'I Don’t Shine If You Don’t Shine'--And Vice Versa

You proposed on December 27, 2004 on a remote island off the coast of North Carolina called Ocracoke. I had no idea a proposal was coming and was simply content with the notion of exercising paid vacation days--a concept absolutely foreign to me, having just started my first job as a grown-up four months earlier. So while I was shoving clothes into the make-shift luggage of a 20-something and stuffing my face with leftover Christmas cookies, you were sweating bullets and pacing around Best Buy, looking for something to listen to. Music has always been an important part of your life, the soundtrack to whatever combination of joy, sadness, hope, fear, or anger you’re processing at the time—and you were desperate for something to take the edge off during the more than 6 hours it would take to get to Ocracoke. This is no millennial love story--we were years away from being able to pull curated playlists from the Cloud to our phones, and still mourning the implosion of Napster—which was the widespread world’s first taste of free downloadable music. MP3s were definitely becoming a thing, but walking into Best Buy the old-fashioned way was still something the average person did to get music. What you walked out with that day was Hot Fuss, the synth-pop masterpiece by The Killers—on an actual disc. It had monster singles like "Somebody Told Me" and "Mr. Brightside", but it was also solid from beginning to end—a true album—and it filled the quiet spaces of a mid-week “weekend” that set the course for our lives together.

For you, it was the farthest end of your indie spectrum, but it was well within the wheelhouse for me. You had been a big part of expanding my musical horizons—but underneath all the Strokes and Spoon that I embraced as an adult, there was still the closet Top 40 fan who once knew every word to Debbie Gibson’s "Out Of The Blue". You and I had met in the middle on music before with moody melodic indie like Ryan Adams—raw and sad and beautiful, but kinda made you want to swig whiskey in the darkest corner of your closet if you listened to too much of it all at once. Hot Fuss was so easy for both of us to love. It was uncharacteristically happy compared to our usual playlist, but an appropriately joyful expression of where our lives were about to go. Knowing now that you were rehearsing your proposal the entire way to Ocracoke, it’s a little heart-breaking to think you had to hear “if the answer is no, can I change your mind” about a hundred times on track 8 ("Change Your Mind", 2004). Good thing the answer was yes.

The Killers released Sam’s Town in 2006, nearly eight months after we got married. We had joined the cheapest gym we could find in an effort to fight off the lard and laziness that often accompany the contentment of married bliss--and my gym playlist was heavy on The Artic Monkeys and The Killers. By this point, IPod Shuffles had replaced the clunky, awkward running companions of years past and Sam’s Town had some fantastic running songs--like "Bling", "Read My Mind", and "This River Is Wild"--to pile on there. And "Why Do I Keep Counting" was a personal favorite of mine for emotionally serenading passers-by as I sat with the windows down at stop lights on the way home.

Track 3 was another gem featuring the line “sometimes I close my eyes and see the place where I used to live when we were young” ("When We Were Young", 2006). At the time, it made me homesick for the house I grew up in, having left it less than a decade before. When I hear that song now, I admit that I get a little homesick for the place in time where we used to live, when we were young together. I love our life now, of course—but 10 years ago was a simpler place in the trajectory of our lives, even if we didn’t know it then. There was so much more time to love each other, to laugh and laze around. Our biggest dilemma was which band to go see and what new bar or restaurant to try. 'If I pave the streets with good times, will the mountain keep on giving?' ("Why Do I Keep Counting", 2006). Probably not. But that was our time and place to do whatever the hell we wanted almost all the time. Just like the song says, those days were numbered. But we had a bunch of them. And it was fantastic.

Saw Dust came out in 2007 and Day & Age was released in 2008, the last year we spent in our first house. We were still 2 years away from the kids conversation and when we weren’t working and paying off debt (all mine, unfortunately), we were drinking beer, playing trivia at the sports bar down the hill, hosting sports-watching events in our basement or playing group Guitar Hero and Rock Band with our other childless friends. For someone whose video-gaming career ended in elementary school when nearly everyone in the house had beaten Super Mario 1 except for me, a game where you could play virtual guitar against other people was an absolute revelation. At last! A game I could get into! One version we had included the song Human from Day & Age, where the chorus repeatedly asks “Are we ‘human’? Or are we ‘dancer’?” At that point in our new marriage, you and I had enjoyed a good streak as “dancer”—even though you probably would have described yourself as considerably more “human” before we started dating (and our mutual performance could probably be summed up by 'Where The White Boys Dance' from Saw Dust). When Allison invited me out with her new boyfriend and his entourage of friends so many years ago, she was pretty openly hoping that I’d hit it off with one them, so the four of us could live happily ever after. Who would’ve thought she’d succeed in being the mastermind of our future? That night, I met a lot of out-going, welcoming guys (many of whom later jammed themselves into the front pew at Sacred Heart Cathedral on our behalf)—but you were the only one who danced with me. I left with a new crush and the impression that you were such a fun guy. And you are. “Dancer” might never have been at the tip-top of your resume... but I guess that was just the first of a few personal rules you were willing to break on my account.

By the time Battle Born came out in 2012, we’d been in our new house for 3 years, and I was already pregnant with our second son. Both times I was pregnant I just knew either The Strokes or The Killers would come to town and I’d have to miss it because I was in labor or still laid out from child-birth. We no longer had our finger so firmly on the pulse of any particular music scene, but we still made a point to go to a few must-see shows a year—in the desperate attempt of new parents to retain some small shred of their former identities.

With our kids being born only 21 months apart, 2011 to 2014 was a blur of bellies, sleepless nights, poop diapers, vomit, bottle-washing, obliterated training pants, and behavior management. Prior to the official commencement of our childbearing years, you had taken me to see nearly everyone on my musical bucket list, but The Killers never seemed to come quite close enough for us to catch them. On a trip to visit my sister in San Diego in 2007, we scoured the parking lot of Rimac Arena for last-minute tickets with no luck. And we missed them in London by a month or so when we were on our vacation of a lifetime in 2009.

When we finally did see The Killers, our youngest was only a few months old and I honestly didn’t know much material beyond Day & Age. You made a playlist from the set list of previous shows on the tour we were about to see (as you often do), so we could catch up in time for the big day. Battle Born was actually tough to listen to as parents with super-young kids. The standouts from the album were all about the ephemeral fantasy of infatuation dissolving into the reality of relationships. I’m pretty sure no couple new to parenting needs any prompting to ask themselves "Can it be the way it was when we met?" ("The Way It Was", 2012). And while still in the throes of sleepless nights with Baby #2, the line “maybe I'll just run away” sounds kinda like an invitation ("Runaways", 2012).

But then again, just as angst and adversity make a better indie rock song, the added challenge of expanding our family has given a bit of indie-cred to our story. And we have been truly lucky. I myself am especially lucky to have found someone I can still call a good man—despite all the things I just had no way of really knowing about you. Some husbands turn out to be serial killers, chronic adulterers, or fugitives from justice. Apparently, more than a few suffer a psychotic break and toss their wives down some stairs before the 10th anniversary. I mean, we dated for 5 years before we got married—so I had a hunch that you'd turn out alright. But still. How lucky for me that I got a guy who willingly carried a vile of his own sperm across town to help sort out my infertility issues. Who endured my commitment to breastfeeding even when mastitis and infection left me with a gaping wound in my left breast for several months. Whose hilariously matter-of-fact assessment of day-to-day jack-assery about town threatens to make me pee my pants on a regular basis. And whose recent anniversary gift to the family was an unbelievable trip to Disney World—that really could have been a nightmare with 2 small kids, but instead was a master class in the management of time and resources, in anticipating need, meeting expectations, and updating plans in response to real-time obstacles. It was a metaphor for who you are for us every day.

Ten years ago, there was plenty I just couldn’t know yet about the man or the father you would become. I just knew you inspired confidence, no matter what the situation was. And you still do. You’re the metaphorical McGyver of real-life problem-solving. That’s a good guy to have in your corner when the shit hits the fan. You’re also a very passionate person, who isn’t scared to tear up—or blow up—about us, the kids, music, movies, or Wolfpack athletics. You have appreciated me, educated me, elevated me—and tolerated me—for more than a decade. AND you took me to see The Killers.

Going to see a band most definitely wasn't the way it was when we met—when we could drink our fill, cab it home, stumble in any time we wanted, and sleep til lunchtime the next day. We now had kids at home who would demand that we be functioning adults in the morning. But that meant every second of “freedom” was that much sweeter, every bite of adult-dinner pre-gaming more delicious, and every moment of undivided attention freed up to enjoy the music, the night, and each other more special--because it isn’t the way it was. It’s more trying and exhausting and morally defeating in many ways--but there’s also meaning, depth, purpose, and richness that couldn’t have existed before.

Fortunately for us, The Killers did not disappoint—nor did the unbelievable seats you scored (as always) close enough to be showered with the metallic red confetti in the shape of lightning bolts and K’s that accompanied a blast of pyrotechnics toward the end of the show. The last song before the encore was "All These Things That I’ve Done", the one song from Hot Fuss you and I had originally disagreed about. I had firmly rejected what I saw as the song’s nonsensical descent into the repetition of “I got soul, but I’m not a soldier”, a ridiculous play on words over a totally random gospel choir accompaniment. “That’s the best part!” you’d insisted. And I have to admit, so many years after hearing it for the first hundred-or-so times on that fateful drive to Ocracoke, I finally agreed. Seeing it live, it was the best part.

Months later, while searching the mudroom cork board for a check I’d been dragging ass on depositing, I noticed one of those red metallic K’s you'd tacked into the upper left hand corner. I had caught and kept and forgotten about the identical piece in my purse from that wonderful night. A night--like the house around me and the kids pecking at my heels--that had been more than 10 wonderful years in the making.

I’m so proud of this life we’ve made and I know our perception of “the best part” will continue to change with the years as long as God allows them to keep coming. But I know all the best parts of this life wouldn’t be possible in your absence and that the best parts of me would not have existed without you. ‘I don’t shine if you don’t shine’—and vice versa ("Read My Mind", 2006).

So, as " the decades disappear like sinking ships" (A Dustland Fairytale, 2007), may we be lucky enough to shine for each other into the coming years—of better and worse, of richer and poorer, of sickness and health—"like rebel diamonds cut out of the sun" ("Read My Mind", 2006).

Happy 10th Anniversary, Love.