Saturday, September 1, 2012

anniversary

In the early months of our relationship, I used to whisper "I love you" into his deaf ear while he slept. He never stirred. Then one night, I said it before he slept, because I had gotten so used to saying it to him after he fell asleep. We dreamed a life together. Sitting around a campfire seven years ago, drinking beer and talking about children we haven't birthed yet, campers we haven't designed, houses we never bought, travels we hadn't packed for. We talked about religion and lack thereof. We talked about the whys and hows of our traumas and our loves, and our friends and family. He's a big white guy from the South, and I am a short brown girl from the East Coast, and yet we seemed so alike. I get him and he gets me. We didn't talk about how we would weather our relationship if our daughter dies three weeks after one of our parents. Or if one of us drinks too much. Or if our children end up in bed every night for five years. We just promised that we would weather it.

The dew covers my toes, and I walk in the grass with the babies, looking for grapes under the huge umbrella of leaves. The fruit flies scatter. The girl tells me that she misses her Daddy, and I tell her I miss her Daddy too. We spent the first five years of her life with oodles of time as a family. Sam working three days a week most weeks, an overnight and a few ten hour shifts that ended around five. When he was working, I savored those times with the kids. Little pockets of alone. When he was home, I used that time to paint and write and be alone in meditation and, also be together as a family hiking on a random Tuesday morning. When I write or art, he takes the children to the park, or swimming, or they just watch European football together while I work in the studio. Compared to other families, I knew those minutes were luxuries, and yet it never felt enough. Suddenly all that time, which felt so pinched and precious then, seems like huge open swaths of land with wildflowers and the women running like they are in douche commercials. My husband took a second job, and now, there is nothing left but waving in the evening as I leave and he enters, and the children clinging to legs and wailing Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

We left last weekend in spite of the fingernail sliver of time we have been around the kids as a family. It felt like a big deal to leave. We left for our anniversary, which is today, and stayed in a hotel and watched adult shows like Antique Roadshow and 48 Hours, and kissed and drank coffee at 6pm. We dressed up and went to see Dead Can Dance, and laughed about how everyone but us were dressed like gypsies or pirates, or gypsy pirates. There was a girl wearing antlers and a fur vest, and I whispered, "Hey, Puck, your deer horns are blocking the show."

And he whispered, You are the love of my life.

It was like the first time I heard it. And I teared up. "Even after all this time?" I ask. But what I am really asking is, "Even after our daughter died, and I got sober and behaved badly and cried and friends disliked me and I yelled about stupid things, and got fat? Even after all of that?"

Yes, even after all this time.

I have friends divorcing. I am at that age, I suppose, where friends have spent decades together and grow apart. And I think that it is natural to grow apart. I am amazed when people are together for decades and years and diamond anniversaries. Not because I don't strive for that, but I think people are hard to live with. I snap at him about his socks in the middle of the floor and why must he be so grumpy at me when I take a phone call from someone in need. I am a drunk and he abides the demands of recovery. And we had such terrible times of disconnect after Lucia died, when my friends seemed so distant, and I couldn't bear the heartbreak anymore. I couldn't bear to be close and disappointed so I didn't even let him close either. I just wanted to die then. I felt so alone, so alien, so diseased and wrong and wronged. I wouldn't make eye contact with him because I was so angry. I couldn't. He didn't grieve her the way I grieved her. He didn't have to grow babies inside him and have his bladder leak and gain weight and have people ask him if he is pregnant when he is not. And I hated how I grieved, so visceral, so emotive, so feminine, so drunk and angry and none of it felt like the life we were supposed to live. I hated who I had become. Our baby died, and I couldn't get over it. Not only that, I never wanted to get over it. It seemed the differences between us were suddenly monumental, even though we used to seem so alike. How could that be? It seemed impossible to be able to keep a marriage going after her death. How would we, really? How does anyone stay married? This grieving business is a solitary affair. No roses. No space within us that radiates love. It is just dark and endlessly solitary. It is the abyss and you never quite come back. It feels a little bit like hell.

And then, it changed again, our marriage. Counseling changed it. Sobriety changed it. I changed. And joy crept in, and so did he again. And now it feels new again with that ancient knowledge of each other and the darkness we now share. He claims he never felt helpless about our marriage, or scared for it, but I did. I feared everything. My first sponsor used to say that what we fear we become. And I feared becoming a monster.

For years now it is better. I don't take it for granted because of the years when our marriage was so hard. I don't say it much, because it is easy now. He is the easiest part of my life, even when it is hard. He is the person that strengthens me and makes me laugh and asks me to look at how I am integrating my philosophies into my real daily living. Really living. Not the explanation of living that I do here.

We have been married six years now, and we have three children and a hope that we miss all the same. We lost a parent, two grandparents and we built a sanctuary here. Our house smells like incense and campfires. We fill every pocket of it with sacred objects--fossils and found objects from our life together. In the morning, we wake and he says, "Good morning, my gorgeous wife." And I say, "Hello, handsome." And we change a diaper, kiss and boo boo, and thank God for each other.




16 comments:

  1. This was beautiful and incredibly familiar. I can see so much of my own journey and my own marriage, the good and the bad, in your words.
    Happy anniversary to a wonderful couple. Head for the diamond.
    xo

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  2. Happy anniversary to you and Sam
    The description of your life and relationship with your husband is scary close to how some of our days and weeks feel in this house. Thank you for sharing, and for your unbridled honesty.

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  3. What a beautiful witness to your love. Sounds so familiar. So beautiful, thank you for sharing.

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  4. I love this. So strange and amazing that despite all of our differences, I feel what the others have already said--it feels so familiar. Keep strengthening each other.

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  5. Happy anniversary! I totally get this. My DH and I will be married six years on 9/16, and I told him just the other day, falling into bed angry after pulling a stillborn breach calf and feeling like a failure, "I love you, but I hate our life." I meant it...I often mean it. I didn't know that our life would be five years of infertility, and two dead twins, and a cattle farm that itself has been fraught with infertility and now babyloss. This is fucking ridiculous and I don't feel any of it is deserved...and if we're not such bad people, then please, can Life shit on some other facet and lay off the reproductive realm?

    This last year has put distance between us as we, too, grieved differently. It also added distance within our recovery programs, distance we both still struggle to shorten. But, remarkably, he didn't drink or use, and I didn't fall into full blown untreated Al-Anon crazy town (close). Counseling has helped me, and is now going to help him and us. I'm glad he had the courage to agree to try something foreign and scary. It is a testament to our marriage.

    That all said, I can't imagine living through many more tragedies, with or without him, and yet there's no one else I'd ever want to be with. We might not have experienced our babyloss the same, but we still experienced it together, and it's forever our baggage to share.

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  6. What a perfect tribute to your marriage. Congratulations on 6 years. I feel as you do, my husband and I have been through SO much but there is nothing easier than our life together now. So glad you have him.

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  7. As always, such a beautiful post. Your writing stirs so much in me, and I am grateful for it. Happy anniversary to you and your handsome husband. Have a wonderful weekend and congrats on the years, past and to come.
    xo

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  8. Happy anniversary. What a gorgeous post. I wish everyone could have what you two have together. ;) And I hope you have many more anniversaries ahead.

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  9. Happy anniversary! Much love to you both and many more happy years.

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  10. Happy anniversary to you both and wishing you many, many happy years ahead. It's tough isn't it?

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  11. Happy anniversary to you both. May there be many wonderful years ahead of you.

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  12. Happy Anniversary! Wishing you many more years. Married for thirteen here and together for almost twenty. I think it's a real testament when couples somehow manage to find a way to stay together despite everything that happens to us along that road over the years.

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  13. I know I am but summer to your heart, and not the full four seasons of the year.

    {Edna St. Vincent Millay}

    *****

    Not you two, though. You are the full four.

    The full four and the test of death,

    CiM

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  14. This gives me hope, because I want to try to have another baby and my husband doesn't, and at this point I don't see how the marriage will survive. Maybe with time, and therapy, it just will. Hard to imagine the future from here.

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  15. There is much in this that resonates—the before dreams and the baby dying shattering and the different roads of grieving and the struggle and the love and the loving through and around all the diapers and day to day, but oddly the image that sticks with me is the woman running through the field like she's in a douche ad. I worked in a douche factory for two summers and had much time to study said fields of flowers and the women in their gauzy (usually white, but occasionally very light pastel) nightgowns with their long flowing (usually blond, but not always) locks (with the exception of one women with short dark hair). And I realize the women and the douche are not the point, but ah, yes, I have an image.

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  16. Ridiculously late, as usual but, happy anniversary anyway. Building on Sara's comment about the douche commercials, I hope you all find a way back to a schedule with more together time and field-frolicking.

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