Kids, the day will come when you will ask me about marriage.  You will want to know how I was sure about your father, and about certainty in love.  And here is what I will say:  it is easy to imagine and to live the carousel of love, to find the person you want to spend your life spoon-feeding butterscotch pudding, simple to to picture laughing on the banks of the Seine while children in sailor suits frolic and say adorable things. In short, easy to imagine easy.

BUT.

But.  The day will come – rudely interrupting this blissful, hazy-edged life – when you and this person have a disagreement.  You might, for example, yell and cry and then fly 3000 miles on an eleven-forty pm flight with four kids sprawled across your combined laps, you might not have eaten in a few days because of fighting and travel and feel quite miserable only to arrive at your house to find that your enormous dog has crapped all over the dining room rug.

You might, say, have to crouch down with this person, in your pale and fatigued body, and scoop handfuls of poop into a bag.  You will be face-to-face with this person and literally picking up the shit, the fallout of your life.

And here’s my advice: at the end of the day (or first thing in the morning after the red-eye), if this person is the person with whom you want to pick up shit, then yes, this is the person for you.