What I promised on a leaf

*Reflections on 8 years of marriage

Dear Kula Diaries,

I said that I knew… but the truth is… I didn’t really know what we promised on that leaf.

Before I explain the leaf… maybe I should backtrack a little bit… to a sunset in April of 2015. My then boyfriend Aaron and I had decided to spend the night in the Park Butte lookout (a backcountry fire lookout that is available on a first come first serve basis to backpackers). We had snowshoed in earlier that day and by dusk, we were delighted that we were going to have the entire lookout to ourselves. The colors at sunset were remarkable — orange, red and purple danced across the slopes of Komo Kulshan (Mt. Baker), which was looming over us. A few years prior, we had climbed that mountain — the second of 5 volcanoes that we would climb together.

Park Butte Lookout - where we got engaged!

Just before sunset, Aaron was standing behind me on a boulder as I frantically tried to capture the colors on my iPhone camera. Unbeknownst to me, he slipped a tiny box into the pocket of my down jacket. “Let’s get a photo over here!”, I exclaimed… and bounded away across the boulders… my pocket now precariously open with a tiny box hidden inside of it. According to Aaron, I leapt to and fro on the boulders for a solid 10 minutes before he finally couldn’t handle the anxiety of worrying about the box anymore. He hugged me and slipped my own hand into my pocket where I felt the tiny box. Of course, I knew what it was.

Still glad I didn’t lose the ring in the boulder hopping - ha!

I had never planned to get married again… but I had also never planned to get divorced from my first marriage. My first marriage took place when I was 26 years old — I was swept up in the ‘idea of marriage’ and the excitement of planning a wedding, but I (truthfully) had given no thought to what marriage even meant. My first husband and I had barely anything in common, except that we both worked in law enforcement. I hiked and climbed obsessively, and he enjoyed relaxing and watching TV on his days off. I passed this off as, ‘being supportive’ of my hobbies… but it’s very hard to maintain any sort of emotional connection with somebody that you never spend any time with. Our relatively immature relationship eroded quickly, and we were divorced less than 3 years after we got married. While I had never been married before, I had noticed a pattern in my relationships — they’d ‘work’ for a few years, and once that ‘honeymoon buzz’ wore off… they started to disintegrate. I had never been able to get a relationship beyond that point. I genuinely believed that I was the problem… Afterall, I was the common denominator in all of my failed relationships. I decided then and there that I would never get married, ever again.

And then I met Aaron, a visibly kind man who was quite unlike anybody that I had ever dated in my life. I’m going to skip all the parts about dating… going to therapy… and ultimately arriving at the decision that I would be open to marriage in the future. Suffice it to say, that after a few years living by myself in a 600 sq ft apartment in Tacoma… and after working hard to build a healthy relationship with Aaron… I felt like I was ready to consider it again. And so, on that April evening at sunset… alone in a fire lookout tower… I slipped on my new engagement ring and looked at it as it glistened in the fading light. I thought I knew what it meant to be married. I thought I knew what it meant to be engaged. I thought I knew a lot of things that night… but I didn’t.

Aaron and I kept our marriage pretty secretive, for the most part. We had chosen to elope to Tahiti for our wedding, and we weren’t inviting any guests. And secondly, I think that the people-pleasing part of me was still embarrassed about my divorce and didn’t want to explain anything to people who had no idea what was going on in my life. And so, we flew to French Polynesia in November of 2015 to get married.

At our wedding ceremony in Tahiti.

I’m going to share something that I wrote about our wedding in Moorea, just a few months after our ceremony:

The ceremony was performed by the celebrant in Tahitian, and a woman was there to translate what he was saying into English.  As per Tahitian custom, we said our vows (they helped us say them!), and we placed our hands on a Ti leaf, and then a coconut was broken and the water was poured over them in a blessing called a “vaihaari”.

A few months after our wedding, we were in Florida to visit my grandparents. We were eating dinner at a restaurant in Key West, when I looked over at Aaron and it suddenly hit me – “We’re married!!”, I exclaimed.  I don’t know why the thought hit me at that very moment – maybe it was the wine talking – but, very suddenly, I was overwhelmed (in a good, corny way) by the thought that Aaron was my husband.  We started talking about our ceremony in Moorea, and I asked Aaron if it had made him emotional at all – he looked at me and told me that he had gotten choked up when he arrived at the beach in the canoe and saw me waiting there.  Tears started to stream down my face as I stammered, “But…but… you never told me that!”  

For months, I had believed that he had been completely stoic at our wedding (and, in fact, I had not mentioned the fact that I was choking back tears when I was standing at the top of the stairway watching his canoe paddle ashore).  He started to laugh, I started to cry, and then, while stuffing our faces with key lime pie so as not to attract too much attention from other restaurant guests, we both sat there at our table, crying and laughing together … for no reason other than we were the only two people on earth who knew the love that was promised on that leaf.

Visiting French Polynesia was indeed a dream – picnicking on a deserted island, sleeping in an overwater bungalow, climbing a jungle peak – these are decidedly the things that dreams are made of.  It was beyond fun to spend 11 days together in paradise, but paradise is merely a perspective.   As I look at my “normal” life at home – the quiet nights we spend together, the hiking in the rain, playing with our cats, talking at the end of a long day and watching football and eating pizza… I’ve realized that these things are paradise too.  Realizing a dream is a special opportunity in life, and things like traveling and adventure add so much “shine” and excitement, but when it comes down to it – nurturing relationships and being “OK” with being normal is just as exciting.  I’m not writing this from an overwater bungalow while receiving a massage – I’m at our home in the Pacific Northwest.  I went to the gym today, ran some quite ordinary errands and attempted to motivate myself (unsuccessfully) to fold laundry.  As I sit here typing in my messy mountaineering gear room right now, waiting for my husband to get home from work so that we can eat dinner together, I know without a shadow of a doubt that there is absolutely no place in the world I would rather be.

Bora Bora.

When I was a little kid and we’d go hiking with my parents, my day was a stickler about staying on the trail…. “Errooooosssssionnnnn”, he’d say in an exaggerated voice as he pointed to the places on the trail where careless hikers had cut switchbacks. Erosion in those locations wasn’t natural - it happened, because people decided to take a tiny shortcut. Sure, maybe one little shortcut doesn’t make a huge impact… but hundreds of shortcuts over a consistent period of time start to erode the trail.

Nobody plans for their marriage to erode — nobody does it on purpose… but it sometimes starts to sneak in, without any conscious awareness at all. It starts small… staring at your phone, instead of taking the time to check in with the other person. The notes you used to write to each other? Those are easy to stop writing. The extra hugs or kisses… those are easy to let go, because you don’t have any time. And then, if you’re like me, you leave your job and you start a business… and you focus everything you have on creating something… and forget about nurturing what you do have. I was looking through my photo album on my phone the other day for photos of me and Aaron, and I noticed something shocking: between 2017 and 2022 there are hardly any photos of me and Aaron together. Sure, there are a few vacation photos here and there… but most of the photos are of me… out on some wild adventure in the mountains… or doing the next great, amazing thing with Kula Cloth. The thing that stands out to me the most about these photos is not what is in the photos… what stands out to me is what isn’t in the photos.

As time passed, we got into a routine — as most people do — and overlooked the care of our marriage, in favor of logistical conversations about packing lunches and when we were going to go to Costco next. The curiosity and fun that we had once experienced began to drift away a little bit. Our once inseparable lives became very separate… and because I spent most of my time at home with my face stuffed into my cell phone under the guise of ‘working’ … it made it pretty darn challenging to re-connect.

I am not a marriage expert. I have failed horribly at marriage in so many ways that I am ashamed to admit it. I have been anything but an ideal wife and partner, and I have blamed my own husband for a lack of communication, when I knew in my heart that it was ridiculous to think that he could possibly connect to a wife who was plugged into her cell phone more than her real life. I demanded communication… but wouldn’t do it myself. I looked at where I was, and fooled myself into thinking that ‘somewhere else’ would be better. The erosion continued, until it all came crashing down in a heap that I wasn’t sure we could come back from.

When we were married in Tahiti, we were given a Tahitian name. Hiti Mahana was the name that the Tahitian celebrant gave to us… and I still remember that one of the women who worked at the hotel told me that the name didn’t suit us. She thought it was too generic. I had helped her the day before at the hotel with an irate customer, and she thought we needed a name that captured more of a sense of kindness. While I was deeply moved by her thoughtfulness, I wasn’t about to complain to the Tahitian celebrant about the name that he had chosen. Now, reflecting back on eight years of marriage, I know the name was the right one. After we had taken our vows on the leaf, and after we had been wrapped in the pareo… the celebrant looked at us and exclaimed in a booming voice, “Hiti Mahana”, he said, “Rising Sun.”

Last weekend, we celebrated our 8th wedding anniversary together. I often joke with people that Aaron and I took our vows in Tahitian over a leaf, and that we still don’t know what we agreed to — which used to be true, but isn’t entirely accurate anymore. When Aaron and I decided to get married in 2015, I thought that I knew what that meant — I had an idea of marriage and what it was supposed to be, and it was completely and utterly wrong. What I’ve learned about marriage is that it isn’t a given thing. Just because you buy a ring and make a promise, doesn’t mean that it’s going to work out — in fact, you might even forget those things over time. The ring loses its glisten and the promise you thought you made is obscured by wishing that the other person is somehow different than how they are. The connection you once felt is replaced by disconnection and confusion. As shortcuts are taken, erosion creeps in and wears away a shaky foundation that was built on an idea… and this, friends, this is when your marriage really begins.

Over the past few years, I’ve started referring to this experience as our ‘second’ marriage to each other. Yes, there was the marriage on the beach in Tahiti… and we even had a second (legally binding) ceremony that we celebrated with 11 members of our family a few weeks later… but those were the picturesque moments of our wedding that included photos and pizza and cupcakes. Our real marriage did not have a photographer… it did not have guests… and it was not pretty. There was no white dress and there were no flowers. Parts of it are very painful for me to think about, and there are many parts of it that I will never share — but each of those moments has played an important part. Every single moment ripped down a piece of the facade… and then we had a choice to build it back up again... together.

This is a photo from our legally binding ceremony in WA.

The rubble of our marriage was painful, but it was not bad — in fact, it was essential for the real marriage to arrive. Marriage is not a one day commitment where you say a few things to each other and eat cake. Being married to somebody is a choice that you make every single day. When Aaron and I experienced our own ‘dark night of the soul’ we didn’t re-commit to who we had been… we re-committed to each other as entirely new people. We left the past behind, stepped out of our skins, and exposed all of who we were — maybe for the first time. And when we decided to re-emerge from that moment, we did it together… as something we had never been before. There were no empty promises of change, while continuing to practice old worn-out behaviors. This was something all together new, and we had been gifted a blank canvas. It was up to us to determine what we wanted to paint it with.

Aaron and I go on a walk everyday together, and our walk climbs about 500’ of elevation up a small mountain behind our home. At the top of the climb, we have the same routine every single morning: we hug and we kiss at the top and tell each other that we love each other. Last year, I started saying, “Happy Anniversary!”… every single day. At first, it was a little corny and silly… but quickly, I realized that I meant it. Each day I was saying, “Today, we choose each other.” I can’t recall the words I said that day on a beach in Moorea on a leaf, but looking back on the last 8 years of our marriage, I think I can piece our vows together:

We come together on this day with an intention of great love. We are not perfect and we will likely cause each other great pain and heartache. Most of this will not be intentional. Most of it will come from a place of seeking something outside of ourselves. Sometimes, we will be confused about what to do or what not to do. We will not always communicate perfectly, but we will try our best. The purpose of our relationship is not to make us happy or whole. The purpose of our relationship is much more important. Our relationship will show us things about ourselves that we have been afraid to look at for a long time — these are the deepest places of our soul that have been hidden away and forgotten… but they are still there. In our time together, we will uncover these places and we will have a choice. There is no wrong choice. But once we decide, we must do so with our whole heart. We must leave behind who we were… and become who we want to be. Love will come from within us, and we will re-discover it together. Our marriage will no longer be based on needing anything at all — but rather, a shared and reflected internal love that radiates through our union with forgiveness, friendship, understanding and compassion. This, above all things, will be the gift of our marriage.

We took a vow eight years ago standing on a beach, and we both cried tears of love that day, for what we thought we were then. I asked Aaron a few days ago why he had wanted to get married, and he told me how much he loved spending time with me. In classic Aaron form, he specifically said that he remembered thinking, “Well, this is nice. I’d like to do more of this.” There were many years when we did not do more of this, and for those years, I silently mourn their loss — although I don’t allow myself to sit and wallow in regret. I reflect back to the young woman who had just gotten married and was writing her blog post about her wedding in Moorea and waiting for her husband to get home from work so that she could eat dinner with him. Now, I drive to work every day with my husband… and we’ve only missed one meal together in two years. I really did understand something back then: paradise is not a tropical island and a white sandy beach … paradise is being seen and loved, exactly how you are — rubble and beauty combined into a story that is being written every single day.

Eight years later… riding motorcycles together and visiting lighthouses.

Love is a funny thing. The movies will have us believe that the only ‘real love’ is the type of love that gives you that ‘honeymoon’ phase feeling, but I don’t think that’s true. I think you can find that feeling with just about anybody. What you can’t often find is somebody that will stick with you through the times that aren’t that great… during the times that you feel very undeserving of love. Aaron and I are not a perfect married couple - because I doubt that anybody is - but over the past few years, we’ve re-built our relationship into something really beautiful… and something worth celebrating. At our anniversary dinner, our server asked us, “What’s your favorite marriage secret?”, and I said, “Get re-married to each other every single day.” A few weeks ago, I asked Aaron if he had been told on the day of our wedding exactly what the next eight years would bring to get to where we are right now — all of it — would he still do it? “Yes”, he said, without hesitating.

From our motorcycle trip around the Cascade Loop - this is Lake Chelan.

When we met a decade ago, I never imagined that we’d be running a successful outdoor gear company together. I never thought we’d play music together… dressed as a sasquatch and a unicorn. I had no idea we’d ride over 8,000 miles on motorcycles together. I couldn’t possibly have known the number of mountains we’d climb or the nights we’d spend in a tent. I didn’t know we would be the parents of three grey cats… and I certainly never imagined that a ‘wild’ weekend night would consist of pizza, a giant chocolate chip cookie… and going to bed at 8pm. I could not have comprehended the pain we’d feel together… or the intense love and joy. I don’t know what else lies ahead in our time together… and I’d rather keep it a surprise. But if the past eight years has taught me anything, it has showed me that even on the darkest days, we can watch the rising sun together… and remember that it shares our name.

Love,

Anastasia

P.S. Thank you all so much for being here! If you have any questions or comments for my next AMA column, or any suggestions in general - you can send them anonymously to the Kula Diaries Vault. If you’d like a response, please be sure to include your e-mail address. I am wishing you all a beautiful week. You are loved, friends.