On the X

This morning, as I was spittooning my mouthwash, I looked up to see a chip clip attached to our hand towel in the bathroom. The mere sight of the chip clip in the bathroom produced not question, but sentimentalism, in the deep recesses of my heart. That is the chip clip we bought at the outlet store, on New Year's Eve day, on a sunny, but cold morning when we didn't have to go to work. Attached to the chip clip was a mortage application, and a lime green post-it note in my husband's exaggeratedly sloppy handwriting: "Pls sign your name here"

This is the life we are building together. This is the year which we began together. Not that we began this year, but that this year, we began it together. On a cold sunny day at an outlet mall where we bought not Uggs nor Jennifer Convertibles, but chip clips. We were kids when we met and, now, we are still kids. We brought to our relationship naivete, youthful energy, a shared love of sleeping outside and a shared habit of reading aloud. We brought past pains and credit card debt. We had limited possessions. We had limited chip clips. Together we are building a life, perhaps soon in a new home with more closet space and with bigger, brighter rooms for the furniture that we do not yet own. First, we will buy chip clips and sign our names on lines, one above the other. It doesn't matter whose name goes first and whose credit is better. This is the life we are building together. I will sign my name here.

This is the first photo we took together. May 2000