Best of Beth Ashley: Our first year of matrimony deserves another

Editor’s note: The IJ is reprinting some of the late Beth Ashley’s columns. This is from 2010.

It’s been a year since I married Rowland. We have settled in like any old couple, lingering over breakfast, watching TV tennis and Netflix movies and negotiating what we’ll do today or put off till tomorrow.

It has been a year of joy and surprises.

I had no idea I would despise his Persian rugs in my previously unrugged house. He had no idea I would throw up my hands at his love of shopping. We already have more stuff than a normal person could name or need.

I had no idea I could be such a nasty little snip.

But aside from my periodic tirades, life has been lovely.

We celebrated the first year with an eight-course dinner at Cyrus restaurant in Healdsburg, courtesy of a gift certificate from the IJ newsroom.

We got all duded up for the occasion. The bar manager, hearing that it was our anniversary, looked us up on the internet, and voilà — there we were, wedding pictures and all, courtesy of the New York Times.

The phalanx of waiters in the dining room treated us like royalty, but everyone’s treated like royalty at Cyrus, where prices approach a king’s ransom.

At dinner, all eight courses were splendid, if drop-dead fancy. And what was that bacon-and-egg dish, tucked in between the Thai lobster and Kobe beef with daikon?

We ordered a $90 bottle of wine (my parsimonious New England forebears recoiled). The wine was good, I think, though I’m not discriminating enough to tell.

After the eighth course, the waiters presented us with anniversary boxes of cookies, in case we felt hungry going home.

It was an affair to remember, although we were too stuffed to sleep well that night.

The next night Rowland made a come-down dinner: meatloaf and mashed potatoes.

Our first year has had similar highs and lows.

We still love to travel and have trips planned for months in the future. We laugh a great deal.

We love our morning walks and our evening cocktail hour, and the hours in between we spend loafing and reading. We spent most of Labor Day weekend on the couch — he reading No. 2 in the Dragon Tattoo series, I immersed in a book on World War II: Lynne Olson’s “Citizens of London.” Right now, to show how politically fair I can be, I am reading Karl Rove’s book, “Courage and Consequence.”

We are usually almost too busy to catch our breath. As soon as we cross 10 things off our list, 10 more take their place.

Rowland, I’m happy to say, loves to garden. He has adorned our tiny backyard with lemon trees and tomato plants and transformed the patio with pots of flowers. I celebrate every time we sit outside. He has also placed, amidst the shrubbery, a dozen bronze or ceramic statues of bunnies, which drive me crazy, as well as a pair of bronze storks, a large black raven and two antlered deer. Why would a grown man collect statues of animals, and why bunnies?

He and I are still in the process of getting to know each other. Almost everything I learn makes me happy. He is bright. He is kind. He has remarkable energy. He has a great sense of humor.

He plays the piano and carries down the trash.

What more could someone ask for?

We still have things to work out, like whose job it is to pick up the kitchen and who gets to pick what TV to watch, but what marriage doesn’t have debates?

We know there’s a lot to rejoice about.

After one year, we’ve agreed to sign on for another.