The last time we were at the Art Institute of Chicago it was on my 30th birthday, months before lock down would take place. It was our last family outing. It was the last time I saw anyone from  my family in person. I celebrated entering into my thirties hopeful (how fitting is this picture of me with Shepherd Fairey’s Hope poster) and ready to scale in my work. I told Jordan that this, 2020, was my year. It most certainly was, but not in the way I expected. You can read my 30th birthday post here.

Jordan and I decided as part of our twelfth anniversary celebration we would go see the Obama portraits. There’s no better way to celebrate our marriage than by celebrating a couple who, in my opinion, did so much good. Michelle and Barack are no doubt hashtag couple goals. When Michelle (always and forever my First Lady) talked about going to marriage therapy in her book, Becoming, it dispelled the illusion of what a marriage was supposed to look like and it showed me what it took to make a marriage work. My upbringing in the Mormon faith simplified the work of marriage, giving promises that if God was central, all would be fine. I once watched a BYU devotional in seminary of a couple being interviewed about their marriage. When asked by the interviewer if they ever fought, the wife and husband looked at each other, uncomfortably laughed, and the wife shyly responded, “We fight sometimes,” followed by the same story of reading scriptures and the Atonement to help overcome those tough times in marriage.

I’m not mocking those things if they help, but I felt that there had to be more. What did it really take to make a relationship work? I would find realistic advice that was more than leaving things to God in Michelle and Barack’s story. The actual work of disentangling the knots in a relationship that were caused by ego, our upbringing, traumas, culture (the concept, not definition, of masipag was always cause for a dispute), and insecurities. Jordan and I started seeing a therapist when the craziness of having a second baby made it difficult to connect. There were also the ten years of the above issues that we never addressed, creating resentments. When the only stress in our life was school, it was easy to overlook the small things. His things and my things weren’t a big deal. Then as the years passed and more stressors, like having kids, work, and, oh you know,  a pandemic, pile up, the cracks of your never-was-it-perfect-not-even-from-the-start relationship begin to reveal itself. Jordan and I did the work for a year and a half and just as our twelfth anniversary was approaching, Jordan and I felt a lot like Michelle shared, a knot beginning to loosen and we were feeling more connected.

It feels serendipitous being at the Art Institute on both ends of the pandemic (this end being the start of the Delta variant, not the end, as in, over and done with). Turning thirty felt like I was entering a new phase of my life and as a precursor to the journey I’d find myself on during the pandemic, the Andy Warhol exhibit seemed to act as a landmark to help me find myself again. On this end, I enter another phase, my marriage to my husband of twelve years. The portraits of the former President and First Lady are monumental for many, but for us, on this occasion, the Obama portraits act as a landmark to help us navigate our way through the ups and downs of our relationship. If they, regardless of status and titles (cause they didn’t have status then) can do it, we can too.

Now enjoy the rest of the photos featuring other wonderful works, especially that of Bisa Butler. Most importantly, have a good laugh at our kids’ enthusiasm of being in an art museum for four hours.

- If only this mountain between us could be ground to dust -

The first exhibition by Palestinian artists Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme in a major US museum ends on January 3rd, 2022. Learn more here.

- Bisa Butler’s portrait quilts vividly capture personal and historical narratives of Black life -

Bisa Butler: Portraits exhibition is at the Art Institute until September 6th, 2021. Run, don’t walk! It’s worth seeing it in person. You can see her work and learn more here.

The hat I’m wearing is the Gigi Pip