So Hold Our Vows

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Luke {27}

My dad should have been there.

He was the one who taught me about love, who showed me what love looked like in a marriage. He was the reason I felt qualified to marry in the first place. He was with me when I bought the ring, and he was there at two in the morning when I was working on the cars out back in an attempt to channel my nerves into something that wouldn't make a mess of everything.

I always did a good enough job of that on my own. But Dad was always there to bring me back, to ground me, to remind me that love is not the thing that's breakable. The night before I proposed, I asked him, out in the shed, I was working on the cars again, and I wanted to know what I was supposed to do if I ended up sentencing Samantha and I to a love that was destined to run dry.

"She's everything. She's everything right now." I'd tossed the greasy towel in my hands to the floor and crouched to put my head in my hands. Dad didn't move too fast, didn't try to talk over my worry. I looked up at him. I'd seen him when Mom's first book was published and then became a best seller. The proudest man on earth. I'd seen him when we lost Lucy; the most distraught. 

And through all of that, through every second I'd known my dad, I'd seen him love. Just love and love and love, always pouring his entire soul into the people around him. He played catch with me every Thursday and Saturday night. He let Landon explain his favorite video games and books. He took Mom out for dinner on Mondays and Fridays, and he sent us kids to our rooms early on Sunday nights so he could watch movies with Mom. And Lucy. He would have torn down the stars and restrung them for her, if she'd asked. 

I wanted to be that for people, for Samantha. Things were going so well, and I loved her more than life. But what if I wasn't cut out to be a good husband? What if I failed us?

"It feels too good to be true. Like I can't trust it. Like we're using up all the good right now, there won't be any left for later."

"Awe, Luke." He took the ball cap off his head and wrung his fingers around it, the sweat making his grey hair more noticeable. "You can't use up all the good. Especially when it comes to love. You can't ever run out of love, that's a myth. And if I ever hear you or Clayton or any one of you boys talking like that, like you've just run out of love to give to someone, I'll take you out back and let Charlie loose on all of you, ya hear?" 

Charlie was the old, cranky, fully grown, obstinate bull my dad kept. Letting him loose was a death sentence, but Dad wasn't all talk. When Landon and I had convinced our friend Connor to hop the Murray's fence and let all the Rodeo horses run loose, boy, Dad did not hold back on wearing us out. And then when we were pained and achey and snot-nosed from crying, he sat us in front of Charlie's pen, him huffing and snorting with pent up anger, and Dad threatening to unleash him for fifteen minutes. Charlie was not to be joked about.

"Ya hear?" Dad said again.

"Yessir." I stood up, my 6'3 frame not even nearing his 6'6 one. 

"Good." He nodded, shifting the weight from one foot to the other. I remember thinking how aged he looked all at once. Tired. He looked tired. "Now, come here." 

I walked with him back to the house. He stood in the kitchen, leaning on the back of one of the barstools as I made myself a glass of milk. I grabbed an aspirin and knocked it back, hoping my headache would cease. 

"The thing about marriage, Luke, is the choice in it. It can be hard, it can be easy, it can be the best worst greatest experience you'll ever have. Notice how I didn't call it a thing. Once you look at marriage as an object, it becomes stagnant. Unchanging. Now, hear me, your marriage should remain stable. But it should always be growing. Your love for Samantha should always be learning more and strengthening, just like hers for you will be doing. So as long as you go to sleep every night determined in your heart and mind and soul to choose her and the well-being of both of you acting as one, then, son, I think you'll be all right."