If I had to estimate, I’ve probably written more than one million words about my husband since I fell in love with him under a Christmas tree in 2008.
We weren’t supposed to.
As I’ve edited the lines below, whether they remain part of a narrative or transition back to a poem, they still declare a truth:
My side of the family was full of boy-meets-girl love stories that members felt a velvet cushion comfort in retelling at the dinner table. Sisters and cousins were okay with passing around the polaroids, the kind of pictures my Mimi took with a black box camera. It spit out a picture that a person had to shake as it developed …
People adored those love stories. Then there was my love story with John: the one that put the taste of vinegar in people’s sugar. The one that made people wonder how we made it into the corner of their picture.
Excerpt from LOVE WITH VINEGAR BY REBECCA T. DICKINSON
I wrote the words that we “put the taste of vinegar in people’s sugar” in a poem I’ve edited over and over again until I decided I wanted to put the lines into a narrative. They are just some of the lines I’ve written about how the world might’ve viewed us.
We were 32 years apart.
We were not in a socially or morally acceptable construct being married to people we did not love.
We were everything others could despise, but I could not leave him. There was something in him that understood me in a way I’d never felt, before I ever read the papers about my history of my neurological testing as a five and six-year-old child showing what I’d always thought about myself with difficulties in understanding social cues.
When we were separated, lines filled my journals and laptop with a collection I’d eventually call Frozen Snowflakes.
The headlights invade
wet, black pavement.
Someone’s leaving.
Someone’s coming.
No more, a poem by rebecca t. dickinson
The choice to end up with the man who would ultimately become my husband cost me people I thought were good friends from college. It cost him every respect he’d had with members of his DNA.
but for us
We helped each other through illness, anger, depression and other challenges we’d face as a couple.
John and I walked through judgement when others might’ve categorized us something as flimsy as paper dolls.
Laugh,
Darling, for the “wise”
made us myths when
they
never did investigate like
Science at the
end …
of the monarch’s days.
when we were myths by rebecca t. dickinson
I recorded our years together in journals, poems and narratives. We chose each other against the wishes of all those who loved us or we thought loved us.
John supported me in my last days as a news writer when I covered a car accident in which I saw the body of a middle school boy being taken out of the wreck. This was the same day I found out I was pregnant with our son.
John supported my writing when understood from the beginning that it was not a hobby in the way some people collect stamps. He understood it was a passion I couldn’t control.
In our early years before we married, John suffered from MRSA.
We faced the loss of employment, building our family back financially, returning to graduate school, and finding a school that fit me best.
John and I faced the challenges in our son’s early childhood education, which led to Hayes’ autism and ADHD diagnosis. This happened while I was still in graduate school, and John made the decision to retire early to make all of Hayes’ appointments. He also joined a group called the National Alliance for Mental Illness (NAMI), and became a volunteer parent teacher.
John has always been the star behind my smiles, the one who walks in step with me, and never in front or behind me.
Smile that smile of yours: the moment when you check what’s on tap, and a woman spots you. She remembers you as the bartender from another place with the signature drink you used to make called “Stormcloud.”
“Waiting for you” by rebecca t. dickinson
John stood in the middle of the road with me one early December while I photographed a the lights of small North Carolina town. I wanted a full-on street view.
John once told me over our decision to be together: “You understand when the s*@t hits the fan, we got to stand back-to-back. It’s going to be us against the world.”
“love with vinegar” (the original) by rebecca t. dickinson
When I faced challenges during my last year of graduate school as the mother of a baby and the decision to put our son first, John held my hand. He stood by me.
An orange sunset and gray clouds cast
mountains into blue shadows and a glow
around the churches. Their signs showed
messages like, “Lost? Meet Jesus. Details
inside.” John drove off main town roads
past barbed wire fences and grass fed
cattle, past small houses parted from
redwood barns stained with storms, dirt,
and decades of use. Yellow gold–like a
New Year’s Eve decoration beads–tangerine-
colored, red, and brown leaves cling to trees
mixed with evergreens.
“off roading” by rebecca t. dickinson
In my twelve years with John and during our ten years of marriage, John and I have stood through “for poorer” and “in sickness” multiple times.
We were never perfect.
When we argue, it might as well be a storm of its own because we both possess alpha personalities.
I was never a great nurse and in December 2017, our children and John caught H1N1.
When I was diagnosed with shingles from stress and told by my doctor I needed to leave my former school due to my deteriorating health, John stayed with me through nightmares, tears, anger, and doctor visits.
Marriage is not
dreams and dazzles,
sparkles and white
on some wedding day.
You can live in the
fifteen second dream
of a ceremony.
Blow the money.
Watch it fly.
Almost,
ten years,
it’s been,
and I need you before me.
Oh, I love you,
I wish I could say it better.
I wish I could show it more.
Daisies on the fields of france by rebecca t. dickinson
When Corrie had to return to the hospital not long after birth with bronchitis and pneumonia, John hurried between the house to spend time with our son and to check on Corrie and me. One year later when Corrie caught pneumonia again, as she would every year of her life except for her last year, John helped Corrie calm down. He got Corrie to keep her penguin nebulizer on her face to help her breathe.
We overcame the damage caused by a tornado on our farm.
When Corrie died suddenly of a tumor in May 2020, John kept me going. We played a lot of Ridiculousness, so we’d still laugh.
John and I’ve been through so many judgements, challenges, illnesses, and losses.
Now, on the weekend of our ten-year-anniversary, we face a next phase in our journey. We will walk together in the new year as John battles stage 3 colon cancer with all the strength for which he’s known. He will work through the chemo and radiation.
And I will be at his side.
The men claimed that the
purple lines in the paint showed a
six-year-old’s
qualifications.
They failed to view Jack, who has
picked up and organized
layers of bricks and dirt
for a memorial garden
with purple flowers
just for his little girl.
jack’s work of art by rebecca t. dickinson
Corrie's Season 
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