I Left a Diet Coke in the Fridge for You

(On hidden love, why I always forget our wedding anniversary and an open apology, of sorts, to my husband.)

I don’t know what day of the week it was. Probably a Tuesday because it had a mundane normalness about it—lacking in the let’s-do-this of a Monday and the we’re-nearly-there of a Thursday. The university library epitomised a moody afternoon in February with grey everything and cold everything and the computer room was heavy with assignment stress and sleepy students.

Paddy, my friend, soon-to-be boyfriend, and later-to-be-husband, proposed a game of pool to the group. My eyes flicked up from my computer screen, waiting to see if I was included in the afternoon’s procrastination activity of choice.

One by one, the yeses and nods and “one moment, let me finish this” responses came in. Someone suggested playing doubles and two other friends paired up. Paddy made the announcement I had been waiting for: I was on his team.

On every other occasion when we won, we hugged. And when we lost, we didn’t hug. So at that moment, I was hoping for a win.

A few months later, Paddy confessed he also hoped for a win so he could inhale the scent of my hair when we hugged. “Well, that was sneaky,” I said, not at all insecure about the frequency with which I used dry shampoo.

He shrugged with a bashful but unashamed smile and I died a little. And then I felt more alive than I’d felt, maybe ever. I’ve been up in my feels about being on his team ever since.

I’d catch that same look of his, lying on the floor on a Sunday afternoon, swamped in a sea of blankets with my four-year-old wedged in the middle of us watching Lion King, and Paddy would sneak his hand into mine. You see, extravagant in-your-face dates called for a babysitter and money, of which this single mother and university student had neither. So we became proficient in a sneaky kind of love.

I was the sneaky friend who invited him to church so I could spend time with him. He was the friend who said yes to church so he could tire out my four-year-old. I was the girlfriend who put a surprise £3 in his bank account for caffeinated assignment fuel and I became the fiancé who left spaghetti bolognese at his student halls with hidden vegetables blended into the sauce.

He was the boyfriend who got a bus to my house and vacuumed while I was at work. And he became the fiancé who did the bedtime routine before I realised it was bedtime. We’re the husband and wife who have been flirting in code over games of Bug Bingo long before our son ever called him Daddy.

Our love is, and always has been quiet. Ordinary. Sneaked into the delicate, hidden crevices of our days. Slipping in so quickly, blink and you’ll miss it.

Our love looks like I left a Diet Coke in the fridge for you, or a mischievous tap on the bum while the unsuspecting recipient carries laundry up the stairs. Except, Paddy is almost always the Diet Coke Leaver and I am almost always the Diet Coker Drinker (and also the bum tapper).

It looks like the post-bedtime reunion with reading lights, novels and legs tangled up for warmth.

It’s a wedding with ten people on the very first day of semi-lifted lockdown restrictions, in the tiniest garden of a church, down a hidden side street in East Belfast—if we hadn’t still been in the eye of a covid-hurricane, it might have gone unnoticed.

It looks like scooping up the child shackled to my ankles without a word, or a freshly cleaned kitchen worktop, also without a word. It’s fighting alongside instead of against, and holding the other as we hold a child struggling through this world. It looks like clasping hands and moving forward, following the hope of healing when our children are hurting.

It looks like a Thursday habit of attending counselling when it’s least convenient, and daily watering the soil of our parched connection when it would be easier to blame a lack of sun.

It was and still is the squeeze of a hand while changing gears and surprising kisses sneaked in over the dishwasher. And it mostly looks like being generous with grace and apologies and curiosity and dreams—and even more generous with cups of tea.

While we were once just friends, we were never just us, and we don’t know what our love looks like outside of parenting. While I have never once wished for a different story, I have on one or more occasions, wondered if our love would be different.

What is it like to meet your person before you meet your kids? Did we or are we missing out? Would we even be together?

My rational husband doesn’t humour my frivolous questions and non-existent answers, because in the words of an artist, he likes to quote, we skipped to the good bit (Rizzle Kicks, 2013).

The author of love Himself isn’t always so extravagant about things. Sure, His love often looks like miracle manna rained down from heaven, but sometimes it’s the divine Son of God sneaking in to eat dinner at the not-so-divine table of typical, unexciting humans. To the nourishment of His body, and the nourishment of their souls.

I always forget the date of our wedding anniversary. “It’s the 9th of June. No, wait. It’s the 10th. Or is the 8th?” There is white space in my brain where that date should be forever tattooed. It’s my toxic trait, I joke. But it does, understandably, receive raised eyebrows from my husband. Neither of us finds it to be a particularly funny or cute quirk (sorry, Paddy!).

I ALWAYS remember May 23rd, I remind him. The date we planned for and invited our world to. Before the world at large completely shut down. But we needed a marriage, not a wedding. And my son needed a dad, not a FaceTime father figure. So on an unexpected, meaningless day in June, when the NI executive lifted the wedding ban and announced outdoor weddings would be permitted with ten people–‘Monday’ became our wedding date.

With the whole thing now in my rearview mirror, I have some tender and complicated feelings about our 2020 wedding. But I am buoyed by my firm belief that it was the right thing to do and also, it was laughably consistent with our story—with our particular brand of delicate hidden love. Like the rustling whispers of leafy trees or flakes of sea glass shimmering in a sheet of dull sand.

On this anniversary, I vow to ferociously chase the quiet love right in front of me. I vow to believe just us wouldn’t have changed a thing—we just got a head start.

Because love is patient, love is kind, love does not envy or boast. And apparently, love is sneaky.