Vow Renewal Vows for 10 Years (2 Minutes)

The vows

Zeynep, ten years ago we got the keys to a house with a cracked tile by the back door. The inspector circled it in red. We said we'd replace it the first summer.

It's still there. Waffles sleeps on it every afternoon because it's the coolest spot in the house, and at this point pulling it up would be cruel.

That tile has seen a lot. Mortgage paperwork spread across the floor. Muddy paws. Me standing there with the letter from work, the year the plant cut half the shift, and you taking it out of my hand, reading it twice, and saying, "Okay. So we eat a lot of lentils." We ate a lot of lentils. You never once made me feel like it was my fault.

That was the bad year. You got us through it by treating it like a normal one.

So, ten years in, here are my new promises. I will finally learn which week is recycling, without asking you. I'll walk Waffles in the rain so you don't have to, and I'll stop calling it "our" turn. I'm going to set up the coffee maker the night before, every night, the way you like it.

I'll say it when I'm worried, out loud, before it turns into a month.

And when the next bad year comes, I promise to be the one who says "Okay," and means it.

We never fixed the tile. I hope we never do. I want us standing on that cracked spot by the back door for a long time, getting older, arguing about the recycling, with a dog asleep on our feet.

Why it works: The cracked tile they never fixed holds ten years of ordinary married life in one spot, so the bad year can be told quickly and without self-pity. Her line about lentils gets a laugh and shows who she is at the same time. The ending goes back to the tile and turns a repair they skipped into the point.