Commitment... And Everything That Goes With it (And Everything that Doesn't)

A few days ago, over a bowl of shared udon noodles, Tiffany told me she was ready to take our relationship to the next level.

I finished slurping a noodle up from the not-so-secure grasp of my chopsticks.

"Really?" I asked.

Now, before our families start calling to bemoan the fact that I've revealed some very big news on my blog, let me explain what level Tiffany meant:

A Christmas card picture.

Yes, after almost six years, Tiffany felt committed enough to me to plaster a picture of the two of us on a card and mail it out to all our friends and family. We've been co-signing Christmas cards since we moved in together, but I think we can all appreciate the seriousness of The Christmas Card Picture--it's what couples do when they're married, when they buy a dog, when they have children.

"Hmmm," I said, stabbing at another noodle and grinning across the table at her. "This is a big moment for us!"

Those were the wrong words, of course. As any half of a couple knows, the minute you assign significance to a moment, the other half will verbally backpedal until any significance is lost. But Tiffany, brave soul, stood strong. She remained committed to The Christmas Card Picture even as I splattered her with noodle broth.

We couldn't discuss the idea much more that night. We were late for a showing of "Burlesque"--a movie Tiffany couldn't wait to see and a movie I had no desire to see whatsoever.

But a few days later, the topic came up again as we prepared our Christmas card lists. We decided to find a suitable picture. This is tougher than it sounds because Tiffany and I are the World's Worst Picture Takers. We very rarely have a camera with us, and, when we do, we almost never point it at ourselves.

"It's like we don't even exist," Tiffany said, scrolling through the hundreds of pictures on our computer, 99.9 percent of which featured someone else.

"How about this one?" I asked, pointing to a shot of the two of us taken by a tour guide in Vietnam from so far away we look like Fisher Price people.

"Eh," Tiffany replied.

Clearly, The Christmas Card Picture called for new material, so, when we got our Christmas tree, we begged one of the workers on the lot to take a photo of us loading it up to carry home.

"You're carrying it home on that?" he asked, raising his eyebrows and tilting his head at our battered Vespa.

"Yes," we answered.

Click.

The photo was a little bit blurry. That's not the fault of the man who took it because our camera takes blurry pictures when Tiffany and I use it too. We just haven't bothered to figure out why. Still, the blurriness almost looked like soft-focus (like all the scenes of Christina Aguilera in "Burlesque"--you know, where her hair fades out in a soft glow--or maybe you haven't seen it? Good for you.). By our standards, it was a keeper.

But when we played around with the picture and some card-making software, we both got cold-feet.* And it's not because we're not ready to "commit" (clearly, we are: Tiffany, who hates food-in-mouth noises proposed The Christmas Card Picture over my noodle-slurping, and I went to see "Burlesque"**--what more commitment can a couple endure?). It's because, in comparison to The Christmas Card Pictures we are receiving from our friends (with babies laid out on plush carpets and toddlers squeezing each other around the neck and puppies in reindeer antlers), we just look like a boring couple with a tiny half-naked Christmas tree. And we don't want to inflict upon our friends and family the cheesiness of just the two of us.

I mean, come on...

That's what this blog is for.

*Despite the fact that this picture never went on a card or into the mail, I've posted it here for illustrative purposes.

**I secretly enjoyed the movie, mostly for the music.