Rediscovering love. The makeover of our marriage during immigration process

A couple of years ago, I was watching a documentary about Magellanic penguins, on Discovery Channel. It was late at night and the voice-over mingled with the sound of my husband brushing his teeth. I dozed off for a few seconds, while images of penguins in their tuxedo-like fur coats continued to fill out my TV screen.

A phrase caught my ears and made my mind alert again: ‘These animals remained loyal to each other for decades, in spite of spending thousands of miles apart during their winter trips’. I remember barging into the bathroom, almost screaming at C., his mouth still full of white foam: ‘That’s us, we are Magellanic penguins’.

This year, on August 15, we celebrated nine years of relationship, including four of marriage. That’s a lot of time when you’re only 25 and your husband is 31. Somehow it worked. After learning how hard-headed we both can be, we quickly abandon the idea of a fairytale marriage in favor of a more down-to-earth concept, where fights are OK from time to time. This laid back approach, not our savings, helped us stick together during those dark first weeks in America.

‘I’m tired of playing this game. Let’s go home’, I said sobbing, face plant in a pillow, no longer than two months ago. Jobless, stressed and frightened, he mustered the strength to sooth my pain with kind words. We hold hands, looked in each other eyes – I, through a curtain of tears– and decided that feeling uncomfortable equals moving forward.

That yes, we’ll probably point fingers when times get though. And yes, there’s a good chance that we’ll fight over stupid things like which kind of movie to rent from Redbox. We didn’t have that in Romania. But in the mist of all troubles, we choose to remember why we came here in the first place. “Family” was the word that popped into our minds. Not ‘money’, not ‘success’.

So instead of mourning our old life, we celebrated the new one by doing more family stuff. We took long walks in the park, drank beer together on Monday nights and watched silly YouTube videos, laughing till our bellies hurt. It was glorious. 

Almost like we fell in love all over again, nine years later, in a different country, in different circumstances. We also learned new things about each other. I, for example, could eat copious amounts of peanut butter for breakfast and make money from carrying trays. He, on the other hand, fears of driving, but has no problem working night shifts or gobbling down polish sausage. Things eventually turned around. With each passing day, America feels more like an exciting adventure; a very uncomfortable one. My motivation? There's two of us riding the same giant wave.