Category: Marriage

. . . mine has lasted twenty years, so I’m an expert.

Winning the Real Race

When I was fourteen, I rode my bicycle from Seattle to San Francisco in five weeks. I used to dream about riding across the country. Can you imagine Iowa on a bicycle, all that flat land? Or the Rocky Mountains? Or crossing the Mississippi River? Dipping your bicycle tire in the Pacific Ocean and then triumphantly dipping it in the Atlantic? Well, I used to imagine that.

Then I went off to college and sold my bicycle and never pedaled more than twenty miles on a bicycle again. And then I got married. And then I had kids.

But Lance Armstrong! What an inspiration! Overcoming cancer, training his wrecked body, pushing himself up hills and winning, winning, winning. Getting married didn’t stop Lance Armstrong. He got married, too, you know, in 1998–after he survived testicular cancer. He had the forethought to bank s p e r m, so he and his wife were able to conceive their children (a son, born in 1999 and twin daughters born in 2001). None of this stopped him from his professional bicycle racing career. His wife was by his side when he won his first Tour de France in 1999.

She wasn’t by his side this time, though, for his triumphant seventh win in a row. No. Now, he appeared with his children and his girlfriend, singer S h e r y l Crow. He divorced his wife in 2003 and hooked up with Ms. Crow soon thereafter.

So here’s the thing. When I see Lance Armstrong on television, crowing about his win, grinning about his achievements, basking in the glow of admiration–all I can think is that he couldn’t even keep his marriage together for five years. Five years. His children are now shuttled from home to home, place to place. His children are the ones who pay the price for his inability to keep his marriage together.

And sure. I know. It takes two people to make a marriage work and there is no possible way we can assign fault. Marriages, even celebrity marriages, are private. Who knows what happened behind closed doors? But I can’t help myself. When the world showers confetti on someone for grit and sheer determination, I can’t get past wondering what the ex-wife thinks about all this. And how the children feel seeing daddy holding hands with someone who is clearly not their mother.

That’s the legacy, I suppose, of my own parents’ divorce. I’m much more impressed by, say, Cuppa and Anvilcloud’s thirty-five years of marriage than I am by one guy winning seven bicycle races in a row. I imagine that the Armstrong children, the almost 6 year old boy and the almost 4 year old twin girls, know what I mean.

What’s Love Got To Do With It?

What does love have to do with it? I guess that depends on what you mean by “love.” Love is patient. Love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. Love is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.

Is that enough? Is love, that kind of love, enough?

I know a couple married nearly ten years. They have been unhappy and mean to each other for years, almost since the very beginning. The stresses pile up, higher than they ever imagined. Money is scarce. Optimism even scarcer. Their two children hear them fight and call each other vulgar names.

I know a financially secure couple married over ten years. She wants a divorce. He works too much. Her emotional needs have grown like weeds, unstoppable, overshadowing the flowers. He keeps calling my husband, hoping for a miracle, begging for advice, a cure, something. They have three children who will soon wonder what happened to their world.

I know a couple newly divorced. They were married only three years, two years and eleven months too long if you ask her. He was cruel in ways no one could see. Their baby will grow up in one house, then another, switching off every week, his life divided into “His” and “Hers.” (The first thing the woman got after her separation was a boyfriend. The first thing the man got after the separation was new rims for his Mercedes.)

I just wonder, can’t stop wondering . . . what went wrong? Sure, every case is unique, every pain fresh, every circumstance individual. But at some point, shouldn’t commitment and love walk hand in hand and bridge the gaps? I hear myself. I know that sounds unbearably sanctimonious and I hear the voices of people saying, “Life is too short to be unhappy.”

When I was in college, I copied down the words, “Love is not a feeling to be felt, but an action to be learned.” I felt like I had come across the secret of a happy life. Action, not feeling. Doing, not being. I trusted that emotions would follow common sense and good judgment. And I waited for a man who believed that, too.

So far, almost eighteen years of marriage later, my open-eyed, clear-headed approach seems to be working. What’s love got to do with it? Well, everything, of course. Love is the heart that pumps life through our marriage. Love is kind. Love is patient. Love is the man who makes the bed in the mornings because he knows that a tidy bed says, “I love you,” to me. Love is the invisible hand that claps over my mouth and stops me from criticizing and nagging. Love is sending him on a weekend trip because he needs a break. Love is him overlooking my messy piles of stuff which haven’t found a home.

Love is what we do. Love is what we choose to do. Love is everything.

A Rambling Tale With No Point

My alarm rang at 5:00 a.m. and I slapped it into submission and slept until 5:10 a.m. I showered, half-dried my tresses, pulled on the clothes I’d draped on the exercise bike last night, wore glasses and a Mr. Rogers sweater. I drove to CuteBaby’s house, arriving at 5:50 a.m. His mom had to go to her military job early again, just to check in. (No physical testing for her because she’s still on the maternity plan.)

I was back home by 7:00 a.m.

By 7:30 a.m., I had baked my first pan of homemade chocolate chip cookies to satisfy Babygirl’s directives: “I want cookies! I want cookies!” Frankly, I wanted cookies, too.

My very long day included:

–twin 12-year old boys who spent more time exchanging nonsense-talk than doing literature lessons;
–two and a half year old daughter who is still coughing, gagging and wiping snot on her sleeves;
–DaycareKid who is not catching on to potty-training (but, hey, at least I know now that he is not constipated);
–infinite laundry;
–really out-of-control, bad hair which I spent an inordinate amount of time contemplating today;
–and CuteBaby (but he took long naps today).

Oh. And a box came in the mail, which is generally cause for rejoicing. The box contained a giant, thick envelope from my mother-in-law. In the envelope were all the pictures I’ve sent her over the years (eighteen years, almost), including the sweet little Creative Memories scrapbook I made especially for her.

Only a few weeks ago, the same mother-in-law complained to me on the phone that I hadn’t sent her any pictures recently.

You figure that one out. I called my husband and he suggested she was preparing to die, which is a fairly morbid thing to say, but that demonstrates his sick sense of humor which is primarily why I love him so much.

We’ve recently been cracking up at the song-list we’re compiling for our imaginary twenty-fifth anniversary bash. (We hate parties. There will be no bash.) I suggested “Hard Habit to Break” and “Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover.” He chose “If You Don’t Know Me By Now” and “If You Leave Me Now”. We think it would be hilarious to have these types of songs playing continuously in the background as partygoers clutch non-alcoholic drinks and little paper plates holding slabs of Costco cake. This joke–this pretend song-list–will go on for months, maybe years.

I also love him because he brought me salad for lunch at 2:30 p.m. when he called and I complained that I hadn’t had a chance to eat lunch yet. He brought Subway sandwiches for the boys’ dinner. When he returned home at 5:30 p.m. to find Babygirl imprisoned in her crib throwing a tantrum while I chatted with CuteBaby’s mom while she was picking him up–looking sweaty and disheveled, me, not her–he rescued Babygirl and she stopped crying long enough for him to transfer her to me.

After the switcharoo, she wrapped her sweaty arms around my neck and tried to steer me. No rocking chair. No kitchen chair. She insisted that I stand precisely in the center of the kitchen, no leaning on counters allowed. As you can imagine, this was great fun for me. Okay, it was annoying. My back began to ache.

My husband suggested he take her for a van ride, knowing she would scream, then sleep. That’s exactly what happened. While I buckled her in, she threw a fit worthy of any child seen on Nanny 9-1-1. That’s my sweetie-pie.

So the day ends. Mrs. Darling would be completely horrified if she saw the state of my carpets. She vacuums every day and once a week–ONCE A WEEK–she vacuums under all the furniture in her house (beds, dressers, everything). I am amazed, jealous and mostly, I wish I could hire her to be my Personal Vacuumer.

I want my floors to be vacuumed. I just want someone else to do it.

I am a horrible housewife. When I told my husband about Mrs. Darling’s spic-and-span carpets and lamented about my own dismal housewifery standards, he said, “That’s okay. I’m not a handyman, either, and you don’t hold that against me.”

And when I say, “I hate my hair! What shall I do with it?” He says, as if preprogrammed, “No matter what you do, I always like your hair.”

He’s a liar, but he’s my liar and he makes me laugh.

The Naked Truth

My husband has no pants to wear. Well, he has pants, but they are all members of various suits he owns. His khakis and his jeans have all disappeared into the black hole of laundry and this week, he’s had to rely on suits and odd nylon exercise pants to get by. Fortunately, he spent a day at home while I was on death’s door, and then a day in bed, so he suffered minimally.

But he said when he goes to work naked next week and people ask, what should he say? And I said, “Tell them your wife has been sick. No, tell them you are helpless and can’t iron your own pants.”

We are so traditional. He’d happily take them to the dry cleaners to be pressed but do you realize that would cost $4.00 per pair? I can iron six pairs–maybe more–in an hour, which gives us a rate of $24.00 per hour to have those pants pressed. I can’t bear to pay for what I do so quickly. And no. He doesn’t iron. He also doesn’t cook, do laundry or breastfeed babies.

The sad and obvious fact is that I am ill-suited to house-wifery. Perhaps it’s because a truly traditional housewife, in the 1950s sense of the word, would not be schooling her children at home. She would not be fooling around on the internet or watching cable television. She’d be wearing pearls and pumps and ironing her grateful husband’s pants. And she’d do it while wearing perfectly applied lipstick.

I am a sorry excuse for a housewife. I admit it. Not only do I not keep up with the ironing, I also don’t do a very good job keeping things spic and span. The other day I read an obituary (I always read them) in which a deceased woman was described: “she loved keeping an immaculate house for her husband.” Oh dear. That will so NOT be in my obituary. Mine will read more like, “She read a lot and liked People magazine and wrote her own blog. She dusted as little as possible and often forgot to plan dinner.”

It’s not that I don’t enjoy an immaculately kept home. Oh no, far from it. It’s just that I live with these other people who are constantly undoing what I’ve done. They have no regard for tidy rooms and neat cupboards. They feel no compunction to pick up trash they might have dropped. They leave their shoes exactly wherever they take them off. Laundry never finds its way to the laundry room. They leave crumbs on the counters, grease on the stove, and a sticky trail wherever they go.

And I’ve tried to train them, teach them, encourage them. I have. And as a recovering perfectionist, I’ve decided to just surrender to the chaos rather than drive them all into therapy.

If I could stand it, I’d be like one of those people you see in shopping mall food courts–you know the ones with the rolling trashcan and the little spray bottle who wipe up after slobs who leave messes? But I don’t want to spend my time following people around, straightening up and putting stuff away and wiping down the tables. It’s hopeless and boring and repetitive. And did I mention repetitive?

A couple of days ago, I saw Dr. Phil’s wife on his show. She’s fifty, you know, and terminally cute and perky and well-groomed. And the whole show was about how she does it, how You, Too, Should Take Care of Yourself. Apparently, she is wholly devoted to remaining attractive for Dr. Phil–she uses a team of professionals, a skin-care regimen, an exercise regimen, all kinds of regimens, laser treatments, plus a nightly bath filled with expensive potions. Staying cute sounded like a full-time job to me, the kind of job a former cheerleader would sign up for. I was not a cheerleader.

I’m not that kind of a wife, either, one devoted to my looks and my body. My physical self hardly rates a thought, not to mention expensive cosmetic counter products. I haven’t even had a haircut in fifteen months. I don’t buy outfits and I never shop for shoes. My workout equipment is holding all the wrinkled pants my husband can’t wear.

As I said, I am ill-suited to be a wife. And that’s the naked truth. Just don’t tell my husband.

The Weekend

Is Monday night too late to write about the weekend? I hope not, because here I go.

My husband’s weekend was jam-packed with funerals and memorial services and a sermon and meetings. My weekend was full of kids and grit on my kitchen floor. No matter how much I “swiffer” the floor, I have grit. This is because I allow my children to go outdoors, dig in the mud and wear shoes, both indoors and outdoors. But. I digress.

On Saturday, I decided to rearrange the boys’ bedroom. This involved removing a lot of books and plastic bins from a huge shelving unit and using brute force to inch it to its new home. I moved beds, chairs. I vacuumed repeatedly. And, of course, I did all this while taking care of Babygirl and three big boys. After Babygirl napped, I took all the kids on a walk to 7-11 again for Slurpees. The weather was lovely, sunny and in the fifties.

Saturday afternoon, my husband calls and says, “Hey, when I get home later, you can go to a movie or something if you want.” Isn’t he thoughtful? I begin to look forward to escaping the four walls and gritty floors of my home. Half an hour later, he calls again to say, “Hey, let’s go to a movie together!” I say, “Oh. Okay.” Now, I have to finish my rearranging project, clean up the rest of the messy house which I’ve neglected while devoting time to my project, feed the kids, clean the kitchen, make myself presentable, bathe the children and put the baby to bed. All alone. By seven. Then when the babysitter arrives, I will go pick him up from his office and we’ll go from there.

I am an exhausted, sweaty mess with a bad attitude by the time I pick him up. And the house isn’t tidy. A girl can only do so much.

The other thing is this. I like movies that my husband would not like. I wanted to see “Against the Ropes” with Meg Ryan. I like literary movies, dark movies, psychological thrillers, critically acclaimed movies. We saw “Welcome to Mooseport.”

I must be very difficult to amuse because I did not find the movie funny. The audience was laughing, guffawing, chortling, giggling. I was shifting in my seat, trying to get comfortable. I thought the cast of character actors had been plucked straight from community theater. They were so overwrought, so unbelievable. And Ray Romano, bless his heart, was just Ray Romano. I don’t think he can act. He is just himself. Maura Tierney was exactly the same as she was in News Radio and on ER. Gene Hackman–yawn. I liked Marcia Gay Harden. The rest? Oh please. I wouldn’t even watch that on network television. It was so boring, so predictable. So not funny.

But as I said, I must be difficult to amuse, because my husband liked it. Everyone in the theater seemed to like it. Maybe I just have PMS.

Sunday was my day to be the volunteer nursery attendant. I don’t really mind since I usually end up in there anyway, sooner or later, with Babygirl. Two of the toddlers, though, had runny noses! I cannot understand why a parent would bring a runny-nosed kid to a church nursery. I am the nursery coordinator and I need to make a giant sign saying “This is a Mucus-Free Zone.” We had seven toddlers in attendance.

My husband worked all day–he had a memorial service and then meetings. We spent a lot of time outdoors in the afternoon. I trimmed a thorny bush by the gate and the kids dug another giant hole and then asked if they could fill it with water. They love to build lakes and streams. I allowed it, even though I was not in the mood for mud. At least they were getting muddy with a spirit of cooperation.

Some time over the weekend, I peered into mirror in the boys’ brightly lit bathroom and spied a strangely colored hair. I plucked it out and examined it. The pigment faded along the shaft of the hair and I couldn’t decide, but I think I may have found my first gray hair. I wanted to save it and immediately realized how neurotic and insane that idea was. So I just let it drift out of my hand. I’ve reverted to my natural color and now it is going to betray me? How is that right?

Speaking of hair, I came across a box of pictures and letters from and to my dad, which led me to another box of his family tree paperwork. And then I found the old envelope I’d searched for a few weekends back which contains a golden-red lock of hair. The outside of the envelope says in faded fountain-pen ink: “Gary’s hair.” Sure enough, I held this silky lock of her grandfather’s baby hair up to Babygirl’s head. Her hair is the exact shade. I snipped a curl off the back of her head to save before she up and leaves home for college. The days are long, but the years are short and soon enough she’ll be earning her Master’s degree and calling me once a week.

Last night, she woke up before 11 p.m., which is strange. I nursed her and put her back to bed and then dreamed all night that I heard her crying. Sure enough, she woke up stuffy this morning. She caught DaycareKid’s cold from last week. Sigh. DaycareKid still has his runny nose, too. I hate colds.

My husband has started taking Mondays off. So, he had today off. He took a load of stuff to the thrift store for me and then hung out. He read the newspaper, talked to me while I was trying to watch a show during naptime and took a nap. I’m glad he gets a true day off now–when he was taking Fridays off, he almost always ended up working.

I still haven’t painted my wall red. But I did iron my husband pants for the week, so he won’t have to go to work clad only in his underwear. I do have my priorities.

So, Are You Ready for Dessert?

I trudged my way through this day. Babygirl wanted to go outside first thing this morning, so I sat in my slippers and bathrobe and fleece jacket with an afghan wrapped around my legs and shivered. When I finally convinced her to come inside, my husband was awake and ready to take her for a ride in the car–this would give me time to shower and get dressed in peace.

He eventually brought home a sleepy looking baby. She’d taken a nap in the car. He then announced that tonight he was taking me to the fancy-schmancy local restaurant that overlooks the Puget Sound to celebrate my birthday. (Which is not until next Wednesday.) He telephoned the babysitter and made reservations. He said that Beth would call back and let us know if she could babysit. Then he left to run some errands.

While he was gone, I went outside with the baby (again). When she consented to coming back inside, I went from task to task–laundry, dishes, sweeping, picking up toys, putting away clothes, washing the bedding–until finally I decided to clean YoungestBoy’s room thoroughly. Grace “helped” me.

Two hours after he left, my husband returned and shocked my socks off by telling me he was taking all four kids to the park. Wow! Fifteen minutes after he left, he called to say that it was colder than he thought, probably too cold for Babygirl. He’d have to bring her back. They were gone almost an hour, though, start to finish. In that stretch of time, I’d cleaned up the twins’ room.

I feel like a cleaning woman today. A cleaning woman with a birthday.

During the course of the day, the phone rang and it was the babysitter telling me she had to check with her mother, but she was pretty sure she could babysit. I said, fine, let me know when you are one hundred percent. A while later, Beth’s mother called to confirm and offered to drive her over. Not long after that, the babysitter called again and said she definitely could babysit. “Great,” I said. “Ten minutes to eight?” she said. “Yes!” Then later on, another call from the babysitter asking if her 7th grade niece could come, too. “Sure,” I said.

At 7:00 p.m., Babygirl went to sleep for the night.

At 7:50, the doorbell rings. Standing at the door is Stephanie. But we had called Beth. I said, “Hello!” and she came inside and took off her shoes. I went directly into the kitchen and whispered to my husband, “Um, I think you hired two babysitters! Stephanie is here!”

He looked stunned. He said to Stephanie, “Did I call you?”

With a puzzled look, she said, “Well, your number was on my caller I.D., so I called Mel and she said you needed me tonight.”

They both turned to look at me. I said, “Oh! When you called, I thought you said–Hi, this is Bethany–not Stephanie!”

Both Beth and Stephanie were at the school science fair. Stephanie mentioned being at the Science Fair, which is where my husband told me Beth was . . . well, it all just led to a big comedy of errors. Okay, well, in other words, I screwed up. My husband took Stephanie home–I tried to pay her $5 for her trouble, but she refused–and Beth arrived. I told her what happened and she laughed and I said, “Is your name actually Bethany, by the way?” She said, “No, it’s Elizabeth.”

We drove to the little restaurant. We eat there infrequently because, although the food is good, it’s scarily expensive. We ordered and then chatted and watched the ferry boat approach the landing. We ate our salad (me) and chowder (him) and ate all the bread and chatted some more. And then more. I yawned and said how hungry I was. I said, “Hey, what time is it?” And he pulled out his cell phone and said it was 8:55 p.m. I watched a middle-aged couple across the room literally staring into each other’s eyes until drawn together by magnetic force into a kiss. I said, “That couple is definitely not married.”

Then we waited longer. Finally, the waitress approached with a big friendly smile and said, “So, are you ready for dessert?”

I said, “We haven’t had dinner yet. So, no. But we are ready for some dinner!” All with a smile and a laugh.

She was mortified but we thought it was hilarious. At long last, dinner arrived. Halibut with crab and hollandaise sauce for me, prime rib for him. The food was good, but not as good as I remembered.

Then the bill came: $82.02 with tip and tax! ACK! I just had no idea it would be quite that expensive. I examined the receipt to see what each item had cost until my husband said, “You are embarrassing me.” He said, “You only turn 39 once,” and I think that’s probably because it’s too expensive to turn 39 twice!

At any rate, now I’ll have to sell my kidney for grocery money. Happy Birthday to Me!

My Restful World

7 a.m.: Shower and prepare for day. Throw laundry from washer to dryer. Start another load. Wash up a few dishes.

7:30 a.m.: Daycare baby arrives.

8 a.m.: Babygirl wakes up. Nurse her, change her, feed her whole-wheat waffles. Twins leave for fifth grade.

9 a.m. to 11 a.m.: Play with babies. Fold one load of laundry. Feed babies snacks. Play with 5 year old. Dance to Wiggles on t.v. Pick up toys. Read baby books.

11 a.m.: Feed babies lunch. Feed YoungestBoy lunch.

12:30 p.m.: Put daycare baby to bed. Send YoungestBoy off to kindergarten. Nurse Babygirl and hope she sleeps. She does not.

1 p.m. to 2:30 p.m.: Play with Babygirl and try to read email.

2:30 p.m.: Daycare baby wakes up. Play with him, too.

3 p.m.: Twins arrive home from fifth grade.

3:30 p.m. : YoungestBoy arrives home from kindergarten.

4 p.m.: Feed daycare baby snack in high chair. While he eats and Babygirl pulls at my knees, peel potatoes, mix up cake batter.

4:30 p.m.: Mark arrives to finish fixing hole in drywall. Mash potatoes, put cake in oven. Mix up frosting. Clean up babies. Change diapers again.

4:45 p.m.: Daycare baby leaves. Finish making dinner.

5 p.m.: Call husband to see when/if he’s coming home.

5:15 p.m.: Husband arrives home. Mark sprays texture stuff on wall with air compressor. Children eat dinner. Babygirl throws dinner. Frost cake. Clean up baby. Thank Mark for fixing wall.

5:45 p.m.: Take baby upstairs. Put her in pajamas. Nurse her.

6:30 p.m.: Baby asleep. Clean up kitchen. Sweep floor. Wash dishes. Load dishwasher.

7 p.m.: Help 10 year old son design brochure cover for school project.

7:30 p.m. Free time!

* * * * * * * *

Last night, I heard my husband talk to a friend on the phone. He was telling her that he wouldn’t mind being a stay-at-home dad. He said, “And then after about six months when I am rested . . . ”

That’s all I heard. I said, “REST?!”

Poor husband with complete inability to understand how not restful it is to stay at home with children. I only wish I could earn enough to trade places with him. He keeps hoping I will write a best-selling novel, but guess what? I DON’T HAVE TIME! Rest! Ha!