Although I didn't mention it at the time, my husband was actually out of town last week, when I was writing my sappy anniversary post. He had a business trip to Tel Aviv (poor him, right?).

He's been away on business trips before, and we've gotten quite good at staying in touch while he's away. We both have cell phones, and we'll text each other when something comes to mind that we want to share. I'll take a photo of the kids doing something cute and send it to him with my phone. I know he has his phone with him during the work day, and that if something pressing comes up that I really need to talk to him about, I can call him and he'll answer if he's able and call me back soon if he's not. At night, when he's back in his hotel room, we would each use our web-cam equipped computers to video chat with each other. It certainly wasn't ideal, but it worked.

And then he went to Israel, and suddenly none of that worked.

We don't have international plans on our cell phones, seeing that we don't often travel internationally. So I couldn't call Israel from my cell phone, and he couldn't even use his over there.

We thought we might be able to use mobile-video apps to stay in touch via my cell phone and his Samsung Galaxy Tab (it's like an iPad). But oops! My phone doesn't have the right kind of camera.

We thought we could Skype, but turns out Skype isn't supported on the Galaxy Tab yet; and when he tried his computer, it wouldn't let him register an American number while he was in Israel.

Video chatting from computer to computer didn't work because the laptop he had with him for work didn't have a webcam.

I spent quite a bit of time researching video-chat apps that would work for him on his Galaxy Tab and me on my iMac (and it's surprisingly hard to find one that will work on a desktop computer and also on a mobile device). Something called "Movicha" sounded like it might work in theory, but online reviews of how effective it actually was were mixed.

Years ago, we used to have a calling card, so he emailed, asking me for the calling card number so he could call me from his hotel room. Miraculously, I found it in a desk drawer, and it did still have minutes on it, but it was very old, and had gone through the washing machine while in someone's wallet, apparently, and the instructions for international calling printed on the back had been worn off. The website connected with the card wasn't very helpful in explaining the international calling process either.

It looked as though we would be down to just plain old e-mailing back and forth for the duration of the trip (which was scheduled to be two weeks long). And I was sad.

And then, it occurred to us, that I could just use my *land line* (yes, we still have one) to call his hotel's *land line.*

Good old regular non-mobile telephones. Sometimes the old stuff is the best stuff.

He e-mailed me the hotel phone number, and after looking up international calling instructions on the internet (I'd forgotten you have to dial 0-1-1 before calling an international number) I was able to punch in the long string of numbers. Within moments, an accented but very understandable English-speaking woman answered the phone at the front desk of his hotel and transferred me to his room.

And there he was--his own familiar voice on the other end of the line, just like he was next to me. We were able to talk to each other, oceans and continents apart, plain as day. We talked for an hour, just like we did back when we were in college and I used to stretch the phone cord of my dorm room phone out into the hall and lay in the hallway to talk to him every night.

And it honestly took us a day and a half to figure out that we could just fall back on this decades-old technology.

Sometimes, I think we're just too smart for our own good.

**A note: While I do still have a land line, we've switched our phone service to Vonage, a company that routes phone calls through Internet lines rather than standard telephone lines. It's a cheaper monthly price for us, and the service has been better. When I called Israel, however, I had no idea what the overseas rate would be and I was afraid we'd pay dearly for that little bit of connection. Turns out, Vonage's overseas rate is .01 cents. For real. We owe them less than a dollar for the all the international calling we did while he was over there. This post was in no way sponsored by Vonage. I'm just a really satisfied customer.

I regret buying a house *riiiight* at the peak of housing bubble.

I regret not going to Europe the summer before we started having kids.

I regret not discovering that I liked long-distance running until my late 20s. Maybe I could have been a cross-country runner in high school if I'd given it a chance.

I regret being 31 and not having finished a novel (yet).

I regret the too-many pieces of hot, buttery French bread I had at dinner last night.

You know what I don't regret?

Him.

There are many, many decisions in my life--major ones, some of them--when I look back and think, "Yeah, I really wish I would have done that differently, come to think about it."

But not marrying him.

We were young when we got married, for sure, but that doesn't bother me at all.

Yes, we still had a lot of growing up to do at age 21, but we did it together, figuring out life and love and each other side by side, as partners.

I've been furious with him, plenty of times. I've wished he weren't so ____ (fill in blank with whatever personality trait happens to be annoying me at the moment). But I've never, not once, looked at him and regretted this moment.



It was 10 years ago. I wish I could say that I remember that moment, the putting on of rings, the saying of the vows, but so much of that day is all a blur now.

What's not a blur?

Walking through a driving downpour together in the streets of Liverpool, England, on our honeymoon; completely drenched, completely happy.

Standing on top of a mountain in Montana and looking out toward the Rockies and feeling like we'd conquered the world.

The exhaustion on his face as he held my hand through the entire 18 hours of labor with our first baby.

Clinging to him as tight as I could, zipping around a windy road on the back of his motorcycle.

Sitting in a roadside Denny's at 2 a.m. to talk for hours about how we really, honestly thought our marriage was going.

It's the accumulation of all those little memories and more--the hard things, the sad things, the boring things, and going through them side by side--that's made us who we are now. On the one hand, I can't believe it's been 10 years. I don't feel 10 years older. On the other hand, when I think back to that summer of wedding planning, that seems like a different life ago. A different person ago.

I don't believe in fate, or destiny, or soulmates. But I'm thankful that it was him. Thankful to still have this guy next to me.

Not a great picture--but it's the most recent picture of the two of us together that I have, so it'll have to do. Clearly we need to start having the kids take pictures of us, and not just us take pictures of the kids.

Ten years. And the only thing I can think of to sum it up is this:

No regrets.

Let's have a little confession time here: you know how family dinners are supposed to be the holy grail of parenting? How you all sit around and share about your day and laugh together around the dinner table, and doing so is supposed to raise your kids' IQ and make them less likely to do drugs and just make them into all-around good people?

Well, here comes the brutal honesty: sometimes talking to my kids while we eat is boring, and I don't want to do it.

Sometimes I ask them something about their day, and they say, "I don't know." or "I can't remember." and then we all just sit there silently until I find some other topic to try to force conversation.

Sometimes they chatter incessantly at me and repeat song lyrics over and over and make weird faces that I am supposed to find funny and sometimes they complain about the food and I get mad.

Sometimes--like tonight--I am tired, and conversation with anyone sounds like work. Tonight Eric wasn't home, and though I made a real dinner and the kids set the table, I was on the brink of telling them that maybe tonight would be a good night to turn on a movie and watch it while we ate. And maybe I would pull out my book, or the newspaper that I didn't even get a chance to look at this morning, or maybe I'd wander off to the computer and sit and stare at Facebook and other people's blogs for awhile. Because to be honest, holing up inside my own head sounded way nicer trying to get inside the heads of a a 7-year-old, 5-year-old, and 3-year-old.

But I didn't. I made myself sit down and talk to my kids. And here's the main reason why:

Respect.

When you sit down around  table with someone and then turn your attention to something else--the TV, a book, your e-mail, whatever--even if it's by mutual consent, you are telling your dinner companions that they are not important. That they are not interesting enough to talk to. That this inanimate object is more interesting than they are.

And even when that's true--which, when you're talking about conversation with a 3-year-old, is most likely the case--it's still just plain rude. I constantly insist that my kids respect me. I can respect them, too. And so I try, at least once a day, to stop whatever other thing I'd rather be doing, and converse with them while we eat.

There are other reasons, too. Such as: if you never engage your kids in conversation, they'll never learn to be more interesting companions. Manners and politeness and friendliness are learned skills, and in this world where we all interact virtually all the time, the opportunity to learn them is more critical than ever. If you get a degree from Harvard but you can't sit down and engage with someone over a meal for half an hour, you're not going to go very far in the world.

And also: making mealtime about more than just shoveling calories into the body while your mind does something else...lingering around the table until your dining companions are done...giving thanks for the food before you eat it...these little rituals remind us that food is something to be savored, shared, and enjoyed. Not just mindlessly consumed.

Spaghetti. The meal that I make when I don't really know what else to make, because I know that if nothing else, the kids will eat it without complaint. Photo from Wikimedia commons.

And so, because of all these high and lofty reasons, I sat around and ate spaghetti and green beans with my daughters and talked to them, even though I didn't really feel like it.

Evie told jokes that didn't make any sense, and the punch line of every one of them was "Poop." Except for one time, when it was "Mr. Poop." And the girls played with their broccoli, and they spilled their milk, and when I asked Lucy what her swimming teacher's name was she said "I don't know," and when I asked her what she learned in swimming she said "I don't know" and when I asked her what she did this afternoon while I was working she said "Fun stuff" but then none of them could remember, apparently, what "fun stuff" entailed.

But there was also a discussion about gravity, and how it's different on different planets (and I sucked at explaining it, because I really don't understand that much about it myself), and we talked about the audio-book we'd been listening to in the car, and we talked about future career plans, and (because we are girls) we talked a lot about a dress that Beth wants to buy.

It was a slow, unremarkable, normal, messy, Tuesday night dinner with my kids. And I'm glad I made myself do it instead of watching TV.

We just got back from a wonderful family camping trip, full of sunshine and water and long nights around the campfire. Camping with your kids along is like wine, I think. It only gets better with age.

The trip was so much fun, it made me feel like doing this, too.

How come grown-ups don't throw their arms up and leap out of the water in sheer joy anymore? I think I'd like to go back and 5 over again, because I'm not sure I properly appreciated it the first time around.

It was so much fun, it makes me want to go camping every weekend.

If only I didn't have to come home to this.

Laundry, my old nemesis, we meet again. You know your laundry/unpacking situation is bad when you can't even fit it all in one room.

Why can't there be a service that completely packs and unpacks your camping gear for you, does all your laundry, and also cleans so that you come back to a tidy, welcoming home?

I'd like to have just the camping fun, please, and not all the work that goes with it.

2,134 miles.



That's how far my summer has taken me.

When people asked me, at the beginning of June, "So what do you have planned for the summer?"

I answered, "Oh, nothing big. Just some weekend trips here and there."

Which was pretty much true. There were no giant cross-country excursions, no get-on-an-airplane kind of mega vacations. But it actually would have been more accurate if I had said, "I have a trip or an outing of some kind planned every single weekend from now through August. Plus a few mid-week ones too."

What looked like a several small-scale trips, when lumped all together into the space of six weeks, has led to what feels like the busiest summer I've ever had. We've criss-crossed the state, and made some wonderful memories, and had a lot of fun, and in between we've spent a lot of time in the car, and a lot of time at home doing the unpack/do crazy amounts of laundry/repack routine.

And when I reflect on what the summer has been about so far, strangely enough I don't come back with "fun!" or "adventures!" or "road trips!" My mind tells me: Gratefulness. Thanksgiving.



After spending hours and hours in the car with my family, I have come to a wonderful realization: I really like these people.



My husband and I will hit the 10-year mark in our marriage later this summer, and if I had to go back and do it over again, I'd still pick him. He loves me, challenges me, entertains me, and makes my life all-round richer. I would be so boring without him.

My kids are healthy, bright, creative, funny, and should all get Olympic gold medals for being good on car trips (knock on wood! knock on wood! We've got a couple more trips planned in August, and it would serve me right if they all turned into little demon-children after bragging like this). I really like them too. All four of these folks are fantastic people to go on vacation with. I should know. According to the Google Maps calculations, I've spent 1 day, 20 hours in the car with them this summer. And amazingly, I'm not sick of them yet.



This little fact--that we're a happy family who enjoys one another's company--I hold out, not to congratulate myself, because there's nothing I have done to make it so. But rather, I clutch this fortunate fact with trembling, wondering fingers. Because I know it isn't always like this. Some people's husbands leave them. Some people's kids have cancer. Someday I might look back on this sunny summer on the other side of a sadness that I can't see today.

I bask in the sun that my family shines into my life, even while I try not to worry about the shadows that may someday come. What did I ever do to deserve these little lights of mine?

Nothing. That's the answer. A gift is a gift because it's not earned or required or deserved. Just freely given. And so I enjoy my gifts today, and leave the future to itself. And thank the Giver for this summer, for long roads together, for making our way safely home.