Some couples take vacations. They say, remember that time when we were on vacation? When we showered, and you put lotion all over me, and we made love all night, and three times a day. And you held me in the pool, and I told you I loved being near you, your smell and hands and the way you talked to the people around us at the bar. I was so proud to be with you.

We’re not that couple. Those aren’t our memories. It wasn’t until we slipped away to Vegas that we’d ever been on a real vacation together. Weddings in Michigan, or visits to Florida family, don’t count. They’re obligations. As lovely as it is to see people, you’re not vacationing when you attend a wedding, even when it’s at a beautiful resort on the perfect island. Why? Because it’s not about you. It’s not about the book you want to read, the way you want to go to dinner in your bathing suit, and most of all, because you didn’t get to choose it. It’s your free time from work, and you have to spend money to fly somewhere that may be lovely in its own right, but it’s still not what you want. It may be a Cape Cod or Capri wedding, but you’ve already been, and quite frankly, with your limited time off and limited funds, you’d rather be going to Africa on safari. Or to New Zealand’s wine country. The time away might be lovely, but any way you cut it, it’s still an obligation. But we go because we love our families and love our friends, and we wouldn’t miss it for the world. And at the end of the day, that’s what life’s about anyway. But sometimes it’s nice to make your own memories as two.

I’m not complaining that we aren’t that couple. That when I think of our beginning I think of a bag of dirt. Of the way he bought it for me, so I’d fill a martini glass and possibly shoot something for Straight Up and Dirty… a dirty martini perhaps with a young green sprout signifying growth and a new beginning.

That didn’t work, but we did. And while we have very few "just us" memories, we will always have the grocery store.