While My Boyfriend Was Sleeping

What I write after Joe and Henry go to bed

How to surprise your husband on his birthday

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Most of the people in my life go out of their way to not celebrate their birthdays.

For example …

For her 50th birthday dinner, my mother, the diva, requested that my father to take her to Long John Silver’s for chicken planks and french fries. For her 77th birthday, my Oma took one look at the balloons I had hung up for her and said, “Vell, dees is the first time I’ve had balloons on my birthday.”

“The FIRST time?” I asked.

“Ve didn’t have balloons in Germany after the var.”

This was delivered with such a mix of melancholy and hardness that I felt at once glad and guilty for having hung them.

My Nana has bemoaned her birthday for years. Earlier this year, when I mailed her a container of homemade brownies, she told me to save myself the effort because she’s “an old crow” and the brownies were “all mush” by the time they arrived.

My sister PK has such severe birthday anxiety that as a child she refused to acknowledge the date. However, like any young ingrate she still liked receiving presents, so to ensure she’d still be gifted but not celebrated she invented a new birthday; an unbirthday for those of you who are into Alice in Wonderland. The date? May 11, the same day as my parent’s wedding anniversary. This was obviously a strategic move so my mother would be less apt to forget it. It worked. At 28 she still gets presents on this day.

Having said this, I do not come from a family of party poopers. Under different circumstances these people are SUPER fun and celebratory. It’s birthdays that bring out the Eeyore in them. Unlike me, this apathy stems less from a fear of mortality and more from a fear of ATTENTION.

My husband on the other hand is exactly the opposite. He’s a birthday whore.

He lives for December 8. Truthfully, he lives for the WEEK of December 8. For Joe it isn’t so much a birth DAY as a birth WEEK. He counts down to it like a child counts down to Christmas. (For the record, he counts down to Christmas too because I think he views Christmas as an extension of his birthday.)

December is Joe’s birth MONTH and he’d lay claim to all 31 days if Jesus’ big day didn’t get in the way.

Sometimes I enjoy his birthday whoriness. When you come from a family of limelight dodgers, it’s refreshing to see a grown-ass man get bitchy when you break tradition and unknowingly cut the first slice of his birthday cake. (“What’s wrong with you? It’s my birthday. I’m supposed to make the first cut.”)

Joe doesn’t open a bag of LJS chicken planks and call it a day. In the fall he types out a long list of things he’d like for his birthday and emails it to me in a Word doc.

This year he failed to send the September wish list. Probably because he’s been so busy supporting our family, being a superb dad to Hank and a patient, understanding and bighearted husband to his sometimes high-strung, sometimes neurotic, sometimes surly wife.

HE EARNED A SPECIAL BIRTHDAY. (And a ticket to see Trey Anastasio play the House of Blues in February.)

So on a weekend that kicked off Dec. 6 with my dear friend Gabriel’s wedding in Safety Harbor, Fla., I planned a two-day celebration that involved a surprise hotel stay at the Safety Harbor Resort & Spa, a surprise boat ride from the hotel to Hula Bay Club and a surprise dinner attended by a rotating cast of family and friends.

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If this ring could talk

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If my wedding ring could talk, it would sound like Jean Arthur, the throaty-voiced spitfire in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. It would be full of piss, vinegar and the kind of wisdom you earn the hard way. Picture 84-year-old Katharine Hepburn: blunt, memorable, sarcastic and dressed in baggy trousers. She would be full of good gossip and zingers. My ring would be the life of the party, if rings were dames.

Of course I have no basis for these flights of fancy – just an overactive imagination and an antique wedding ring that once belonged to Joe’s great-grandmother Millie.

Here’s what I know about Millie: she was a small Italian woman who lived with my mother-in-law in a three-story walk-up in Brooklyn, where she cooked big dinners and sewed fabulous clothes. She was married twice and couldn’t keep a secret, especially if it was a pleasant one. Other than that I don’t know much else about the woman, which feels kind of wrong since I wear her wedding ring 24 hours a day.

Some girls spend their girlhood picturing their ring finger bedecked in a diamond, emerald-cut and mounted in platinum, fastened to a band that was dipped in gold at the end of a rainbow somewhere in Africa. Me? I had other fantasies. On more than one occasion I said I’d be perfectly verklempt if my husband-to-be proposed with a hot tub.

When I did, however, finally warm to the idea of a ring I latched onto one word: antique. I wanted a ring with a past. But since Joe and I rarely spoke of marriage, much less marriage BLING, my fondness for antique rocks never came up. I figured if my hand ever needed a swift Liz Taylor-ing I’d browse Zales in my jammies and order one of those eternity rings middle-aged husbands buy for their middle-aged wives to let them know they’re still the cat’s meow.

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Wedded bliss, old Florida style

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Been meaning to post these shots from a wedding I photographed a few months ago in San Antonio, Fla. It was a simple, beautifully understated gathering of friends and family.

(Wait. What? Where’s San Antonio, Fla.? It’s a tiny town outside of Tampa.)

Here are my three favorite things from the day:

1. I discovered an old red barn in the field behind the venue. (Score! Nothing says I love you like an old red barn.)

2. The bride was lit from within … and several months pregnant.

3. The groom was so calm, cool and collected. He radiated with a genuine unhurried joy that can’t be feigned. The bride too. They were both so at ease. It was as if they were already married.

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Things you can’t shake

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There is (of course) a story behind the salt shaker on my kitchen counter.

It was an unintentional wedding gift, given to me on my wedding night inside a carton of french fries.

After our wedding was through, and the band had packed up, and nearly every guest had been carried away by pumpkin at midnight, Joe and I looked around the ski lodge where our reception had just taken place in a stardust swirl of bliss and we realized, we had no ride back to our hotel.

My cousin Cory and his wife Krystle, always the last to leave a party, were still milling around as we packed up leftover favors and the last of my mother’s centerpieces.

They offered to drive us in their Hummer.

So, around midnight we piled into our off-road chariot and set about a short ride to the hotel.

I was starving.

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Western NY must sip: Winery of Ellicottville

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Over the summer, one of my nearest and dearest childhood friends opened a winery in Ellicottville, N.Y.

Psssst … Joe and I got married in Ellicottville in September 2009. Sam Sheehy and his father-in-law, Dominic Spicola, opened the Winery of Ellicottville on Monroe Street in the village just one year later.

Had it been open for our wedding, you can bet our bridesmaids and groomsmen would have enjoyed wetting their whistles here.

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Kimberlee & Jonathan | October 9, 2010

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Western New York | The Quintessential Fall Wedding

When my friend Kim asked me too shoot her wedding in our hometown, I was honored and thrilled. When she told me it was in October, I was even more thrilled.

The fall in Western New York is breathtaking and Kim and Jon picked a date that turned out to be the peak of fall foliage.

A trolley named The Fonz transported the wedding party from North Collins, where Kim and I grew up, to the church, where I once wrote an article about a pipe organ for our weekly newspaper, to Knox Farms, where the groomsmen dutifully posed along a fence until it broke. (See below.)

Take 1: Down goes the fence.

This one’s even better: the guy in the middle goes down and his fellow groomsmen catch him.

I loved photographing Kim in the makeup chair at John Roberts Salon. Here’s a little fun fact about Kim: in college she used to sleep with a full face of makeup in case there was a fire drill in the middle of the night. The night before her wedding she also slept in makeup.

Beautiful, makeup or no makeup.

Mirror, mirror in my hand. Who’s the fairest bride in the land?

Kim desperately wanted to take pictures with her two pooches, but in the end she decided we didn’t have enough time between primping and trolley pick-up. Instead she brought a framed photo of her fur children to the salon, where they sat in spirit and watched the bridesmaids get up-do’ed.

The wind in the willows & the dress in the tree.

By all means, kick off your heels in the leaves and stay awhile.

A little collage action.

Kim and her dad.

Each lady delicately pinned a flower to her waist.

The unveiling.

Kim has a photo of she and her dad ambling down the street in front of their house when she was a little girl. She wanted to recreate that. Here’s the shot from the front.

And from the back. Hello shadows.

Bouquets courtesy of Etsy. Wise choice!

Pretty maids in a row … boarding The Fonz.

Kim and her mom.

This shot is one of my favorites for a few reasons. We’re sitting in the church parking lot. Guests are filing into the church, including the groom and his groomsmen. Kim is hiding behind the Just Married sign in the back of the trolley so no one will see her. She’s watching all the people she’s ever known in her life walk from their cars to the church to see HER get MARRIED. It’s a surreal moment and she realizes it. I imagine the look on her face is a combination of nervousness and anticipation.

I can’t say enough good things about the bridesmaids. They were all so sweet, patient and lovable. Not to mention stunning in their purple dresses.

Back at Knox Farms. As we meandered through the property in The Fronz trolley, I spotted a few dilapidated barns that I thought would work splendidly for photos. (Juxtaposition!) But of course our farm “tour guide” wouldn’t allow us to shoot beside these crumbling structures. (Liability!) I thought they were being overly cautious until the fence fell.

At one point Jonathan busted out a pink suit coat and aviator shades. I’ve never seen a dude look so dapper in pink.

I don’t know which is more delightful: The fact that there’s a ray of light cutting through this shot. Or that Kim is posing like a model in a bridal magazine.

Wondering how to pump up a hungry crowd at the start of a wedding reception? Make your entrance under an awning of inflatable baseball bats.

The koozies were an ode to one of Jon’s favorite outdoor hobbies. (That’s my best friend Ro holding the beer. She also served as a hand model at my wedding.)

Jon and Kim engage in a twisted-arm champagne toast.

And then dance like no one is watching.

—

To J+K: Thank you for letting me capture the day. Much love and congratulations. I hope you’re having a fantastic time zip-lining through the Dominican Republic.

To those of you who don’t believe in fate: Kim told me there was a “Post-it note mishap” in the early stages of the wedding planning process that resulted in accidentally booking the church for Oct. 9 instead of Oct. 2 –– her original wedding date. It turns out the mix-up was fortuitous. The Oct. 2 weather was dreadfully cold and rainy. The Oct. 9 weather? Well, you saw the pictures.

The jam session.

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Mothership drew this cartoon of me, Joe and the pug on the back of an envelope a couple years ago.

Let’s call it The Jam Session.

Those of you who know Joe, know he loves to jam. He’s awesome at it. He even has this little jam face. All good guitar players have one and Joe is no different.

The first night I met Joe, he played me a song on his guitar.

It was a song he made up earlier that day, prior to meeting me and a gaggle of friends at a downtown St. Pete restaurant.

It was a slow song, a dreamy song, the kind you drink coffee and cook pancakes to. We would do this a few months later, after the dating dance had begun. But at this moment Joe was a stranger with framed concert posters on his walls and an odd bar of Lava soap in his bathroom.

The song, so you can hear it in your head, was the kind of sweet little number girls get squishy over. Boys know guitars make girls swoon. It was a nice treat and the perfect cap on an otherwise perfect night.

He didn’t sing. Just strummed this song, a short song with a lullaby of a refrain that repeats and folds over itself like a quilt.

I was sitting in his apartment on his old futon, wedged between four good friends who no longer live here. We were all fairly drunk. I was slurring inappropriate stories that I would never have told in front of mixed company had my tongue not been coated in vodka.

I was being myself. My roots were exposed.

It was because I was comfortable.

This was because of Joe.

Eventually my roommate passed out on the futon, curled up in the fetal position. Two years and eight months later, after he had moved to Philadelphia, my roommate would get ordained to marry Joe and me on top of a hill in Ellicottville, N.Y.

But none of that had happened yet.

In that moment we were just a cluster of friends in an old apartment with dark hardwood floors, telling stories and taking turns trying to play Joe’s guitar.

It was cool out. I was wearing a purple scarf around my neck and a green scarf in my hair. Joe remembers this.

We had all lost track of time and the night had rolled on thick with throaty laughs; the way nights with friends tend to do.

My insides felt velvety. I didn’t think it was possible to feel so snug with someone I had just met.

I had gone out begrudgingly that night, but at 2 a.m. there was nowhere else I wanted to be.

That little song Joe played for me, did I mention it was an original?

It became my song.

On our wedding day, Joe stood under an arbor and played it as I walked down an aisle made of scattered mulch.

He looked dashing. He always looks dashing when he’s playing his guitar.

I wasn’t nervous.

I felt warm and sunny and light and comfortable.

Every time Joe plays me that song I think of our beginnings.

His futon. On top of a hill in Western New York.

My insides turn to velvet.

Recently, he played it for me when I was standing in the front yard, tugging weeds out of our vegetable garden. He walked out the door, guitar tucked under his arm, strumming for all the neighborhood to hear.

Curious, our neighbors moseyed over.

I didn’t even notice they were standing there until the song was over and they applauded.

—

PS. Happy anniversary, my darling rock star. I’m the luckiest gal in the universe to have snagged you. Have you ever thought about giving our song a title?

Eternal sunshine of the spotless unwind

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Matrimony didn’t physically change my life.

Joe and I had lived together for almost two years before we got married.

Before he’d even proposed, we had purchased a house together and vacationed alone together. From the day we first cohabited I began packing him a tuna fish sandwich every morning before work and in return he began making the bed. This arrangement has been going on for three years.

For an impulsive person with irrepressible wanderlust, I take to domesticity like a fish to water when I’m in love.

On our honeymoon, I met a couple in their 60s from Detroit, who told me they spent the first year of their marriage getting to know one another. He worked as a supervisor at a Ford plant and she was a housewife.

Every morning for a month she would wake up at 6 a.m. to cook him breakfast before his shift and every morning for a month he would force himself to eat it.

It was painful.

“I finally had to tell her I don’t eat breakfast,” he said.

“All he wanted was a thermos of coffee,” she balked.

Ironically, during this conversation we were eating breakfast outside, overlooking Seneca Lake at a bed and breakfast in Upstate New York.

“I eat breakfast more now that I’m retired,” he countered.

“But how was I supposed to know?” She exclaimed. “It’s not like we talked about breakfast before we got married.”

This blew my mind.

For those of us who shack up before marriage, the first year of matrimony takes on a different sort of feeling. I knew Joe didn’t eat breakfast three dates into our courtship. By the time he popped the question, I’d vacuumed up his toenail clippings no less than a dozen times.

The transition from live-in girlfriend to wife was subtle, but no less educational.

Here’s what happened to me:

In the months after our wedding everything Joe and I did as a couple suddenly seemed more official. More serious.

We were a married couple grocery shopping. A married couple watching Jeopardy. A married couple shopping for Christmas decorations. A married couple arguing over whether it was worth the extra buck for Hellmann’s Mayonnaise instead of the store brand.

As a result, I became more serious.

I felt like someone I had stamped the word adult across my forehead in bold, black ink. The weight of this perceived label caused me to spin into a toxic spiral of anxiety.

I worried about money. I worried about the future. I worried about fertility, drinking water, health insurance, car insurance, my savings account, his savings account, our credit card balances and the fragile state of the industry in which we both work — newspaper journalism.

I worried about APRs and PPOs, 401Ks and other acronyms I know nothing about. I worried so much the pug’s face turned gray.

I worried in my dreams and I worried in my pipe dreams. I worried I hadn’t achieved enough as a single person, all the accomplishments I had yet to cross off my list, all the countries I had yet to visit.

Joe had fallen in love with a free spirit and married an old crank. I held onto my last name because it was the last bastion of my former lighter self, but I had strangled my former, lighter self by fixating on things I couldn’t control.

One day, not long ago, it dawned on me that while it’s important that relationships mature, it’s equally important that they stay the same. And by that I mean, there are a million reasons why two people fall in love, none of which have anything to do with how well you look while carrying the weight of the world.

If marriage is about growing old together, then the best thing I can do for mine is drag it out by staying young.

Some women appear to have it all and I spent a year agonizing over whether I could too, until I came to the conclusion that having it all is not a literal feat, but a figurative one.

Having it all is making peace with it all. The first year of my marriage taught me that.

A maiden changes her name

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I didn’t know I was attached to my last name until it came time to change it.

It’s this way with most things, isn’t it?

I’ve been married for 318 days, 315 of which I’ve been Heidi Kurpiela, a name that I’ve pronounced two different ways my entire life: Ker-peel-ya and Ker-peel-a.

I always give people these two options when they ask me how to pronounce it. I’m not sure which is right and which is wrong and it doesn’t much matter as long as you spell it with a “pie” and say it with a “peel.”

Kurpiela is a German name with Polish origins, the result of blurring boundaries between two countries from which my people hail. Other than my Dad’s immediate family, I have no known relatives with this last name in the United States. Three years ago, Facebook introduced me to a whole new brood of Kurpielas in Canada, but after sending a series of messages back and forth with one of them, I’ve yet to find a common ancestor.

This is unfortunate considering how much I love Canada.

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