Many of you already know about the whirlwind of our first three months of marriage in 2007. Our wedding was in May in Birmingham. Brent was living in Fort Myers, FL at the time. He’d been in a one bedroom apartment for almost year while working at his first job out of college. A few weeks before our wedding, he moved into a 2 bedroom, 2.5 bathroom condo so we’d have more room and an extra bedroom for all the guests we were sure to have while living in beautiful southwest Florida.
So we’d have more room are just famous last words now.
Two weeks before our wedding in May, I graduated from Auburn University with a degree in elementary education. Through an “only God can do this” kind of situation, I had a 4th grade teaching position ready for me starting in September.
Our condo was two stories with a typical layout—all the living was downstairs, all the sleeping was upstairs, with a cute little screened-in lanai outside. I looked forward to nearly three months of nothing while waiting for my first teaching job to begin and learning how to be a wife. I made breakfast for Brent every morning before work and often had his lunch ready to go as well. I had dinner ready for him when he got home. I was a happy little homemaker that didn’t know what to do with all my free time but cook for two, but I appreciated our condo and the neighborhood we lived in.
This Fort Myers condo became my home at the end of May 2007 and by August, due to Brent’s employer relocating him, we’d moved to Huntsville, AL, lived in a corporate housing apartment for one month, then moved into a house we bought. I told you. Whirl. Wind. There’s more to this story. For now, I need to explain why I should have appreciated the double vanity in our condo while I had it. It was the biggest bathroom we’d have for the rest of our marriage, probably.
I did some digging and I present to you—
The Official Master Bathroom Tour of our Marriage
I don’t have a picture of our bathroom in the condo, but it was the only time in our marriage we’ve had a double vanity (i.e., a bathroom large enough for two people). I do have a picture of the half bath downstairs. Because our move to Huntsville was sudden and unexpected, my brother flew down to help us load up a Uhaul and move. Here he is sitting in the half bath, on a dining chair, with a fan blowing high speed on his face because our air quit working the day before we moved. We were in southwest Florida. In July. Moving boxes and furniture. IT. WAS. HOT.
The next stop on our tour is our bathroom in Huntsville. Only one sink, but plenty of mirror and counter space for the two of us before age created a need for an expensive plethora of beauty options for our face and hair. I still remember who gave us the bamboo tissue cover, hand soap dispenser, and toothbrush holder at a wedding shower.
Next, we have the bathroom in a basement apartment we rented while we lived in Birmingham for 362 days. There is definitely a story to tell with this picture that has nothing to do with a pedestal sink and everything to do with what happens when you think the place you belong is not the place you live. It’s complex and I have to remind myself it actually happened as more time passes. There is another bathroom at my parents’ house, not pictured, where I miscarried our second child during this short season in Birmingham.
Who knew these unassuming spaces could tell a whole story?
Next on our tour of luxurious master bathrooms is from the house we lived in the second time we lived in North Alabama, after that almost year in Birmingham. It looks pristine because this was from our real estate listing when we sold the house, but I like to think it’s the prettiest of all the bathrooms because it represents a place we lived just short of seven perfectly imperfect years. Still a single vanity, and it seems the square footage of our bathrooms is decreasing with anniversaries.
I present to you the final stop on our tour, the bathroom in our current home, which is even smaller than the previous if you consider the tiny shower. The picture is also taken from our listing when we tried to sell our house at the height of a seller’s market in 2021 but nary an offer came in. It’s equally hilarious and frustrating at how the space we share to get ready for anything, or just simply pee, gets smaller and smaller. The only time this bathroom feels like plenty of space is after my family of five shares our camper bathroom for a weekend trip.
Why do I share all of these? I don’t really know. I guess to help myself find humor in a materialistic, unimportant possession that can really drive me insane sometimes. Not so much the bathroom itself, but the whole house. Not only has our bathroom decreased in size over the course of our marriage, so has the square footage of the house. We’ve added people and decreased our square footage over the past 17 years. It’s the opposite of what it seems you are supposed to do in America.
It’s not really about the space, though. These bathrooms represent homes and places I never imagined I’d be—places I fought to leave and places I fought to stay.
The thing is, none of us are living the life we planned. For better, for worse, and somewhere in the middle, we’re all just walking the path that’s before us. A path that isn’t all ups and isn’t all downs and often makes us ask what if it hadn't worked out that way?
Brent believes we’ll have a double vanity at some point in our marriage, but I give him a hard time, reminding him that sharing a single vanity is what has united us all these years. We have the opportunity to get irritated and say ugly things under our morning breath in a small space every morning. Why distance ourselves when we’ve done so well in tiny places?
Because absence makes the heart grow fonder, Brent says as if I’ve forgotten how much he believes in the marriage of our future.
He dreams of the day we’ll build a house and design a Jack-n-Jill bedroom—one with the bedroom in the middle and separate bathrooms on either side. He says it will be so separate that when people see it, they’ll question the health of our marriage.
And he’ll say, “We’re fine. We earned this.”
But for now, and maybe forever, I’m the queen of his single wide vanity.
You have no idea how much I needed to read about the path we’re on- unexpected, hard, but still the path God has placed us on.
Write on friend!!