We visited Zermatt, Switzerland this past Christmas, and on our last day there, took the Gornergrat Railway all the way up to the top for stunning views of the Matterhorn and surrounding mountains. It was this gorgeous, otherworldly expanse, snow and craggy peaks everywhere you looked. Quiet, cold, peaceful.

(I should add, for full disclosure, that it was only Aidy, Gabe, J and I who went up. Nora chose, instead, to sleep in and have breakfast with my mom at the cozy inn where we were staying, a decision she says she regrets not in the slightest, even when Gabe reminds her - and her reminds her of this often - that she missed “the best part of our trip” and, possibly, the most awesome thing in the world, ever).

When we got off the train, a young man proposed to the young woman he was with, and I, as expected, quietly, but probably not quietly enough, freaked out. It was so incredibly perfect. I got a chance to talk to them when we all ended up in this tiny chapel they have up there, where I delivered my congratulations in a way that seemed (I think) relatively sane. I kept my exclamations of “this is the best ever” to just three. Or four.

Thankfully (obviously), they were pretty excited themselves, and when they learned J and I had been married nearly 20 years they asked if we had any advice. I sputtered and said what immediately came to mind: to keep going on adventures like the one they were on right then.

Which is advice I fully believe in. Going on adventures as a couple - whether it’s making your way up the Gornergrat, squeezing in date night when you’ve got tiny children at home, or simply shaking up the mundanity (like when J tried to institute something he calls “cookbook roulette” to amp up our nightly dinner game, which failed to launch when his first attempt landed him on a complicated lamb recipe) - has always seemed to me like one of the best ways to keep honoring the relationship post-wedding.

Twenty years of marriage, which J and I celebrated this year on October 8, seems to be one of those milestones where you are finally worthy of this sort of advice-giving, advice-giving being something I never feel quite worthy of. Maybe in part because there is something I’ve always questioned in this particular advice space. Ruminated over. And it’s the fact that I regularly hear people saying that relationships are hard work. They lead with that.

I nod resolutely in agreement. But I think, feeling kind of like a jerk if I’m being honest: well, mine’s not.

To be clear, I’d never dissuade anyone from working hard at something meaningful, it would be misguided of me to ignore the fact that there are some issues you simply can’t work through, and it’s naive to say that the often complicated, constant situations that couples have to handle don’t require intense effort. Like dealing with the wild twists and turns of this unpredictable life, or realizing last minute that your children have their bi-annual dental cleaning on a morning you both have scheduled meetings, now what?

But what I’ve valued the most about my relationship, now 20-plus years in, is that our marriage feels like the thing I have to work at the least. Being with J is the dependable, joyful foundation that makes the actual hard work possible.

And that feels like kind of obnoxious advice to give. So lately (and I apologize for getting a little convoluted here) I’ve been thinking about this concept, digging in. About how maybe it’s too cavalier to say that J and I don’t work at our relationship. Because maybe doing just that is ingrained enough in our every day that it doesn’t quite feel like it’s happening at all. The way I force us to air out even minor grievances immediately, when J is fully immersed in a huge plot reveal in this quite endless series of science fiction books he is reading. The way he does this thing we call “Justin’s famous clean up” where he tidies up the whole house in mere minutes, or how he recently listened intently as I unloaded a minor mid-life crisis on him about my creative aspirations and then provided thoughtful, practical advice.

The way we met at our mutual friends’ wedding, 23-years-old and it felt like lightning, despite the fact that I’d come with my serious boyfriend, a situation that needed some, well, figuring out (and many beers). I always get caught up in the serendipity of that story, the fatefulness. But it also required painfully honest conversations and weighty decisions. It required very good friends and very good advice.

We’re lucky, there’s that. But perhaps my take on relationship advice is a little more nuanced than I once thought. If someone asked me for my honest advice on a happy marriage - if I could impress one thing upon my own children about good relationships (when I’m not all swept up in the romance of witnessing a literal ice castle proposal with the Matterhorn looming so close it felt like you could touch it…if I took some time to be really thorough in my answer) - what I would say is: Be with someone who makes your life better by default, and be that person back to them. Who makes it all possible. Be a solid, supportive landing place for all the great things your partner plans to do. For their rough days and big wins. Until it becomes habit. I believe you can choose that setting. You can choose it, then choose it again, and again.

I didn’t say that to the couple that day, as we took in the views, as the bride-to-be cried and I tried not to, because, first of all, it would have taken me such a long time to verbalize, and we eventually had to catch a train back down (we missed our initial planned departure time, by the way, due to Aidy and I deciding to take one last selfie, which I felt was worth it; J did not quite agree).

I’m saying it now though, the more thoughtful answer to the question. If they’re out there, by chance, planning their wedding, or already a few months in. Yes to all the things everyone says: communication and honesty and respect. Yes to adventure, and yes to coffee in bed, which is perhaps the most unshakeable tenet of our particular marriage.

But most of all, when you can: let each other, each day, be the least complicated part.

Several mornings ago I came downstairs where J had been for some time. He’d woken up early and decided to get some work done while the rest of us were still in bed, uninterrupted solo time a rarity in this particularly busy stage. College decisions and discussing complex ideas with teenagers. Everyone’s so big, how are we even fitting in this house anymore? Everyone’s so grown up.

I entered the kitchen where he greeted me in his pajamas, handed me a mug, gave me a hug for no reason. I laughed and said, “what is this?” And he said, “it’s just life.” He makes the hard work easy.

A couple of weeks ago Nora and I headed to Ohio to tour colleges. We drove (a bold move) following a weekend in Virginia with friends and, on the way out, took a gorgeous route through West Virginia that Nora, tired from a late night, mostly slept through in the way back of the car, although she said she did hear it when I put on John Denver. Which, I explained, I had to do.

Our college experience, so far, has been marked by qualities I did not expect. I suppose I expected the obvious ones as we approached Nora’s senior year of high school; that it would be intense, stressful and chaotic. And I can’t say we haven’t had those moments. But it’s also been calm and funny and enjoyable. It’s been fascinating, and random - like, what were we even doing in Ohio?

The answer is sort of how everything goes, you know? How life, through a series of decisions, falls into place. She’d heard good things about schools from friends who go there; we thought it would be insightful to get off the east coast; my brother went to college in Ohio. Why not?

We drove until the sky got huge and the land got flat and the corn - OMG those cornfields - endless! I told Nora I get nervous in landscapes like this, as we made our way through an early evening thunderstorm to our first stop. No rocky outcrops, nowhere to hide. She said she liked it, that wide open expanse, even all threatening with lightning like that. She took my phone from the console and put on “The Wizard of Oz” theme, and we laughed hysterically even as I reminded her that it was the wrong state. It was the right vibe.

The logistics, the details, of our experience so far, it has been like this. Booking tours, scanning stats, a lot of laughing, which is how it always is for me with Nora. These steps - even the application process, although I’m sure she would disagree to some extent - have felt less challenging to me than I imagined they would.

The emotional part of it, however. That crept up. In between exploring college towns and reading Nora’s first essay draft, without warning (because I didn’t think I was this kind of person, really) I got all weepy; the caricature of a high school senior mom. Like, we are in Ohio! And, wait a second, the idea is that someday I might leave her here?

Nora has always been the easy one. I’m putting it in writing, which is dangerous, because my other children will find this and hold it against me, but it’s irrefutable. She was born like that, a staid presence in an eventually frenetic family. I came downstairs this morning and Nora was quietly making breakfast, serenity incarnate. I came down five minutes later and Gabe had joined her, put on Biz Markie (loud) and was brewing tea that he wouldn’t drink. He makes tea every morning, about one minute before he is scheduled to leave. I find it, hot, on the counter, ghosted.

What this college experience has done for me is - well - I’ll put it this way. I imagine myself balancing spinning plates on both hands, while Nora has weaved in and out, no problem, all these years. And what this has done is it has given me the gift - a gift is what it is - of putting the plates down, because this year is all about her. Focusing so much energy on this one child: the constant guitar, the songs she writes; the way she leaves her book propped on her pillow, ready for bedtime; the friendships she fosters; all the giddy excitement that characterizes a 17-year-old’s life. And what that has been is a pure delight. And it has transitioned from a logical analysis of where she might like to go to a reckoning with the eventual leaving.

What I decided is I will be that weepy senior parent! I will be the hell out of her. Soaking up the afternoons when all my children get home, throwing backpacks where they don’t go, raiding the fridge, fighting (who would have thought it? now my favorite time of day!). Ensuring that when Nora got her senior portrait done they took the ridiculous shot of her holding up a license plate that says “SENIOR,” that is the one I want the most.

Lately I feel like my fingers are barely able to move fast enough across the keyboard to catch the feelings I’m having as they exit my mind. So many feelings, nowhere to hide them. But it’s like a badge we earn as parents, like the sleeplessness everyone knows about when you have a newborn. You can settle right into it, is the good news, sitting at a sun-dappled picnic table with your first child on an impossibly charming campus somewhere deep in Ohio, saying, “I can totally see you here,” voice wavering, you can’t help it! Because you totally can.