Marriage: A Work in Progress

"You make concessions when you're married a long time that you don't believe you'll ever make when you're beginning. You say to yourself when you're young, oh, I wouldn't tolerate this or that or the other thing, you say love is the most important thing in the world and there's only one kind of love and it makes you feel different than you feel the rest of the time, like you're all lit up. But time goes by and you've slept together a thousand nights and smelled like spit up when babies are sick and seen your body droop and get soft. And some nights you say to yourself, it's not enough, I won't put up with another minute. And then the next morning you wake up and the kitchen smells like coffee and the children have their hair all brushed and the birds are eating out of the feeder and you look at your husband and he's not the person you used to think he was but he's your life. The house and the children and so much of what you do is built around him and your life, too, your history. If you take him out it's like cutting his face out of all pictures, there's a big hole and it's ugly. It would ruin everything. It's more than love, it's more important than love."

I came across this quote rereading Anna Quindlen's One True Thing and it seems so apropos today, my fifteenth wedding anniversary.  "Wow!", some of you must be saying, "Her marriage must really be on the rocks for her to reference this quote on her anniversary."  But I feel quite the contrary.  After fifteen years of being married to the same man, I am proud to say I feel this quote summarizes my marriage, and marriage in general, pretty well.

Of course, this passage is about a cheating husband, so let's ignore that part, but if instead you define the "I won't put up with another minute" as the incessant leaving of socks on the floor and dirty dishes in the sink, or insistance on watching The Bachelor, we have all had those moments where you look around and say, "This is not what I signed up for."  How did you go from gazing longingly into each other's eyes, to barely glancing at each other over the dinner table while trying to cajole the products of your love into please eating their broccoli?  From not being able to tear yourselves out of bed to threatening your significant other with ejection from said bed if he farts like that again?  

In between these moments of boredom, annoyance and hard work, are the brighter moments of romance, fun and camaraderie that make it all worth it.  But are those moments enough? I believe they are.  I believe marriage is a work of pointillism.  Up close, it looks horrible and messy and doesn't make any sense, but look at the bigger picture and you see how all these small moments, when viewed as a whole, come together to create a beautiful life.   

Another thing I love about this passage is  Anna Quindlen's honesty, having her character admit "he's not the person you used to think he was, but he's your life".   Who is that person you feel in love with?  Where is he or she now?  You probably aren't married to him or her, but to a person who vaguely reminds you of that person.  After fifteen years of marriage (and twenty of partnership), I can say with complete conviction, I am not the girl H married.  How could I still be after all the highs and lows that life has thrown our way, and not to mention, three children?  

You are a different person now. Certain parts of your personality, left unchecked, have become more dominant as circumstances have dictated.  Some of the same things that drew you to your partner, have morphed and  are probably among the things that drive you craziest.  His single-minded focus for things he is passionate about was fun when that thing was you and, later in life, has made him successful, but it also forces you to occasionally have to pry the Blackberry out of his cramped hands.  And your knack for planning sure came in handy when you were back-packing through Italy, but now drives him to drink when you can't seem to have an un-planned Sunday.  But hopefully through the years, you have grown in complimentary ways.  Like two rocks rubbing together, you change, but, in response, so does your partner, yet you still fit together.

So Happy Anniversary, H.  No, we're not the two kids in the picture anymore (clearly, neither one of us has the same hair color), but I like this us better.  Life has put some bumps in our road for sure, but it's always been OK if you were riding with me.  And you let me drive.  And bring a map.  And pack the snacks.

Trademark optional

Diaromas, mobiles, posters, "A Day in the Life of" reports, paper mache globes...I would like to issue a formal apology to the parents of every child I ever taught.  Now that I am a parent myself, I realize I had no fucking clue what a wretched pain in the ass these projects were I so cavalierly assigned on a regular basis.  With two children in the higher primary grades, I now know how many parent hours were put into these assignments. The trips to the craft store, where I stand in line, impatiently tapping my foot, behind people with waaaay too much time on their hands judging by the amount of scrapbooking, bedazzling and decoupage supplies in their child-free carts, all so I can buy popsicle sticks to glue into a replica of the Jamestown settlement with a recalcitrant child long into the night.  Karma is a bitch.  It was during such a project though, that I recently learned something - other than never go to Michaels later than ten in the morning or on Senior Tuesday.

#1 came home with a project titled "My Family Flag".  Before I even finished reading the assignment  I was making a shopping list in my head, wondering, "Do I still have that felt from the Native American headdress project?"  Before we could even begin cutting and hot gluing (you are not officially a mother of school-aged children until you own a hot glue gun and have several sizes of google-y eyes in your house at all times), she had to come up with her concept.  This particular project was for a Social Studies unit about countries, and in a pretty interesting twist, the teacher was having each child treat their families as if they were countries themselves.  On her flag, #1 had to have our family motto, and representations of our national pastimes and industries - basically, what we do as a family.

My eldest had done some brainstorming at school (love when they are given class time to work!), and had a pretty decent list of things we do - going to the beach, reading, riding bikes, cooking etc.  So now we had to tackle the motto.  As I steeled myself for what was sure to be a long discussion, where I tried not to feed her answers, my daughter came up with some great ideas.  It seems over the past ten years, I had been saying certain things over and over again - creating mottos without intending to. When I thought about it, I realized every family needs, if not a motto, then a few credos by which they live - and if we really want our children to absorb them they need to be said out loud and often.

We think the lessons we are trying to teach our kids come across loud and clear through our actions, but their interpretations of what we are doing may not be the lesson we are trying to teach.  You may think you are forging strong sibling bonds, forcing your children to compromise when playing with each other, but they might just be thinking "How do I get my own way this time?" When you are clear about the message you are trying to send, there can be no mixed signals, and when heard enough times (roughly a thousand for the average eight year-old) it will eventually become rote.


H and I stumbled upon this accidentally in our parenting and it has proven quite useful.  For example, I frown upon my children using the term "best friend", I feel it sets everyone up for heartbreak and disappointment at some point.  Instead, when it comes up I say, "Yes, So-and-so is your very, very good friend, but your siblings are your best friends."  Sure, maybe #1 can't imagine Little Man as her top confidante as he lays on the floor banging Hot Wheels cars into his forehead, but in fifteen years that will change.  And she will be open to that by drilling it into her that he and#2 are the two people, other than her parents, who she can trust most in this world.


Taking it back a step further, this flag project brought to light that, as parents, we need to distinctly specify the values upon which we will raise our families.  These vague, amorphous ideas of love and respect are all well and good, but a concise phrase to bring it into focus allows you to make parenting decisions by asking yourself if your choices are meeting these goals.  These phrases can also be succinct reminders of longer discussions you have about these values.  All of the ideas #1 had for her motto were based around the central principal H and I repeat again and again to our kids - "Family comes first".  It handily covers who to side with when your friend and your sibling are in a disagreement, or why, no, you can't invite a friend along on our family outing. H and I can also use this slogan as a litmus test for decision we ourselves our making.  Have we been too busy?  Have we been spending enough time with the kids, and interacting with them in a way that is meaningful?  We have tried to teach our kids that we are a strong unit and what matters most is caring for and enjoying that unity.  I guess we had a motto and never knew it.

In the end, #1 decided upon "Better Together", which I thought was a beautiful interpretation of our motto.  Although, she later told me she thought of it when the Jack Johnson station was on Pandora.  I will choose to ignore that and, based on the discussions we had, claim this as a parenting victory.  Precious are moments when you see your parenting efforts come to fruition and  I will not have this one stolen from me by a guy who plays the ukulele.

Besides, I had already envisioned Mean Mommy Family t-shirts being printed up and everything.  Now we just need a logo....

That time of the month....

I'm tired, bloated, and crampy.   I have a (more than usual) hair-trigger temper, alternating with periods of wanting to sob, and I am doing everything in my power to not eat the stale Easter candy lingering in the kids' baskets I have yet to clean out and put away.  Yes, dear readers, I have a wicked case of PMS.

"PMS?", you ask incredulously?  "What are you, a Cathy comic?"

Yes, PMS.  I know, I know, as a modern, educated woman, I should be debunking this myth that women become unstable for a week each month, which fully justifies the corporate glass ceiling and why we should never have a woman President.  And yet....there it is.

In my twenties I jeered at Midol ads and considered PMS to be a product of the anti-feminist propaganda machine.  Coincidentally, I was also on the pill at the time, which prevents you from experiencing any of the nasty side effects of having to ride Th Great Hormone Cyclone each month.  Now that I am Laird Hamilton, having spent a decade surfing the tides of estrogen in my body each month, I think those commercials are not graphic enough.  There needs to be footage of a woman clutching a chocolate donut, screaming at her kids to "PUT YOUR SHOES ON!!!!" until a vein pops out on her forehead, then the same woman sitting at the kitchen table, crying, after her children have left for school.  And I am not the only one who feels this way.  We have all shared tales of PMS-induced, low-level insanity.  We all want to deny it, but then the only other explanation would be that we really are insane.  I'll blame it on the hormones, thank you.  PMS is like racism.  Nobody talks about it openly in mixed company, but we know it exists.

Since the women's movement first began, one theory on gaining equality was to deny any differences between men and women.  I think this is ludicrous.  It shows how strong women are that we do all we do even when we feel like crap.  I have a repeated fantasy where H has to experience one menstrual cycle and still function in his daily life.  This is second only to my desire for him to experience just one transitional labor contraction and poop on a table in front of people.  But I digress.  I think it is a testament to womankind that even when we feel like we could justifiably kill everyone around us, we hold it together.  Sure, we may not be Susie Sunshine about it, but we get it done.  Susie Sunshine brings up another important point.   Maybe women are expected to be too nice all the damn time.  Maybe PMS gives us the excuse to not give a shit and be a little cranky.  See: Men every day.

Even though we soldier on through this discomfort, I think Mother Nature, being a woman, knew that women would work themselves to death, and was trying to engineer a sort of "pause" button.  Our cycles follow the moon, which, even as a celestial being, knows to take a breather once a month and disappear.  No, this doesn't mean we can't be CEO because we'd be holed up wearing bunny slippers watching Lifetime movies every twenty-eight days, it just means that women, who are typically more critical of themselves (see: fat men in Speedos), are given a physical cue to take it down a notch and be kinder to ourselves.  See again: men are every day.

So how do we deal with this?  And by "we" I don't just mean women, I mean our partners as well.  Because the men in our lives are as affected by our behavior as we are.  But if our husbands dare ask if we are having our "ladies days", they risk being beheaded by the sheer force of our rage.  "PMS" is like the N-word for women.  We can say it all we want, but you can't.  I think the fear is, once we admit it's an issue, we are giving men permission to treat us like dim-witted slaves to our ovaries.  I think we should all approach it like we would having a cold.  When you have one, it's OK to admit it and you're allowed to be a little cranky.  No condescending judgement.

I myself am altering my orignal plan today to sand and paint the bathroom trim.  It will do me good to take a break - and I would've spent the whole project muttering myself into a rage over somebody, who shall remain nameless*, taking showers long enough to already start peeling the year-old paint.  H has also been told there will likely be takeout for dinner.  Maybe instead of my usual running around, I'll put up my feet and watch some bad TV while eating chocolate.

"AACK!!!!"

*H!  Wtf, man?  I have one hundred times the hair to wash and square inches of skin to shave, yet I shower in half the time you do.  I know the lack of functioning lock means you're not jerking off.  What exactly are you doing in there?