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Shikha Sharma
The first time I introduced my husband as my husband I got the word wrong.
Not wrong as in incorrect. Wrong as in it came out strange. I said this is my husband and the word husband landed in the sentence in a way that sounded like I was trying it out, which I was. I had said boyfriend for two years. I had said fiancé for eight months. And now I was saying husband and it was the right word and it also sounded like someone else's word.
He heard it. He looked at me briefly in the way he looks at me when something small has happened that we will discuss later. We discussed it later. I said I did not know why it sounded strange. He said he thought it would stop sounding strange. He was right. It took about three months.
The introduction happened at a dinner, five days after the wedding, people we both knew but not well, the specific social occasion of early marriage where you are newly this thing together in front of others. I was telling someone how we met and I said this is my husband and then I continued with the story and the story was fine but the husband was sitting there being new.
We had Sunfeast Marie Light in the car on the way home, late, because I always have something in my bag, and I said the word again just to practice. Husband. He said yes. I said it again. He said he was still here. I said I was just getting used to it. He said take your time.
The Weight of the Word
The word husband is heavier than boyfriend.
Boyfriend is light. Boyfriend can be wrong. Boyfriend can become something else or nothing at all and the word goes with it. Boyfriend is a present-tense word.
Husband is a different kind of word. It has clauses in it. It implies a future that has been agreed upon. It is a word that, once used, means something about the shape of your life. You do not use husband lightly. You do not use husband and mean maybe.
This is why it sounds different the first time. The word is carrying more than the previous words carried and the carrying is audible.
My friend Priya described the first use of wife in her marriage as feeling like a door closing. Not in a bad way. In the way that a door closing means you are now inside a room, and the room is the one you chose, and the closing is the choosing becoming real. She said she stood in that room and it was exactly the room she had wanted and it was also very definitely a room.
She said it took her about two months before wife sounded like her own word. Before that it sounded like her mother's word, or her aunt's word, or a word from a generation she had been watching use it.
The First Times
The first husband introduction is not the only first.
There is the first time you write it on a form. The marital status box. Married. You tick it for the first time and it is accurate and it is also the first time it has been accurate and the tick feels slightly more deliberate than the other ticks on the form.
There is the first time someone refers to him as your husband without you having introduced him that way. A colleague who has heard, a relative who has updated. They say your husband and you hear it from the outside and it sounds more settled than when you say it yourself.
There is the first time you call him my husband on the phone, mid-sentence, to someone who cannot see you. This one is different from the in-person introduction because there is no face to look at, no room to read. It is just the word going out into the air and you hear it as you say it and it sounds, the first few times, like you are reporting on someone else's life.
My friend Meera said the phone version took her longer than the in-person version. In person she was in the moment and the moment carried her through. On the phone there was nothing to carry her.
She said the moment it stopped sounding strange was when she was telling someone about something he had done and she said my husband and the word was just the fastest way to identify him. Not a declaration. Just the most accurate and efficient label available, used without thinking.
She said she went home and told him. He said he had been waiting for that to happen. She asked how he had known it had not happened yet. He said he could tell.
When It Settles
The word settles at different speeds for different people.
For me it was three months. The three months had nothing to do with certainty about the marriage. I was certain about the marriage. It had everything to do with the word catching up to the fact. The fact was established. The word needed time to become ordinary.
What I remember about the three months is that each use of the word moved it slightly closer to ordinary. Not dramatically. Incrementally. Each introduction, each form, each phone call. By the end of the three months the word was mine.
The last time it sounded strange I was on a call with my mother. I said my husband had said something. I heard myself say it and it sounded almost normal. My mother said something back and used the word too and in her mouth it sounded completely normal, fully settled, as though it had always been this way.
It had not always been this way. It had been this way for three months.
She had been waiting longer than three months for it to be this way.
That is probably why it sounded so settled in her mouth.
