Apparently two billion people tuned in to watch the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton this morning. I was one of them (if they count the re-broadcast on TLC), mostly because I was recovering from a nasty stomach bug and didn’t feel like much besides guilty pleasure TV-viewing, and also because I thought it would be weird that I got up at the crack of dawn to watch Princess Diana’s funeral for a glimpse of William but didn’t watch him get married. My affections for the dashing Prince have obviously waned considerably since I was willing to settle for the prerecorded version of the nuptials instead of watching His Royal Highness in real time. Maybe I get back a few points for proceeding to watch all-day news coverage of the wedding, including Oprah’s Royal Wedding Party?

(Erm, possibly not for the Oprah thing; after all, she did describe some aspect of the wedding as being “on spot,” while her British correspondent nodded and smiled in a very British way that seemed polite but clearly said Oprah is a gigantic poser.)

On the subject of the incredible amount of media attention given to the wedding, a lot of people have griped or just goggled about why Americans, in particular, care so much about some other country’s future king’s wedding. We did, after all, fight a long war for independence from said country because we weren’t too keen on their monarch.  I snarked on Facebook about the ridiculous wedding merchandise marketed to Americans, notably, a positively ghastly Kate Middleton figurine collection, but other than that the media glut didn’t really bother me. In fact, I thought speculation about Kate’s gown was a rather pleasant distraction from recent headlines of wars, economic recession, earthquakes, tsunamis, wildfires, and tornadoes. Others, understandably, including Brian Williams and the NBC Nightly News, thought it was inappropriate to give so much attention to something as frivolous as a royal wedding when there’s so much trouble in the world right now.

But as the wedding unfolded and the media voices fell silent, I became absorbed in the magnificence of Westminster Abbey and the transcendent songs of the choir and the solemn tradition of the ceremony itself and wondered if two billion people weren’t drawn to this for a reason that runs much deeper than a bit of pleasant distraction.

My favorite scene in the Harry Potter books takes place in the Hogwarts infirmary after the Death Eaters break into Hogwarts and–SPOILER ALERT!–Snape kills Dumbledore . The Order of the Phoenix are gathered around the bedside of Bill Weasley, whose face got eaten by a werewolf during the battle, and everyone expects Bill’s seemingly shallow fiancée Fleur Delacour to call off the wedding because of his disfigurement. Only Fleur surprises everybody by saying she loves Bill more than ever now, which prompts an outburst from Nymphadora Tonks who has, apparently, been involved in a tumultuous relationship with Remus Lupin who won’t marry her because he’s a werewolf and that makes him “too old, too poor…too dangerous” for her. But Tonks disagrees, and wants to hash it out with Remus right then and there. He responds, “This is…not the moment to discuss it. Dumbledore is dead…” And then, surprise of all surprises, Professor McGonagall dresses him down: “Dumbledore would have been happier than anybody to think that there was a little more love in the world.”

Because isn’t love what it’s all about? The root of everything we fight against, everything we fight for–nature, politics, evil–is love. Family. Marriage. Without that, the human race can’t survive. And not just in a reproductive sense, though that’s certainly part of the biological drive to love. But our emotional survival is just as crucial, and humans aren’t solitary creatures. We need someone to love and to cherish, to have and to hold, for better or for worse, for rich or for poor, in sickness and in health till death do us part.

That’s why, when the world is burning up and blowing away all around us, two billion of us turn our televisions to watch some other country’s future king’s wedding. Because we need a little more love in the world.

(And also very beautiful dresses and very bad hats.)

While browsing Walmart’s Valentine card selection the other day, I kept coming across variations on a theme: “They say that the longer a couple stays together, the more they start to look alike. Good thing we’re both so good looking!” Apart from the fact that this trope is not particularly funny, I eschew cards emblazoned with it because it’s simply not true of Mr. Burt and me. (Though, come to think of it, I do wear a lot more t-shirts and hoodies than I did when I met him eight years ago…)

Now, if there were cards that said, “They say that the longer a couple stays together, the more they start to think alike. Good thing we’re both so exceptionally intelligent and clever!” I’d be all over those.

Then again, that truth may be self-evident without its being expressed on a greeting card.

We don’t go overboard on Valentine’s Day in the Burt house, but we do celebrate it. I mean, why wouldn’t you take advantage of an excuse to exchange silly cards and eat candy and have sex? Not to mention it’s such a cute holiday–and you know a holiday’s legit when it’s got its own kitchen towels and dishes. (I’ve got the dishes, but will be hitting Target or Kohls tomorrow for clearance decor.)

And sock monkeys.

When I saw the sock monkeys at Walmart, in Valentine pinks and reds (or robin’s egg blue or jailbird stripes for the men in your life) with hearts stitched on their chests, I caved to consumer pressure and bought a pair for Mr. Burt and the Burt Squirt. (Monkeys are a bit of a thing in our house, what with Mr. Burt being a code monkey and the Burt Squirt just being a plain monkey and owning a bit of monkey paraphernalia. But I won’t pretend that any other thought than Must have Love Monkeys! influenced my decision to buy.)

Friday night, Mr. Burt went out to do a bit of Valentine shopping for me. Before he left, I told him he didn’t have to make a big deal of it.

“I just got you something little and silly,” I said. And lingerie. But I’m not so into being Even Steven that I wanted Mr. Burt to come home from Walmart with silk boxers or, God forbid, a banana hammock, so I kept that part to myself.

As it turned out, our Valentine gift exchange was a little more Even Steven than I’d imagined. Actually, I had imagined that Mr. Burt might be taken with Walmart’s Love Monkeys (that’s kind of a disturbing phrase, and I will never use it again) as I had been, and wouldn’t it be funny if he got me one, too? But I didn’t really think he would, as just a few days prior I’d remarked about how much I’m missing that gene that cares about stuffed animals.

Anyway, Mr. Burt opened his Valentine present from me and drew out a black and white-striped Love Monkey.

I opened my Valentine present from Mr. Burt and drew out a red Love Monkey.

(And when a boy Love Monkey loves a girl Love Monkey very much…)

If the Love Monkeys alone didn’t prove just how similarly Mr. Burt and I think, there was also the little issue of our Valentine date destination.

Earlier in the week I’d emailed my mom to ask if she’d be free to babysit Saturday, and when she wrote back to ask what time she should come over, I asked Mr. Burt, who was at his computer, when he wanted to go out.

“Noonish,” he said.

“What do you want to do at noon?”

“Hang on, let me check.” He started clicking around with his mouse.

“Check what?”

He didn’t answer my question, just said, “Yep, that’ll work.”

“What’ll work?” I asked, confused and intrigued, because we hadn’t even discussed what we might do for Valentine’s Day, not having secured Squirt care until the moment before.

“It’s a surprise.”

A surprise would be fun–except that I had this not-so-surprising feeling that Mr. Burt was going to take me ice skating. I had no good reason for suspecting this. We hadn’t discussed ice skating, not in relation to Valentine’s Day; a few weeks earlier the Groupon had been for ice skating, but when I mentioned it to Mr. Burt he was in the middle of a computer game and it’s a crapshoot whether he’ll hear you or not when you talk to him while he’s gaming.

Sure enough, Saturday rolled around, and when Mr. Burt asked me if I had any idea where we were going and I told him I thought he was taking me ice skating, his mouth fell open and he said, “How did you know? I didn’t give you any hints at all.”

It was true. We hadn’t discussed our Valentine date at all. And I hadn’t seen his email confirming his coupon purchase, because we have separate email accounts on separate computers. And the coupon he’d purchased hadn’t even been the Groupon one I told him about before.

“That’s not fair,” Mr. Burt whined as we drove down the tollway toward Stonebriar Mall. “I wanted to surprise you.”

I patted his arm consolingly. “You couldn’t have done anything differently. There’s just no accounting for ESP.”

We’re just a couple of Love Monkeys, with two hearts that beat as one.

(And we’re not too shabby on the ice, either.)

It’s a recurring joke between Mr. Burt and me that the first time we vacationed at Walt Disney World, on our honeymoon, we were too broke to eat.

That was the truth. We could only afford the trip in the first place because Mr. Burt’s parents took all the other Burt kids and Burt grandkids to Cancun that summer and gave us the money that would have been our portion of the family vacation. Due to our marrying right out of college (literally, a few weeks after Mr. Burt graduated and before he started his job) tight would be a generous word to describe our budget: Mr. Burt worked at Olive Garden all four years at Baylor to pay for room and board, textbooks, and student fees, and even with the IT job he took his senior year in addition to waiting tables, only managed to scrape by on his living expenses with a very little left over for dates (his entire savings up to that point had gone to buy my engagement ring–which was perfect for my tiny ring finger, but by no means a rock by anyone’s standards); I worked on and off at department stores but, to my chagrin, brought all of $70 into our marriage because I have no self-control when working around clothes.

When Mr. Burt and I arrived at Walt Disney World, we had X dollars in our budget with absolutely no wiggle room, because that was all there was in the bank. We didn’t even have a credit card, though if we had, Mr. Burt was smart enough to know that starting your marriage broke was less than desirable but not the end of the world when you had a good job lined up, but starting it in debt because of your honeymoon was not a good financial precedent to set.

So, we made like Oregon Trail and limited our rations to bare bones. We splurged on a character breakfast buffet our first morning at the Magic Kingdom, but the rest of the week our first stop was an Epcot cafe where we could get cheap (by Disney standards) pastries and breakfast burritos. And split an orange juice. We’d skip lunch, maybe share an ice cream early afternoon if we were desperate, and ate a late lunch/early dinner, frequently splitting that meal. Not exactly taking advantage of the many unique and delicious dining opportunities Walt Disney World affords honeymooners, but it was what we could afford that won the day, and anyway,we didn’t really care that much about eating because…it was our honeymoon.

Thus it was that when our hunger pangs subsided and faded, as did all but our very best memories from that wonderful first week of marriage, being too poor to eat on our honeymoon became a joke.

There’s nothing like old photos to give you a shocking dose reality.

Take, for example, one of the few pictures of one of our honeymoon meals (indeed, one of our few honeymoon pictures, period, as we were also too poor for a proper camera and made due with four 27-exposure disposable cameras, the developing of which also pinched):

Two drinks. One blob of mashed potatoes. One prime rib. Oh, and not pictured, a minuscule Caesar salad. For two adults who hadn’t eaten anything all day except a cheese Danish and a breakfast burrito and possibly an Lemon Chill because we were about to die of heatstroke standing in line for Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. And that was a splurge.

“Remember how excited we were?” Mr. Burt said as we boggled at the picture last night. “We sat there at that table and said, ‘All right, we’re gonna have prime rib tonight!’ A little bit of prime rib. Geez, I feel so bad for us!”

I didn’t feel bad for us. I was too busy laughing at our naïve, dazed-by-our-own-happiness newlywed selves till my stomach hurt and tears tracked mascara down my cheeks.

It’s little wonder when we returned to Walt Disney World five years later for our second honeymoon, our package including a Disney Dining Plan, that we reacted to our first meal like this:

While we may feel a little sorry that First Honeymoon Mr. and LR Burt didn’t get to fully enjoy all Disney has to offer, we thank them for having the good sense not to have made that honeymoon a financial burden, or else we might not have been able to go back five years later for seconds.

We definitely wouldn’t have appreciated what it means to have full bellies. (Too full; eighteen months later, we’re still trying to work off the pounds we put on during that trip! Luckily for me, I also had a baby during that time. Children: the eternal scapegoats–but that’s another post…)

When Mr. Burt and my parents asked me what I want for Christmas this year, I had a hard time coming up with anything. (This is saying a lot, considering my Christmas lists used to bear an alarming resemblance to Sally Brown’s.) It was much easier for me to come up with what I don’t want (heavy sweaters, sweatshirts, button-down shirts that have to be ironed…to which Mr. Burt replied in bemusement, “Does that leave anything at all for me to give you?” and which may not be so far removed from old Sally after all); I’m content with the things I have, and there’s very little else that I need.

Except for sleep. But last I checked, sleep doesn’t come gift-wrapped.

It’s been two weeks since Mr. Burt and I had a good, solid night of sleep, thanks to the Burt Squirt going through one of those physical development stages (learning how to pull himself up on the crib rail and beginning to walk) notorious for throwing off sleep schedules. (Also, gas.) Mr. Burt, I think, is actually getting less sleep than I am most nights–though apparently he’s not keeping count.

I, however, am.

Now, I learned rather early on in this parenthood venture that score-keeping is the quickest way to lose the marriage game, so it’s not that I’m sitting up in the middle of the night doing fuzzy math as the Burt Squirt nurses and resenting Mr. Burt for being snuggled up in bed. No, I’ve developed a more noble kind of arithmetic that revolves around me obsessing over Mr. Burt getting as much sleep as I do. Or me losing as much as he does. And me feeling guilty if I get more. Because that just wouldn’t be fair, would it?

A word problem:

If LR goes to sleep at 11ish at night and Mr. Burt at 11:30ish and the Burt Squirt wakes up at 1:30ish in the morning and Mr. Burt gets up with him, not coming back to bed until 3:00ish, how many hours of sleep did LR and Mr. Burt get if LR only slept intermittently during the hour and a half Mr. Burt was trying to soothe the Burt Squirt back to sleep and then got up to feed the Burt Squirt from 3:00ish until 3:30ish but was too wired to fall asleep until after 4ish and then was up at 7ish and Mr. Burt got up at 8ish?

I never was able to come up with an exact answer to my muddled math problem, but I got the gist of it across to Mr. Burt in conversation as we showered and dressed this morning:

LR: “If it makes you feel any better, I didn’t sleep very much while you were up with the Burt Squirt.”

Mr. Burt: “Why would that make me feel better?”

LR: “Because we got the same amount of sleep. Misery loves company.”

Mr. Burt: “Oh. I’d rather you actually get sleep.”

For the first time in nine months of being a mom (and in six and a half years of being a wife, really, because I’ve always struggled with (unfounded) feelings of guilt and fear that Mr. Burt might resent me for not being a monetary contributor in our relationship), it hit me:

I don’t have to feel guilty about getting more sleep than my husband does.

Because he loves me.

And fairness and equality, while both very essential ingredients for a successful marriage, don’t have all that much to do with love.

Misery may love company, but love hates misery. After all, love is why we get up when the Burt Squirt cries in the middle of the night and lose all this sleep in the first place.

It brings to mind the words of one of my favorite Christmas carols: What I can I give Him / Give my heart.

Mr. Burt may not be able to give me exactly what I want for Christmas, but he gives me the one thing I really need.

As for sleep…maybe that’s what the Burt Squirt will give to me.

Once upon a time, the news that Prince William is getting married would have broken my heart.

Because he was supposed to marry me.

When I caught a glimpse of him in the newspaper, it was love at first sight between me and the handsome future King of England who was just my age. Or it would be, once he saw me–by which time he’d already be well on his way to falling deeply in love with me, thanks to the beautiful letter of sympathy I’d written to him upon the occasion of his mother’s tragic death.

It would have to be a real humdinger, as no doubt William had servants who read his post first to weed out the girls who were only after his power, riches, and masculine beauty from the one who truly loved him. If there is ever anything I can do… I wrote, convinced that the letter-reader’s response would be, Oh yes, Miss Bond, there is something you can do—heal His Royal Highness’ heart. Because nothing bespeaks true love like the phrase, Until that time, know that you are in my prayers whenever I think of you. Even the Apostle whose words I’d hijacked couldn’t have prayed as much for his fledgling churches as I was praying for William, because the first century had a distinct lack of 24-hour news coverage about celebrities dying to keep people frequently in his thoughts.

Also, Paul wasn’t a fifteen year-old girl.

He especially wasn’t a fifteen year-old girl who got caught by her father smuggling Diana-related newspapers back to her room and, flushing furiously, told him she was saving them because they were “history in the making”–as was getting up at three in the morning on a Saturday to watch Princess Diana’s funeral–like he didn’t know the truth, like every other father of a teenage daughter in 1997.

My letter never made it to Prince William—or his servant who read letters—it never even got finished–so I thankfully am spared the humiliation of having attempted to woo royalty with godliness. I only have to live with the humiliation of having played that card in my love games with regular boys at school and in youth group—about as successfully, I might add, as I would have been with His Royal Highness. The first boy who did take an interest, two years later, informed me that what actually drew me to him was not my prayers, but my pants—the blue plaid ones. And we all know what that’s teenage boy code for.

Not surprisingly, that relationship was no more destined to be than the one I had dreamed of with Prince William. For a big dose of irony, my first boyfriend played a prince in our high school production of Into the Woods—and used his charm both on-stage and off, with more girls than just me.

Princes were seriously over-rated, I decided, much as Sondheim’s Cinderella did. You have to work too hard to get–and keep–them.

Mr. Burt came into my life without the stench of prince anywhere near him. Well–he had played one of the Three Kings in a church play, but Binky the Wise Man bearing gifts of ties, toasters, and soaps-on-a-rope is a far cry from crowns and glass slippers and senior proms and angsty teenage romances. I never played any games with Mr. Burt; the first night we met I hadn’t washed my hair or put on makeup, and I spit popcorn on him. He wasn’t looking for me to impress him–though I did when I worked out the meaning of the word defenestration by using my (extremely limited) German vocabulary–and when I scored a date simply by being myself, I knew my search for Prince Charming was over.

Though that doesn’t mean I won’t get up at three in the morning to watch the royal wedding. After all, it’s history in the making.