Year three

On May 8 David and I officially started our third year of marriage. It's gone by fast, these past two years. Which I take to be a good sign. I still don't feel married sometimes, which I also take to be a good sign. The transition has been too easy, and I married someone who gets me so well that it seems like we've been together all along.

I asked David, on our drive through the prairie, what he likes most about being married. He said: 1) the end to loneliness, and 2) having someone who makes you feel you can do anything because you're part of a team.

I agreed. But then I added: 1) companionship and, 2) having someone who "gets me."

I never thought anyone would get me. Or, if they did, would want to hang out with me for more than 2 hours. I have my quirks, and my doubts and obsessions, and my bad habits. I don't hang up my wet towels in the bathroom. I just stuff them onto the towel bar so they never get dry, and then they start to smell dank. David hates that. But he loves me anyway. But other than the towels, I'm anal about cleaning. I throw everything away, even if it was still usefull (according to David). I retreat and stop talking when I'm depressed or hurt. He puts up with that, too, and a myriad of other annoying traits. I love him because he puts up with me, and loves me even when I don't love myself.

And I like being his cheerleader. I never got to be a cheerleader in high school. I couldn't do a cartwheel, plus, I wasn't perky enough. But now I can be David's cheerleader, without having to wear a short pleated skirt. I want him to grow and thrive and be the person God created him to be. I love that he's going back to school and being affirmed in those gifts. He's smart, a great writer, and compassionate. I like having someone to cheer and encourage. And I like having someone do the same for me.

I also like that we expand each other's worlds. I'm ice skating, going to a catholic church, attending plays and art openings that I never would have without David. I'm meeting people and reading books that I would have missed if I were still single. I'm being challenged in ways that seem good and fulfilling, even though hard at times.

It seems like we've been through a lot in our short marriage. Two miscarriages, job changes, financial challenges. And through it all I feel we've grown closer, forming a bond that will only grow stronger with time. And we acknowledge our dependence on God. We can't do this without him. We've grown spiritually...together....as we sit in mass and pray together about each of these challenges.

To be honest, marriage is different than I expected. I thought my life would just fall into place when I got married. I'd finally be a traditional member of society -- married, house, 2.5 kids. It's not turning out that way. But you know, I've never really liked following the traditional path, anyway. I like that we're different and maybe a little odd. Our path may be different, but it's more interesting, I think. And God keeps surprising us. I like surprises.

Winter Wonderland

When I was a child, my dad owned some land that had a pond. In the summer, we'd catch frogs in the shallow, green water and fish for sunfish (of course throwing them back as soon as we caught them.) But in the winter this pond was transformed into a frozen other world -- sortof like stepping out of the back of the wardrobe into Narnia. Every winter, as soon as the temperature dropped below freezing for several days, my dad announced that we were going ice skating up at the pond. So we'd dig our our skates, long lost somewhere in the basement since last winter, make sure they still fit (if not, we may get hand-me-down skates from an older sibling, who at that point may be too teenager-y and cool to go skating up at the pond), bundle up in our puffy coats and mittens, and pile in the car for the short drive up the road to the pond. Sometimes we'd take the neighbor kids. We'd drive up into the overgrown driveway, my dad would hop out of the car to unlatch the rusty, creaky gate, get back into the car, and we'd drive through tall weeds that had over taken the dirt road.

Before us kids could even get out of the car, my dad had to make sure the pond was frozen enough to hold us. My dad worries -- a lot, and he needed to ease any worries he may have about us falling through the ice. So he'd walk onto the ice, way out to the middle of the pond, and bounce up and down a couple of times. Then he'd walk to a different spot and do the same thing. This made me nervous. Sure, he didn't want us falling through the ice -- but what about him? What would we do if the ice wasn't thick enough and he fell through? But after bouncing in 4 or 5 spots, he'd walk back to the car and say, "Yep -- that ice is frozen solid -- probably a foot thick!" and we'd all get out of the car and find a spot in the weeds to lace up our skates.

Often, we'd skate at night, when the air would be clear and cold and we could see stars and the moon reflecting in the ice. My dad would build a campfire and we'd skate, practicing our spinning and backwards skating, trying to avoid the bumpy parts of the ice where twigs had frozen. We'd hear the ice boom and creak. My dad said not to worry -- it's just the ice cracking but there was no way we'd fall through. I trusted my dad, so I'd keep on skating. When we'd get cold and tired, we'd sit by the fire and look at the stars. After a few hours, we'd douse the fire, take our leather skates off our sore feet, and pile back into the car. At home, my mom would make hot chocolate and we'd sit by the heating registers and get warm. Very Norman Rockwell-ish, I know.

After I left home, I forgot about skating. In fact, I learned to dislike winter. The problem is, I HATE being cold. And in Chicago, when it snows, the snow gets messy and dirty and it's hard to parallel park on the street when there are mounds of dirty snow. Plus, it's really hard to look stylish wearing clunky snow-worthy boots. And if you wear the great, sassy Nine West boots you just bought, the snow and the salt poured everywhere on sidewalks and roads to help it melt leave ugly white splotches all over the heels and toes. So during Chicago winters I learned to hunker down inside, read lots of books, and wait for Spring. That is, until I met David. Little did I know I married Wayne Gretzky.

Last winter David announced that he was taking up ice hockey. Yes, at 51, my husband decided to learn a sport where teeth are lost on a regular basis, bodies are checked, blood is shed, and bones are broken. He's been skating a lot the past couple of years -- he started going to the ice rink at the park near our condo. Or, he skates down in the Loop at Millenium Park. He even got his picture in the Chicago Tribune last winter, for a story about regular skaters at the ice rink. Until he was 16, he lived in Michigan, so he was no stranger to skating -- in fact he's pretty darned good. But then last winter he decided he was bored skating around in a circle over and over. He needed more action. So he tried a pick-up hockey game at the park rink. This just depressed him -- he was playing with 20- and 30-something guys who'd been honing their hockey skills their whole lives. I told him he needed to find and "old geezers" league. This depressed him even more. But this fall, he found a class where he could learn hockey skills....and the class consisted of guys his own age. So now he's happy. And I told him he looks really sexy in his hockey gear, which made him even happier.

Last winter I told him I wanted ice skates for Christmas. So we bought a pair and I started skating with him. At first I was nervous and wobbly. I hadn't skated in 20 years. But then it all came back, and I found myself gliding over the ice a little more gracefully each time, while David flew by me calling out pointers. "Bend your knees more!" or "Cross-over when going around a turn!"

A snowstorm blew through here a few days ago. We were supposed to get 14 inches, but Tom Skilling, our typically infallible local weather reporter (and brother to Jeffrey Skilling of Enron fame), was wrong this time. We only got about 5 inches here in the city, and it turned the city into a Winter Wonderland. The evergreen trees in the park have snow weighing down every branch, the other trees have a coating of ice, so they sparkle in the sun. The snow hasn't turned brown around the edges of the street yet, so the city looks all sparkly and white and fresh. Last night, after spending a day inside working, David and I dug out our skates and piled in the car and drove down the road to the ice rink. It was the first day the rink was open. The sky had cleared and the moon shone bright. We were bundled up in our gloves and puffy coats, and we skated around the rink in the moonlight, trying to avoid little 10-year-old girls who were practicing their spins and backwards skating. David gave me pointers, once again, on doing the cross-over turn and backwards skating. Sometimes he'd skate up to me and take my hand and we'd skate along like teenagers at the local rollerskating rink during "couples skate". I thought of those night skating at the pond with my dad, and breathed in the fresh, cold air, and was thankful, again for winter. And for a dad who taught me to skate, and for a husband who taught me to love it again.

Freelance Blues, or Gene Kelly is My Co-Pilot

Has it really been almost two weeks since I updated my blog? Time flies when you're busy with work. And....it becomes a blur when you're depressed. I worked like crazy for a while, then nothing...no phone calls, no leads, nothing. I made enough $$ in one week to last a while, but still.... Currently, my emotional life is riding the ups and downs of the freelance rollercoaster. I doubt myself, wonder what in the heck I'm doing, trying to be a freelance writer. Why not just get another corporate gig....work at Starbucks....move to the middle of Iowa and become an organic farmer? On days I don't have "real work", I sit in the coffee shop and stare at my computer, trying to force a work of art to flow out of my head and onto my computer screen. I have the beginnings of a novel rattling around in my brain, and some thoughts for a collection of essays. I last about two hours, and then get restless. My soul is restless, waiting for direction, some sign from God about how I can use my gifts. Who I can serve. Waiting for him to show me the next step on this journey. I try to see the "non-working" weeks as gifts from God....huge expanses of time I have to write things that are important to me. Write things other than direct mail letters and brochures. But then I get this nagging feeling that I should be doing "real work" and so I leave the coffee shop and go home and make a few job-related phone calls. This battle wages inside my head for days. Melancholy, my lifelong companion, shows up and I start sleeping more, and dragging around the house, wearing the same clothes everyday. David tries to cheer me up by playing his new favorite song, "Let's build a home", by White Stripes as loud as possible and doing his weird husband dance (I won't even try to describe it). He makes me laugh and I tell him how weird he is. His crazy dancing cheers me up for about a half an hour, then I go back to the computer and stare at the computer screen some more.

"Is there no way out of the mind?" Sylvia Plath once asked in one of her poems. This war inside my head, my lethargy, depression, self-doubt has haunted me since I was a child. I've learned to cope, and have, in recent years, had long stretches of joy and productivity. I think I have it whipped, that I'm "cured", but then it shows up again, unexpectedly. But I've been in this place so many times before that I know it won't last forever. That in a few days, or weeks, hopefully not longer, I will start to feel better. I will jog on the Lake path and see the sun reflecting on the waves, and see the city skyline in the distance at sunset. I will help a very pregnant friend clean her house, thankful that I'm not working so I can help her get ready for a new baby. I will go to church and hear the liturgy and see the sun shining through the stained glass. I will watch my husband dance, and thank God that I have someone who knows how to make me laugh. And I will pray, and eventually start feeling hopeful again.

the heart of the matter

I went to see my therapist a few weeks ago. My therapist married David and me, so I'm having a hard time talking about the "bumps in the road" because I'm afraid he'll be kicking himself -- "Why did you agree to marry them? Big mistake!"

Not that David and I are having trouble. We flew through the first year of marriage. In fact, we were concerned that we weren't fighting more. Are we doing something wrong? We asked ourselves. I think it's really because we're well suited for each other, we're older so we've already worked through a lot of things, we're older so we know how to communicate and resolve conflict, and we're just old...so we don't have the energy to fight. But seriously, I do say a prayer of thanks whever I hear about my friends' knock-down-drag-out fights with their spouses. Maybe we're just quietly sweeping things under the rug. But I don't think so. I think we just have a way of making each other laugh when we fight. I often find our fights so ridiculous that I start snickering, and then he breaks down laughing, and that's pretty much the end of it.

But I was concerned about how it's hard to talk about our faith. I hear my friends say how they talk to their husbands for hours about a sermon, or about a God-book they're reading. David and I aren't like that. For me, I've been on the journey for so long, I think my faith, at this point, is too deep for words. How do you describe a God who is indescribable? How do you explain the miracles you've experience in your life without sounding ridiculous and trite? And for David, I think his faith, born out of deep pain and hitting rock bottom, is too fresh and raw and new that he also doesn't have words for it, either. I deliberately chose someone who wasn't steeped in the Evangelical tradition -- because I'm a recovering Evangelical myself and I can't bear to hear the cliches, the pat answers, the certain language the skews faith in one way that seems stale and staid to me. Believe me, I dated enough men who had all of the right things to say, but didn't have much else to show for for their faith.

I've longed for a new language. For a new way of talking about God. My counselor explained that he thinks we're both aiming for an authentic faith, and that our hearts are experiencing that connection, even if our words aren't yet. I like that. It's like when we sit in Mass and both of us start crying because of the words of Christ in a song we're singing: "I am for you. I am for you. I am for you, You are mine." YOU ARE MINE. For two people who were single for so long and didn't feel loved...hearing that God is for us, no matter what, is a healing balm. We don't have to discuss it. Our tears say it all.

Or, when we went to the funeral of my 41-year-old friend, Sara, who died of breast cancer in July. We celebrated the life of someone who was seeking God until the end, when her body finally gave out from the tumors eating away at her liver. We were so moved by the memorial service, the hope, the sadness, the inspiration to live like Sara did....that we couldn't say anything. I started talking about it, but the tears came and I couldn't talk and David leaned over the restaurant table, took my hand, and said "I know." And I knew he did know. He so often knows what I'm thinking, feeling, because he's thinking and feeling the same things. It's spooky, but cool. To be known. To have a spiritual communion that is often too deep for words. To have someone say "I know" without you even having to articulate what you're feeling. To seek an authentic relationship with God that is so beyond all of the cliches, and the rationalization. That's what it means to me to have a soulmate.

I'm baaaaack......

Wedding's over. I'm back online. And back in the beige cubicle -- much to my chagrin. But now I get to go home to a great husband who cooks dinner, mops the kitchen floor, gives me backrubs and selflessly agrees to clean the encrusted poop off my little kitty's bum. He's so cool....

No more fretting about bridesmaid dresses. I'm through with caterers. I'm finished obsessing over wedding hairdos and the price of hydrangea. The wedding came off with only a few minor hitches (curses to the baker who left the cardboard in the cake, but I still love my little nephew who was mortified at the thought of carrying a minature pillow down the 6-foot aisle. See, Jake, you didn't have to kiss the flower girls after all....).

Now we can get on with real life where we have to pay our bills and take out the trash and deal with the fact that marriage doesn't solve all of our problems. Bummer. But we're in it together, at least. The two of us and God. I've been praying for help a lot these days. Because this venture is scary and our bills are overwhelming and I have a hard time not letting it get to me. But this is life. And I know I have lots to learn and these things we have to face will teach me to be patient and kind and humble. And to love others and trust God.

And that's what it's all about, isn't it?

Oh -- and honey, we will go to Paris together someday. And one of these days I will also learn how to correctly post photos in this blog.

"He's sooooo weird"

But that's why I love him....

The minister who's marrying us ask us to provide him with a brief description of how we met, our first impressions of each other, etc. for the wedding ceremony. In my feable attempt to delegate wedding tasks, I asked my goofy fiance to take a stab at it.......(now you'll understand why I don't delegate more....)

David and Karen's (Brief) History


David and Karen met in August 2004 after a whirlwind email courtship of high-flown allusion, entreaty, rejection, persistence and surrender. Use your imagination. Despite that tumultuous preface, they soon felt assured that they should spend the rest of their lives (gulp) together.

That was about it for tumult. They came to see me [Chris M] for wise counsel on their most pressing difficulty -- the almost complete lack of argument and conflict in their relationship. Now, some of that is doubtless due to growing up in families where argument and conflict were about as welcome as a broken hip or the pox. On the other hand, Karen and David discovered, over and over, that their thoughts and tastes and opinions were almost weirdly in tune, like a Texas guitar and a Midwest piano that automatically crank out "I Loves You Porgy" in perfect harmony.

To that I can only add, "Wait till you're married."

They also had the advantage of the accumulated wisdom of more than just a couple of decades on earth. Being of a certain age -- older than the average marrying couple, let's say, for the sake of concealment -- they felt they had a pretty good idea of what they were looking for in a spouse, qualities based on more than a cool haircut and favorite indie rock band. Although, let it be said, one ignores the importance of a cool haircut at one's peril.

That said, they quickly discovered what came to be known as The Three-Month Rule. In their conflicting tendencies toward caution and eagerness to get married and have it over and done with, they found a number of instances of similarly situated couples who got engaged three months after meeting and married three months after engagement. The most high-profile example is our current president, Mr. Shrub, and his beaming wife.

The Three-Month Rule would normally entail a February wedding for Karen and David, then, which would have worked out great for a Caribbean honeymoon while everybody else was suffering the doldrums and despair of a Midwestern winter. But it was not to be. Too darn complicated. That's why we're all here today and not when snowdrifts are piled outside the windows.

The wedding of doom

On the phone last night my sister, Sara, told me she suffers from guilt for not helping me with my wedding. Since she lives in Ohio, I understand why she can't drive to Chicago to help at the drop of bridal bouquet, and I told her not to worry about it. But then I remembered her wedding, and it all started coming back to me. "Yes," I told her. "You should feel guilty."

Since my sister was teaching English in China for the year after she graduated from college and wasn't returning until the month before her wedding, my mother took on the task of planning most of the wedding herself. In my mother's mind, this was going to be the wedding to end all weddings. She made (yes, actually sewed on her Bernina sewing maching) my sister's wedding dress, all of the bridesmaid dresses, the flower girl dress, AND her own dress. There were many details, and my mother obsessed over every last one of them and drove us all crazy. She turned me into her own personal wedding slave. In our family, the wedding came to be know as "Ellen B. and the Wedding of Doom" after the recently released Indiana Jones film.

After being an indentured servant most of the summer, the August wedding of my sister came and went. Of course, my mother pulled it off and the wedding of doom was beautiful. My sister and brother-in-law have been married for 20 years and have 5 children. It was the wedding to end all weddings.

Now my mom is gone, so she's not here to help me with my nuptial planning. I guess I'll have to convert Sara into a wedding slave all by myself.....

Marriage at 40, part two

Feel I'm going mad. Wedding stress is coming out in strange obsessions. Like what my maid of honor is going to wear. Green dress? Purple dress? White suit? AHHHGGG! And I'm losing sleep over what jewelry would look best with my dress. Dangly earrings? Choker necklace? No necklace? Will my shoes make me look taller than David? Who's going to pick up our out-of-town guests from the airport? Is this wedding going to be a total disaster?

I think this is all a distraction from what's really going on: I'm getting married after being a single adult for 20 years and this is a scary leap of faith. I want to know how it's all going to turn out....what kinds of things we're going to fight about. Whether we'll get our debt paid off. If we really have the energy it takes to raise the kids we want to have. But these are all things I can't really know on this side of the "leap." And that bugs me. This has been my struggle all of my life -- wanting some kind of guarantee before I make any kind of decision. Which has left me paralyzed and risk-averse. Ultimately, I know I don't want to be like that any more. I want to know the joys on the other side of the "leap." I don't want to live a safe life. So on May 7 I'm getting married....and I'll start the adventure of marriage. Pray for me!

Marriage at 40

It's supposed to be perfect. We dream about it all of our lives. What dress we'll wear, who will be there, who our bridesmaids will be, what it will be like walking down the aisle. I want everything to be perfect, but seeing that my wedding day is only a month away, I'm coming to the realization that it won't be. I screwed up by inviting too many people. I'm not losing weight (guess what? I don't have a 25-year-old body anymore). I'm not sure I like my wedding gown. I have this fear that the whole day will be a train-wreck. Not exactly what I pictured.

But as my friends reminded me the other night....even if everything goes wrong, on May 8 I will be married to a man I love and want to spend the rest of my life with. How do I know this? Because when I told him this morning about all of my body image issues regarding my wedding day and how I feel so imperfect, he said "But you'll look perfect to me."

I'm marrying this incredible man. Here's what I love about him:
He thinks I'm beautiful.
He makes me think.
He's intelligent.
He has an incredible vocabulary.
He cleans the kitchen.
His hands are always warm.
He wants to grow.
He loves my cat.
He doesn't care that much about material possessions.
He's a wonderful musician.
He encourages me to write and sing.
He's a better writer than I am.

I could go on and on. When it comes down to it, while we dream of perfection, of how everthing will look and feel on our wedding day, maybe we have been dreaming of the wrong things. It's not how we look and how the cake will taste, but it's about two imperfect people committing to one another despite all of our faults and imperfections. It's about having the priveledge of loving someone who God has brought into my life. About getting outside of my self-obsession to give everything I have to him. If I can do that on my wedding day, it will be a perfect day....