Writing on the Wall

A few days ago, Joe –my husband of nearly six years -- and I were once again officially married. Rest assured family and friends, this was no elaborate black tie affair complete with five courses, a tiered cake, and a hundred or so people trying to manage the chicken dance on a ten by ten foot dance floor. This was not even a minor affair on a beach with sandals, sun dresses, and a mariachi band. In fact, our marriage happened in a series of seconds while Joe and I weren't even in the same room.

It all started when a curious message popped into my in box. It stated “Joe Wingate has updated his profile to indicate that you are married. Please click here to confirm or deny this status.”

First, I have to admit, I am somewhat of a Facebook neophyte. Gregarious and outgoing in person, I am rather socially awkward on the internet. My profile picture is still that generic shadow figure that is probably more fitting for a person in protective custody, and since setting up my Facebook account nearly eight months ago, I've not really been back. I have received the occasional email notice, mostly from people I'm in regular contact with anyhow, requesting friendship, but since I don't actively Facebook, I've felt that accepting these “friendships” would be doing so under false pretenses, setting up the kind of relationships I hate, where one party doesn't really participate.

My husband, in sharp contrast, while a self-proclaimed introvert, is an internet social butterfly. On more occasions than I can count, I've witnessed him running to his chirping cell phone to accept a new friend to his account. He's also been the first in our physical social group to figure out how to set up familial relationships and propose marriage to me, his wife. He has friended many more people than we are in regular contact with, including people who live halfway around the world and share his passion for snowboarding. To the surprise of those who know us, it can be said he has cast his social net far wider than I will ever cast mine. (What more did any of us expect from a world where the twitter account of God is owned by Richard Dawkins, the raving atheist?)

On the morning of my husband's proposal, (although this email paled in comparison to the first, which happened on the top of a mountain in the warmth of a late August afternoon) a small part of me worried that I'd hurt my husband's feelings if I didn't immediately accept.

So I clicked the link, and after nearly ten years in a committed relationship, during which have we proclaimed our undying love to one another in a very public ceremony (one that did not include the chicken dance but did feature me wearing a dress that could stand on its own reconnaissance), commingled our bank accounts, purchased a home and created a child, I “confirmed” our status as married.

This prompted the second curious email of the morning which read, “You are now in a relationship with Joe Wingate.” Immediately, I forwarded the message and asked him if we should change the date of our anniversary and if I should be packing for a second honeymoon.

To which he replied with a picture of Hawaii and asked if clothes were really required for this kind of trip. (Okay, he didn't really do this, but wouldn't it have been funny if he had?)

While lacking in romance, our marriage on Facebook is more public than the one six years ago. We are officially linked in a world far more accessible and far more connected than by the brief announcement in the Portsmouth Harold, which has yellowed in our wedding scrapbook, or that small square of paper that is gathering dust in a file drawer in the town of Greenland, NH, where the official record of our wedding is kept.

I find pleasure in the fact that people I don't even know now know that Joe and I are on this great adventure of building a life.

In addition to confirming my marriage, I found myself confronted by an entire page of people whom I could barely remember the sound of their voice. Proposed friendships, waiting for me to ignore or accept. It was both funny and sad to see their faces smiling out at me, the way they'd changed their hair or featured themselves with a spouse I hadn't met. However, instead of feeling like we are suddenly connected, as pictures of a child I didn't know they'd had flashed across my screen, it made me realize instead all the chapters of their lives I have missed.

Suddenly, there were so many questions I had to ask. Like, when did you marry that guy? And what was your pregnancy like? And, if they, like me, felt they'd seen the face of God when they first held their child or threw up during transition in the birthing suite.

Is it ironic that this “catching up” after all this time was happening while I sat alone in the pre-dawn dark, surrounded only by the eerie glow of a computer screen?

And what of all the social customs I've spent years trying to master that I will now have to learn in this new space? For instance, how much time is too much time after the birth of a child for you to send an e-card with an online gift card to Babies r us? Or, heaven forbid, what happens when someone dies? Does your family member log on to update your status? Do we need to leave passwords in our wills? Does it hurt more or less to sign a set of legal documents weighing roughly the same as a human heart than it does to click “confirmed” on the status of divorced?

Yet, these are things we do not post on each other's walls. These are intimacies forbidden to this medium, so they will remain untyped and caught up in my throat.

“I love you,” I write on my husband's wall when what I really mean to say is I want the heat of your touch, the stiff, tickling scrape of your stubble against my chin that I will find when I crawl back into bed, waiting for our alarm to go off.