Epilogue
Fifteen years of marriage and one beautiful daughter later, Victor and I are still as mismatched as ever. We fight. We make up. We occasionally threaten to put cobras in the mailbox for the other person to find. And that’s okay. Because after fifteen years, I know that when I call Victor from the emergency room to tell him that I was attacked by dogs when visiting my parents, he’ll take a deep breath and remind himself that this is our life.
I watch Victor almost in wonderment at the man he’s become, now completely unfazed when my father asks him to pull over so he can peel a dead skunk off the road because he “might know someone who could use it.” I see Hailey slip easily between the world of ballet classes and helping her grandfather build a moonshine still.
I see how we’ve changed to create a “normal” that no sane person would ever consider “normal,” but that works for us. A new normal. I see us becoming comfortable with our own brand of dysfunctional functionality, our own unique way of measuring successes.
But most important, I see me . . . or rather, the me I’ve become. Because I can finally see that all the terrible parts of my life, the embarrassing parts, the incidents I wanted to pretend never happened, and the things that make me “weird” and “different,” were actually the most important parts of my life. They were the parts that made me me. And this was the very reason I decided to tell this story . . . to celebrate the strange, to give thanks for the bizarre, and to one day help my daughter understand that the reason her mother appeared mostly naked on Fox News (that’s in book two, sorry) is probably the same reason her grandfather occasionally brings his pet donkey into bars: Because you are defined not by life’s imperfect moments, but by your reaction to them. Because there is joy in embracing—rather than running screaming from—the utter absurdity of life. And because it’s illegal to leave an unattended donkey in your car, even if you do live in Texas.
And when I see another couple, who seem normal and conventional and who aren’t having a loud, recurring argument in the park about whether Jesus was a zombie, I don’t feel envious. I feel contentment and pride as Victor and I pause our shouting to share a smug, knowing smile with each other as we pass the baffled couple, who move to give us room on the sidewalk. Then I lean in to rest my head on Victor’s shoulder as he laughs quietly and lovingly whispers to me, “Fucking amateurs.”
The End