I looked up what the traditional gift is for a 16th anniversary. It was mostly out of curiosity, really, since actual anniversary gifts are not a thing that we traditionally partake in. With Mother’s Day just before and my birthday just after, our anniversary falls into that super romantic dead zone of, “Oh, wait, how many years have we been married again? Let’s beg the children to actually go to sleep tonight, have a drink, and fall asleep binge-watching True Detective.”

Apparently, the traditional gift for 16 years of marriage is silver holloware, whatever that is. At 16, you’d think the traditional gift should be something more like, say, that vintage alfa romeo I have wanted since I was actually 16 years old. But alas. Here we are.

My husband—even though there’s no alfa romeo in my driveway—is kind of better at the whole celebrating thing.

(And by kind of better, I mean really, really, colossally better.)

(Remember that time he tracked down a dress I saw Kelly Ripa wear and surprised me with it?)

(Yeah, I’m a romantic failure.)

(But I do manage to keep his children alive and he comes home to a clean house every day — I’m basically June Cleaver.)

(Without the ironing because the only kind of ironing I do is for melty bead projects.)

He got me a card (a card!) and instead of messing around with silver sugar bowls or soup tureens, he made me a batch of homemade chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream so basically he wins.

And that’s why I allow him to spend all of his free time playing Draw Something and watching The Sopranos (again) on his laptop, laughing out loud to things no one else thinks are funny because he has his earbuds in.

Oh, our marriage at 16 is funny, strange, quiet, loud, silly, messy, interesting, predictable, unpredictable.

Good.

It’s some kind of teenager, I guess.