When your right to marry is not always guaranteed, like Richard Swerdlow, it’s easy to recognize the little things that make marriage special.
“Do you have a frequent shopper card?” asked the supermarket check-out clerk, ringing up my items.
I do, but digging through my wallet, I hadn’t brought it.
“No problem, I can find it by your phone number,” said the clerk. He tried, but nothing showed up.
“Oh!” I realized, “Maybe it’s my husband’s phone number.”
The clerk keyed it in, and it worked. You saved two dollars and thirty-four cents, he announced, bagging my purchase and telling me to have a nice day.
And, as I left with my grocery bags, it occurred to me I was leaving the supermarket with something that wasn’t on my shopping list – an unexpected feeling of gratitude. Even the automatic door sliding open for me seemed surprisingly symbolic. Because that remark about my husband would not have been possible before 2015, when a Supreme Court ruling legalized marriage equality in all fifty US states.
My husband and and I, like the 800,000 married same-sex couples in the United States, tied the knot for the same reasons that sixty-one million straight couples did. We wanted to formally honor our love, commitment, and companionship. We wanted to be a family, like everyone else.
We’ve been together 35 years, so I know marriage is about more than just romance. Gay or straight, every day isn’t candlelight dinners and slow dancing. Marriage is also about the legal protections married couples are entitled to – providing coverage through workplace insurance benefits, property survivor rights, leaving assets to each other. The right to make healthcare decisions for the person you care most about in the world.
But marriage is also about a million small everyday things, like picking up his favorite snack at the grocery, finding the misplaced pair of glasses, watching TV together. Marriage is about sharing a life together. Marriage is even about sharing a supermarket card.
So, I’d like to tell that check-out clerk I did have a nice day in his line that day. Because along with the bread and the milk, I picked up a renewed appreciation for a Supreme Court ruling – and for how extraordinary it is to do ordinary things, like calling my husband “my husband” at the supermarket.
With a Perspective, I’m Richard Swerdlow.
Richard Swerdlow is a retired San Francisco teacher.