Textual Healing

May 16, 2010. Dancing on our official wedding day.

To be fond of dancing was a certain step towards falling in love.—Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

This morning, my friend Chris Vaughan posted one of those social media threads that calls for others to copy and post their own versions to keep a message amplified. This message chain was about marking “Happily Married Week.” The italicized text below is what I was prompted to copy and share, which I did. I had a little more to say than the original text, though, about why I chose to copy and share, so that’s what follows below.

Every person who has been married for a long time will agree with the following: Marriage isn’t for the faint of heart; it’s not always pretty. That part about for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, are in the vows for a reason! It’s “Happily Married Week.” If your spouse works extremely hard, has been with you through triumphs and tragedies, loves you when you’re at your best and worst, is who you’re proud to be married to, then copy & add the date.

Mika De Roo and JL Anderson

2005

c. 2008

2010

I’m mostly not a participant in whatever national day or week has been proclaimed—such declarations aren’t really my jam, especially where my personal life is concerned. I’m making an exception today because I have been lucky enough to be with my love and my best friend for half my life now, together 25 years this May.

Whatever we have gone through, from ecstatic joy to deepest sorrow and back again, we have loved each other, we have chosen each other, and we have been proud to be who we are, individually and together. That’s worth marking and celebrating with pride and without hesitation. It’s worth shouting from the rooftops at any time, but even more so at a time when many people are being attacked and even killed—brown and Black people, immigrants, LGBTQ+ people, and especially trans people—for nothing more than being who they are, openly and proudly. We are lucky to have each other, and we know it.

Most people don’t know that JL and I married multiple times.

In 2005, we walked to city hall before work one morning. We long considered ourselves partners by then. We did what was legally recognized—the only thing that was legal at the time—so the NYC government could declare us, already partnered seven years, “domestic partners,” and so health insurance companies would afford us a fraction of the status and civil rights that hetero married couples receive. (Look it up. The disparity between the rights given to civil unions and domestic partnerships compared to marriage is massive.)

A few years later, when legalization of marriage equality for everyone remained at a standstill in New York State and indeed nationwide, the two of us stood on a Cape Cod beach with no one else there. We said some meaningful words of love aloud to one another, and we let the sea marry us.

In 2010, gay and queer marriages were still not legal in New York, but NY State did recognize legal marriages from other states. On May 16, we gathered with friends and family in Provincetown, made vows to one another, and let our friend Fred Speers declare us legally married by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. We had no idea until Fred said it out loud how much hearing that legal piece would move us. Even if it hadn’t, what was fascinating was how much being married, legally, changed how many other people saw and treated us. People in our lives who for years hadn’t taken us seriously as a committed couple used the words “wife” and “partner” and “spouse” with a respect and gravitas that had not been there before. Make of that what you will.

In sickness, in health, in grief, in elation.

In inclusive times and regressive and draconian times.

In legal marriage and in defiant, illegal queer-love joy.

Whatever comes and goes, we define and celebrate and renew our union and our happy marriage. We say gay, we live gay, we love gay, and we aren’t going anywhere. Here’s to the next four to five decades, my love.

November 1, 2008. Earlier that day, I had taken a knee and proposed to JL, and we became engaged, officially. We went out dancing with friends that night at the Brooklyn Museum to celebrate, and that’s where this snapshot was taken.

Taken in 2016 at the wedding of Chela Weber and Maria Matienzo. I love this photo because we had no idea it was being taken, and it radiates love even though you can’t see our faces.

October 31, 2021. Our little family posing for our annual goofy snapshot during our Cape Cod respite. This part wasn’t planned: I was trying to find a recent, cute photo of us in which we weren’t wearing sunglasses—and this one fit the bill—but it so happens this photo was also taken 13 years almost to the day (minus one day!) from when we became officially engaged to be married. Go figure.