feels like returning to a life we’ve always lived. Making decisions about our shared home, making mutual plans, learning to live together - none of this is challenging.
Yet, anyway. Let’s not jinx anything. I know marriage is hard. I am quite sure there are many obstacles our infant marriage simply has not yet come up against.
As for living in Sydney, so far, it hasn’t come as that much of a shock. There are a lot of perks to moving to a foreign country where they speak your language. Everyone is pretty nice here, and the customer service is exceptional. In fact, I’m planning a future blog post on the topic of how Australia is different from Israel, the two foreign countries where I’ve lived (spoiler alert: it is different in literally every single way).
I mean, it’s not as if we’ve moved to some isolated homestead in the bush (though I probably would have really liked that, to be honest). Sydney is a big, thriving, modern city where everything you need is easily available. It’s definitely different from New York, definitely calmer, the pace a little slower, but in a lot of ways, it’s not reaaally that different. Other than, you know, cars on the wrong side of the street. And these weird pelican-looking birds everywhere.
Err, hello... what are you?
Obviously, we’re still new. There will be many things to which we must adjust. We haven’t started hosting Shabbat meals yet, which will be a big part of Phil’s rabbinate. We’re both looking forward to it, but right now we don’t even have plates and forks. God willing, all our stuff will arrive within the next week or two, and we’ll finally be able to open all of the boxes of our beautiful, brand-new, never-unpacked dairy, meat and Shabbat dishes, our shiny new silverware, our pretty, classy serving trays - all the beautiful things we registered for and received and have never used and are currently somewhere in the world waiting to be transported to Sydney. Once all of our books have been decanted into our empty bookshelves, our clothes divided into our closets, and our kitchenware toiveled, washed and stacked in our cabinets, we will finally, at long last, be living in a real grown-up home, where everything has a place, where we don’t eat every meal off of plastic and paper, where we can invite people over and become the hospitable rabbinic household we are destined to be, where we can create and inhabit our own space exactly how we want.
And then life will finally assume the shape we’ve been dreaming of, separately and together, for years.
In the meantime, the dust is slowly settling. Phil is easing into his new role at the Great Synagogue, and I’m taking this time to exhale. I’ve been doing a bit of acclimatizing each day, getting to know our neighborhood. Last week I joined the library. Soon I’ll begin my job search.
I'm basically a local now.
And that’s pretty much it at the moment. As I get more settled and more involved in life here, my daily concerns will certainly shift. Right now I feel pretty protected from the world in our cozy little house where my biggest problems have to do with managing our trash cans (excuse me, “rubbish bins”). I’ve been having a little ongoing drama with our garbage collection services which has yet to be fully resolved.
I’ll keep you updated.