A cynic once told me, “Every marriage has one liar and one fool.” He shared this with me over a cigarette in the corner of a loud apartment party in New York City. I laughed out loud, shoulders shaking, and mercilessly made fun of his pessimism. I didn’t believe this. I couldn’t believe this because I was married and wasn’t a liar or a fool. I said as much to my friend, as we finished up our smoke, and then promptly forgot the comment. 
           
            Years later, my husband of 17 years and I drove down the coast towards Big Sur, California. Soaring blue skies, dry hills and the swaying wildflowers of Carmel Valley floated past us. It was July 27th, and we were on our way to celebrate our wedding anniversary. He reached out and held my hand while we laughed at a podcast on the radio of our old Toyota. I held the back of his neck as he drove. What I felt that day was love, the big kind of love, the self-assured-safety of love. I watched him while he drove and took in the man I had committed my entire adult life to. His straight black hair, once long and wound into dreadlocks, was now short and spiked. His thick belly was wrapped in a bright Hawaiian shirt, and sunglasses only he thought were cool rested on his forehead. Even if the pieces weren’t so original, the package was. Jose was one of a kind. A unique, complicated, beautiful man. 
          
            We headed to Nepenthe, a classic Big Sur restaurant nestled on the coast of the Pacific. Multi-colored tables covered the decks perched on steep cliffs that descended into an ocean I never learned to feel safe next to, even after years of living in California. We took our seats on the front deck and ordered drinks. I lifted my wine glass to Jose, looked into his big almond eyes, and said, “I am so lucky to be your wife. Thank you for 17 years together.” 
            He smiled at me and said, “To 17 more years Beca. Feliz aniversario, mi amor.”  
            “You know what time it is, right?” I said, smiling. I was about to rope Jose into my anniversary ritual. Every year, as part of a toast to our commitment, I liked to list the things that we loved about our life together.
            “You first.” I said.
            “Ok”, said Jose, smirking, “I’ll do it, but just for you. One, I am grateful we are trying to build a family.” 
            Me: “Two, I am so grateful for how you sing me awake in the morning.”
            Jose: “Three, I am grateful for our house and the projects we are doing there.”
            Me: “Four, I am grateful for how we are always trying new adventures together.”

            We finished listing seventeen beautiful things about our life for our seventeen years of marriage. It wasn’t hard to do. We had a lot to honor. Then we feasted, as we always did, on fresh salads, fries, and steaks. Nepenthe was our spot to celebrate . And even though it was an almost three-hour, traffic-filled drive from our home in Oakland, we always made it there on the big days. And seventeen years together was one of those big days.  
 
            We first pulled into the restaurant’s sprawling parking lot on the side of Highway 1 when we were 23 years old. We had driven up from Los Angeles, our new home, after running away from Boston together and eloping against the wishes of most of my family and friends. In the spring that first year together, we drove to San Francisco, winding our way up the edge of our new coast, stopping to watch sea lions and fill our old 1989 blue Honda hatchback at gas stations packed with motorcycles. We began a life of adventure then. We would travel to many parts of the world together. We would build a life out of the raw material of what we thought love was when we exchanged rings at a courthouse on a hot, July day in Boston at the age of 22.

            I met Jose one night at a club dancing to Latin music. Sweating on the crowded dance floor, we shared our first kiss and promptly fell in love. I was graduating from college and getting ready to start my young life. He showed up in late March of 1999, swept into my world and changed all my plans. One night, early after we started dating, I woke up with a nightmare. Many of the things I needed to heal and discover still laid buried deep inside me. I often had nightmares that would crush me with panic. I sat up, sweating in my twin bed in my college dorm room, panting with fear. I went to the bathroom to wash my face and try to shake off the darkness. But as I lay back down in bed, my breath was still ragged and fast. Then I made a weird decision. It was three am. The corners of my room shimmered with the demons of my nightmare. I needed to hear someone’s voice. In my half-conscious state I decided to call Jose with my mind.

             Closing my eyes, I imagined him sleeping in his room across town, and said out loud, pleadingly, “Jose, wake up and call me. Jose, wake up and call me. Jose, wake up and call me.”  And the phone rang. My old-school-plugged-into-the-wall-plastic phone rang at three in the morning. I sucked in my breath, afraid that I had conjured something evil.
            I slowly picked up the receiver and said, “Hello?” 
            Jose’s sleepy voice said, “Hola mi amor, what’s happening?” 

            And with that, I was his. And that love, that story, that magic, would hold me to him even through all of the bad times. It was the kind of love that I didn’t think would or even could end. As I lifted my wine glass on that afternoon at Nepenthe, seventeen years later, laughing with Jose, I never thought that it would be the last anniversary we would celebrate. I was about to learn that even the big loves could end. And despite my protests so many years earlier at that party in NYC, my cynical friend was indeed correct. Maybe not about all marriages, but about mine. There was definitely a liar and, most definitely, a fool.