Author Archives: Alan Ilagan

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in twenty years of blogging, it’s how to paint a pretty picture even when the source material is flawed and far from idyllic. I’ve taken gray days and made them shine, turned rainy vacations into sunny-spirited romps, and transformed the rattiest of outfits and surroundings into the stuff of sparkle and pizzazz. There is so much negative stuff everywhere else I try to offer an alternative of tranquility and serenity here, occasionally coupled with a laugh or ridiculous complaint. But there are darker and more somber and serious moments here, when real life interrupts how pretty we might want it to be, and sometimes that creeps into even the most happy of events, like our wedding anniversary. 

Rather than pretend it was all hearts and flowers and chocolate candy, I’m at the point where it’s a disservice to anyone looking for some real resonance or meaning in what I post here to feign some impossible idea of perfection or even a vague notion of prettiness when the heart feels anything but pretty or happy. 

A full Flower Moon and Mercury in retrograde motion made for a startlingly dismal crux of emotional crisis, and so it was that I arose on the Saturday of our anniversary weekend in Boston alone and without Andy. I wish I’d taken the astrological mayhem into account and backed down when our argument began to escalate, but sometimes we lose sight of things and get confused and accusatory in the moment.

As I puttered about the condo, and a beautiful spring day unfurled outside, almost exactly like it had thirteen years ago, I remembered something that Andy said to me early on in our relationship: “You’re not the man of my dreams but I fell in love with you anyway.“

He’d proclaimed those words in the impassioned heat of an argument and reconciliation, and if we could still be so fiercely affecting one another twenty-three years after we first met, then certainly that was a sign that we still vitally cared. 

Walking around Boston, I passed our favorite haunts, remembering all the moments we’d had here. With the tumult of the full moon behind us, things seems sillier and less portentous in the morning. The vast scope of a life shared offered perspective on a single fight, and the power of the bond of marriage bound us together even when we might disagree. 

I texted an apology to Andy – a rare but not entirely unprecedented act when I knew I had a hand in what had gone wrong. I said I was sorry, and then I wrote that we shouldn’t be alone and away from each other on our anniversary. My heart hurt with hope while I waited for a response.

It came a few minutes later, and he said he would come to Boston the next day. Then he sent his own apology, which may have been the best gift ever received for an anniversary. Thirteen years into our marriage, we are still learning, still trying to be better husbands. 

We had our fancy anniversary dinner at Rare, and the next morning we took our traditional stroll through the Boston Public Garden after having our wedding rings cleaned. Happiness had returned, like the waterfowl that honked and squawked on the water, and our hearts felt lighter than they had in days. The world had been righted for the moment. We’d had a less-than-ideal anniversary weekend, and it wasn’t a complete disaster. We survived, and the morning was beautiful.

Maybe there are those couples who have it entirely together and every moment is wonderful and dreamy and perfect. We are not one of those couples. We have to bicker and argue and be angry and upset and work it all out every once in a while. We have to let things go even when we are certain we are right and the other person is wrong. We have to forgive and acknowledge and accept, and decide whether it is still worth it to keep trying. Underneath it all is a foundation of love and care and commitment, and hopefully that is strong enough to see us through to get to more of the good stuff – the majority of peaceful and happy and calm days of living that makes the difficult parts as worth it as they are meaningless in the grand scheme of things.

Thirteen years into our marriage, and almost twenty-three into our relationship, we still have mostly good days and happy times. Laughing our way through the silliness and insanity of life, even and especially when our own foibles trip us up, even when we are the ones getting in our own way – that’s a wonderful gift to open up every day, so here’s to lucky #13 and all that we’ve already been through.

A curtain of willow branches closes out the morning and our time in the garden, and the rest is between me and Andy…

After almost twenty-three years of having a partner – thirteen of which we’ve been husband and husband – I rarely had occasion to see a Broadway show alone. That’s one of the comforts of being with Andy that I’ve never taken for granted. So it was unorthodox and unfamiliar to be attending a Friday night performance of ‘Beetlejuice’ at the Citizen Opera House in Boston completely on my own, with an empty set holding only my Burberry coat and the Playbill. It was even more strange, and ultimately sad, to be there on my own at the start of our anniversary weekend. 

Before I met Andy, this would not be such an unusual circumstance. One of my favorite things to do when I was going to Brandeis was to escape the mind-numbingly dull trappings of campus life and take the train into Boston to see the newest movie release. The shows before noon were usually at a discount, and I could make a large popcorn into a very satisfying brunch and not worry about eating again until dinner. Sitting there with a small spattering of attendees, I felt relievedly alone and isolated, left to my own devices and happy to be so unbothered. There, in the dark, I didn’t worry about the social anxiety that plagued me in the light of day, when people made encounters at best wearying and at worst highly stressful. I didn’t realize at the time that it was ok to embrace such solitude, that it was ok to be alone, yet as much as it was a relief to me, it also came with its own set of neuroses. 

Sitting by myself in the Opera House, as the purple and green lights slowly raked the audience while menacing Tim Burton-like music made a macabre joke of my situation, I remembered those movie days but found no comfort in the memory. My husband was not with me. I’d driven to Boston alone. It looked like we would spending our wedding anniversary weekend without each other. 

It wasn’t supposed to be this way, if anything can even be planned as ‘supposed to be’ anymore. I’d scheduled our anniversary weekend in Boston – an annual tradition from the time we were officially married on May 7, 2010 (with the exception of the COVID year 2020, which we still honored, albeit it in our upstate NY backyard) – with reserved dinners at Mariel, No. 9 Park, and Rare. The surprise gift was a pair of tickets for the musical version of a movie that Andy loved – ‘Beetlejuice’ – which was playing that very weekend. Planning went back months to get the tickets and dinner reservations, and I thought everything was set, until the morning we were set to depart, when Andy decided to pick a fight before we were even out of bed. 

Andy usually gets in a mood right before we go on any trip or vacation – he’s always been that way, and I’ve learned to accept it and go with the flow so as not to make it worse. On this morning, with all the stress and awfulness of the world, I foolishly decided to engage and argue. Now, this was a mistake on several levels – the main one being that I’d entirely forgotten that there was a full moon and Mercury was in retrograde.

For many years, I’ve made it a point never to argue or fight during such tremulous times; it never ends well, and usually ends up in a bigger blow-up than would ever be warranted under saner circumstances. I forgot about that then, and in the end I wound up driving to Boston on my own, while Andy stayed home. Even the reveal of tickets to the show as his gift wasn’t enough for us to calm down and disengage, and so it was that I found myself sitting beside an empty seat, utterly unable to enjoy the spectacle and riotous laughter as ‘Beetlejuice’ made for a fun theatrical romp for everyone other than me. 

After the show, I walked back through Boston Common, winding my way to the Public Garden where we’d been married thirteen years ago. It was where I always ended up when I found myself in doubt or worry, and on this night, as the heart was heavy, and the head wondered where we had gone wrong, I followed the full moon and realized what we had done. What I didn’t know was how deep the damage had gone, and whether we’d find our way through it. What I did know was that the world was always off when we weren’t getting along, and the notion of a life without Andy was something that filled me with dread and sorrow and an emptiness I understood would never quite be fixed. 

Pausing on the footbridge of the Boston Public Garden, I watched as the clouds parted, revealing the full Flower Moon – that meddlesome, beautiful bringer of mayhem and madness and aptly-named lunacy. I checked my phone for a text or call from Andy, and there was none. 

Beneath the full moon, the garden was gorgeous. Haunted and forlorn, but gorgeous…