Yesterday was the last day of the lease on my husband's old apartment. His former roommate had since moved out, moving on to bigger and better things as a new lawyer in a brighter tomorrow. Unable to sublease, we'd just used it as a temporary storage for our wedding gifts and as a transitional place while my husband was getting settled in our new (well, new to him) (tiny) abode.
So, we rented a truck and started hauling our stuff out to then be deposited in a storage unit place in a podunk town about 15 minutes away. When you live in a college town, storage unit places around town this time of year get snapped up. Of course everyone and their grandmother was also moving out that day. Although I had expressed it earlier, I was still nursing a bit of irritation at the fact that his roommate had deuced out without necessarily getting rid of all his stuff and sort of left it up to my husband to sort out. I get that some of the stuff was mutually shared and bought (i.e. plates and kitchen utensils and their couch) but his bed? His bookcase? (We took the bookcase, tho. He didn't want it.)
Anyway, you know how moving goes. Well-laid plans with the best intentions that start melting in the sun and Georgia humidity. I started out as a trooper but ended up sweaty, tired and irritable. The turning point came when we were finally unloading our stuff into the storage unit. A box which had a delicate item in it slipped and the item inside, an elegant white serving dish, was smashed to heart-wrenching pieces. Tears sprang to my eyes and my husband apologized about 50 million times and I ended up making him feel bad and it was just a bad moment. But in the end we just took the box with the broken pieces (and gift receipt!), put it in the car and hoped that maybe we could get a new one. That was the first thing broken.
I got the new bookcase all nice and set up and was sorting through junk to throw away or things with sentimental value enough to keep. In the process of moving things around, I dropped a little ceramic creation we made with the Young Married's group from church (before we were actually married, but we were included anyway). That was the second thing broken.
We went back to my husband's old apartment to do some final sweeping and vacuuming. He produced a plate and serving dish one of our colleagues had let him borrow for his little CD release party a while ago. I had planned to go but decided not to for whatever reason. That was about a month before our initial coffee date. So, in effect, my husband had borrowed and kept those things from before the time it took to meet me, date me, become engaged to me and marry me until now. We had a good laugh about it. We put them in the car. I drove the car and he drove the truck on the way to donate the beds. Enter a weird driving person who kept putting on the brakes at weird times. Just as I was about to get into a turning lane, homegirl suddenly stops in front of me for whatever reason, so I slam on the brakes. Of course the dishes (on the back seat) fly off. And one of them shatters on the floorboard. That was the third thing broken.
Back at home. Finally. My husband is digging around for some boxes and/or bins to put his to-be-donated kitchen items into. In the process, he drops a box of these little stone coasters with our initial on it. I was planning to take those back to Bed Bath and Beyond because people got us like a million of them. My husband apologetically emerges with pieces of one of the coasters...except...it's not his fault. I actually broke that coaster a while ago when I was digging around in our little closet. But I put it back in the box with the others and figured we'd take care of it later. And that was the fourth thing (still) broken.
Today, sore from our moving expedition, I thought about our reactions to things breaking and how it related to our marriage. I was nearly crushed after the first broken thing. It was a really nice dish someone had given us for our wedding. And it was sort of my husband's "fault" since he was moving stuff around when it fell. I got upset. But what about the things that I broke? Even something that didn't belong to us? Even something that I broke a while ago and never said anything about? He was calm. Forgiving.
I realized that I could definitely stand to be a little calmer and a little more readily forgiving when things don't go the way I think they should.
And we took back the broken elegant white dish and got a brand new one. I felt so badly for my unnecessary drama when the first one was broken. I apologized over and over. My husband smoothed down my hair, smiled, and assured me that it was okay.
Saturday, July 25, 2015
Thursday, July 23, 2015
Things I Did While My Husband Was Out of Town
1. Went to Target with all the Target gift cards we received. I bought a little rolling cooler for the beach (in two weeks) and a sunflower-colored beach bag. I can only find cute clothes/shoes when I don't have any money or gift cards to spend.
2. Ate leftover chicken poppyseed casserole and watched Buzzfeed videos.
3. Worked all night on a bibliography that I should have finished a while ago because I needed to finish it, I wasn't tired, and I needed to keep my mind occupied.
4. Ate a middle-of-the-night piece of banana bread.
5. Got in on his side of the bed not just because it's closer to the lamp. Smelled his bottle of cologne and his stick of deodorant and looked at a little baby picture of himself he got from his mom's house when we went to visit over Christmas.
5. Tried to go to sleep, but, being unable to, read a couple of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie short stories.
6. Finished a short story that ended pretty depressingly, felt sad, felt cold, didn't feel like moving to turn up the temperature, cried into his pillow and still couldn't sleep.
7. Tried a breathing exercise I'd read about in one of those stupid "listicles" to help me fall asleep. It didn't work.
8. Started thinking about babies again and how my father half-jokingly said we were "postponing" having one. Mom I can understand, but not you, Dad. Not you.
9. Woke up from a strange dream-filled sleep at 8 am.
10. Thought I'd lay back down just for a few more minutes and didn't wake up again until 10:45. There's a morning wasted.
2. Ate leftover chicken poppyseed casserole and watched Buzzfeed videos.
3. Worked all night on a bibliography that I should have finished a while ago because I needed to finish it, I wasn't tired, and I needed to keep my mind occupied.
4. Ate a middle-of-the-night piece of banana bread.
5. Got in on his side of the bed not just because it's closer to the lamp. Smelled his bottle of cologne and his stick of deodorant and looked at a little baby picture of himself he got from his mom's house when we went to visit over Christmas.
5. Tried to go to sleep, but, being unable to, read a couple of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie short stories.
6. Finished a short story that ended pretty depressingly, felt sad, felt cold, didn't feel like moving to turn up the temperature, cried into his pillow and still couldn't sleep.
7. Tried a breathing exercise I'd read about in one of those stupid "listicles" to help me fall asleep. It didn't work.
8. Started thinking about babies again and how my father half-jokingly said we were "postponing" having one. Mom I can understand, but not you, Dad. Not you.
9. Woke up from a strange dream-filled sleep at 8 am.
10. Thought I'd lay back down just for a few more minutes and didn't wake up again until 10:45. There's a morning wasted.
Saturday, July 18, 2015
Two Months
So, Thursday was our two-monthiversary. We celebrated with a breakfast of Chick-fil-a chicken biscuits. Yup, totally went all out. Some observations:
1. I sometimes struggle with an impulse to push him away when I don't feel like a great me. It's like I want him to go away for a while until I'm back to being acceptable enough. But I just can't do that.
2. The impending fall semester is staring me in the face. It's going to mean sequestering myself in a library carrel while I eke out the rest of my dissertation. It's going to mean beginning a job search that feels overwhelming. It's going to mean not spending as much time with my husband because while I'm writing, he's going to be taking classes/teaching/researching/writing. I know that once classes start, things aren't going to be the way they have been this summer.
3. Conversations with my mom have taken on a new layer that I'm trying to get accustomed to. I can't explain what it is. It's not awkwardness, necessarily. It's a hesitation, an unsure dance that consists of trying to figure out the boundary between supportive and intrusive, between honesty and oversharing. It's her trying to exercise restraint when her heart is spilling over with all the advice and experience that 34 years of marriage has to offer, wanting to say the right thing. It's me wanting to talk to my mom like I always have, but trying to figure out how to do so with the awareness that someone else is intimately connected to me.
4. One of the things I'm trying not to allow to take residence in my brain is the fear that we will never gain the stability I'll need to feel comfortable enough to have a baby. It's ridiculous, I know. A perfect time or perfect amount of "stability" necessary to undergo any kind of life change simply doesn't exist. And I have no idea what the future holds, so I'm trying to tell my brain to cut it out. That kind of thinking doesn't do anyone any favors.
5. Sometimes when I look at my husband unnoticed (while he's asleep, working, or doing something that allows me to observe without being observed), I ponder what it is that made him decide that I was it. What made him so sure? We're different. We were raised differently. Our families and backgrounds are different. How did he decide that he definitively wanted me and wanted to spend the rest of his life with me? When I ask him things like this, he laughs and says something sweet and generic, like because I'm a beautiful person or something like that. But the fact is that there's not some specific reason or specific moment he can recall that he can point to as the reason or the moment, and that's how life is a lot of times. There are a series of little reasons and little moments that add up to a life-defining whole.
1. I sometimes struggle with an impulse to push him away when I don't feel like a great me. It's like I want him to go away for a while until I'm back to being acceptable enough. But I just can't do that.
2. The impending fall semester is staring me in the face. It's going to mean sequestering myself in a library carrel while I eke out the rest of my dissertation. It's going to mean beginning a job search that feels overwhelming. It's going to mean not spending as much time with my husband because while I'm writing, he's going to be taking classes/teaching/researching/writing. I know that once classes start, things aren't going to be the way they have been this summer.
3. Conversations with my mom have taken on a new layer that I'm trying to get accustomed to. I can't explain what it is. It's not awkwardness, necessarily. It's a hesitation, an unsure dance that consists of trying to figure out the boundary between supportive and intrusive, between honesty and oversharing. It's her trying to exercise restraint when her heart is spilling over with all the advice and experience that 34 years of marriage has to offer, wanting to say the right thing. It's me wanting to talk to my mom like I always have, but trying to figure out how to do so with the awareness that someone else is intimately connected to me.
4. One of the things I'm trying not to allow to take residence in my brain is the fear that we will never gain the stability I'll need to feel comfortable enough to have a baby. It's ridiculous, I know. A perfect time or perfect amount of "stability" necessary to undergo any kind of life change simply doesn't exist. And I have no idea what the future holds, so I'm trying to tell my brain to cut it out. That kind of thinking doesn't do anyone any favors.
5. Sometimes when I look at my husband unnoticed (while he's asleep, working, or doing something that allows me to observe without being observed), I ponder what it is that made him decide that I was it. What made him so sure? We're different. We were raised differently. Our families and backgrounds are different. How did he decide that he definitively wanted me and wanted to spend the rest of his life with me? When I ask him things like this, he laughs and says something sweet and generic, like because I'm a beautiful person or something like that. But the fact is that there's not some specific reason or specific moment he can recall that he can point to as the reason or the moment, and that's how life is a lot of times. There are a series of little reasons and little moments that add up to a life-defining whole.
Wednesday, July 15, 2015
Oh, Baby
No, we are not having a baby any time soon. I always feel like warding off questions about kids with a crucifix as if they were vampires trying to sink their fangs into my exposed neck.
Why, then, is my brain being lit up with baby fantasies?
I know I don't want one. Not right now. It would just be too hard and too weird and just too much. Ugh, knocked up/writing a dissertation/trying to find a job/maybe moving/still being a newlywed. Just a jumble of stuff that would just be ugh. My brain knows I don't want that. Not for real.
But then I keep having these visions of myself glowing with maternal radiance and wearing these flowing maternity clothes and my husband being the sweetest husband in the world and taking care of me. I imagine carrying this beautiful, fat, brown baby. Curly, coppery hair, dimples (in the cheek like him or in the chin like me), and devastatingly long, dark lashes.
I imagine baby foods: applesauce, bananas, those grainy cookies they gum down until they're soaked through with saliva. I want to decorate my baby's room with a Curious George theme. My baby is definitely going to be bilingual, we've already decided that. My husband and I are both fluent in Spanish and plan to consistently use the language with our child.
I imagine my parents being the most happy humans in the world. Finally. A grandchild. I know my in-laws would of course be happy, too, but my husband has older siblings who have already married and produced grandchildren. My future baby (unless one of my brothers beats me to it, which, at this point, I highly doubt) will be my parents' first.
Even after so many questions have been settled, new ones always arise. Who knows where we're going to be, where we're going to be headed, what we're going to be doing this time next year? I still feel unsettled. And I feel like things have to be settled before we bring a baby into the equation. But then I ask, are things ever "settled"?
But then I keep having these visions of myself glowing with maternal radiance and wearing these flowing maternity clothes and my husband being the sweetest husband in the world and taking care of me. I imagine carrying this beautiful, fat, brown baby. Curly, coppery hair, dimples (in the cheek like him or in the chin like me), and devastatingly long, dark lashes.
I imagine baby foods: applesauce, bananas, those grainy cookies they gum down until they're soaked through with saliva. I want to decorate my baby's room with a Curious George theme. My baby is definitely going to be bilingual, we've already decided that. My husband and I are both fluent in Spanish and plan to consistently use the language with our child.
I imagine my parents being the most happy humans in the world. Finally. A grandchild. I know my in-laws would of course be happy, too, but my husband has older siblings who have already married and produced grandchildren. My future baby (unless one of my brothers beats me to it, which, at this point, I highly doubt) will be my parents' first.
Even after so many questions have been settled, new ones always arise. Who knows where we're going to be, where we're going to be headed, what we're going to be doing this time next year? I still feel unsettled. And I feel like things have to be settled before we bring a baby into the equation. But then I ask, are things ever "settled"?
Saturday, July 11, 2015
Sacred Marriage or Is Marriage "Hard"? Part II
A friend suggested the book Sacred Marriage by Gary Thomas, so I downloaded it to my Kindle and started reading. I'm already four chapters in. The premise is not unlike something I've expressed in one of my earlier posts and that is that God intended marriage, rather than as a means of self-fulfillment, as a means of understanding our relationship with Him.
It seems that part of what makes marriage "hard" is loving another flawed human being and making a conscious choice to love this flawed human being every day, which in turn requires you to exercise self-discipline and requires you to examine your own flaws.
Maybe it's a good thing I married a little later than many people because by this time, I'm confident in saying that I don't have my expectations too high. What I'm saying is that people get disillusioned because they go into marriage expecting their partner to "make them happy" and fulfill them in ways only God can. I realize that knowing this mentally is different than putting it into practice spiritually. But in the end, it would be unfair for me to expect my husband to bring me to a place of self-actualization, just as it would be unfair for him to expect it of me.
But here's what I'm still having trouble accepting: That one day the feeling of being "in love" will fade away. Maybe it's true. It's something I've heard and read many times. That the "excitement" fades and you're left with something more "stable" and "familiar." But I honestly feel that excitement is not really what makes me feel in love, and I don't think that stable and familiar are buzzkills. I'm okay with the ordinary. With routine. What makes me feel in love are very simple things that aren't "exciting." What makes me feel in love is seeing how he lights up when he comes home to me after a long day. What makes me feel in love is when we hold pinkies in church as we're praying a dismissal prayer/pre-altar call prayer (I don't know how or why we started doing it, we just do). What makes me feel in love is seeing him enjoy a raspberry-blueberry-banana smoothie I made for him. I know that as we learn more and more about each other, we will become more and more familiar to each other, but why does that lead to a loss of feeling "in love"?
I have this picture framed and placed on our coffee table:
I look at how on-top-of-the-world we both feel in this moment, and I want to always remember it. Treasure it. I know I will not always feel the excitement of this day, but I want to always believe that marrying him was one of my best decisions. We wrote our own vows and we have them taped to the mirror in our room. Every time I look at myself in the mirror, I'm faced with my promises to him and his promises to me. They remind me of why I decided to marry him. That's what makes me feel in love. Please don't tell me the delight of sharing my life with someone will fade away. Right now, that idea is hard for me to believe or accept.
It seems that part of what makes marriage "hard" is loving another flawed human being and making a conscious choice to love this flawed human being every day, which in turn requires you to exercise self-discipline and requires you to examine your own flaws.
Maybe it's a good thing I married a little later than many people because by this time, I'm confident in saying that I don't have my expectations too high. What I'm saying is that people get disillusioned because they go into marriage expecting their partner to "make them happy" and fulfill them in ways only God can. I realize that knowing this mentally is different than putting it into practice spiritually. But in the end, it would be unfair for me to expect my husband to bring me to a place of self-actualization, just as it would be unfair for him to expect it of me.
But here's what I'm still having trouble accepting: That one day the feeling of being "in love" will fade away. Maybe it's true. It's something I've heard and read many times. That the "excitement" fades and you're left with something more "stable" and "familiar." But I honestly feel that excitement is not really what makes me feel in love, and I don't think that stable and familiar are buzzkills. I'm okay with the ordinary. With routine. What makes me feel in love are very simple things that aren't "exciting." What makes me feel in love is seeing how he lights up when he comes home to me after a long day. What makes me feel in love is when we hold pinkies in church as we're praying a dismissal prayer/pre-altar call prayer (I don't know how or why we started doing it, we just do). What makes me feel in love is seeing him enjoy a raspberry-blueberry-banana smoothie I made for him. I know that as we learn more and more about each other, we will become more and more familiar to each other, but why does that lead to a loss of feeling "in love"?
I have this picture framed and placed on our coffee table:
I look at how on-top-of-the-world we both feel in this moment, and I want to always remember it. Treasure it. I know I will not always feel the excitement of this day, but I want to always believe that marrying him was one of my best decisions. We wrote our own vows and we have them taped to the mirror in our room. Every time I look at myself in the mirror, I'm faced with my promises to him and his promises to me. They remind me of why I decided to marry him. That's what makes me feel in love. Please don't tell me the delight of sharing my life with someone will fade away. Right now, that idea is hard for me to believe or accept.
Wednesday, July 08, 2015
Is Marriage "Hard"?
I've gotten so many grim-faced warnings that marriage is so "hard" before getting married, it annoyed me, but I also have to admit it slightly worried me. One of my FB friends posted this article. I really appreciated it and it made a lot of sense to me, giving a relatable analogy to explain the so-called "difficulty" of marriage.
But here's another admission: I think we're special.
What I mean is, I have this feeling that we're different than the people who've supposedly been there and done that and know how "hard" marriage is. Maybe it's silly and naive and perhaps even a little self-indulgent, but that's sort of how I feel. I guess I don't think that facing life married will be any harder than facing life single. I faced life single for a pretty long time and sometimes it was hard and sometimes it was exhilarating, but most of the time it was somewhere in-between. I imagine marriage to be more or less the same.
Call me naive, but also I have this unfounded, fanciful belief that we possess above-average gratefulness for one another. I cannot remember a day we haven't said "I love you" (several times a day) to each other since we started saying "I love you." Even the times we've argued ended up in "I love you"s. I guess we haven't had a super blow-up argument yet, but I wonder if we ever will. I know, I know. We're still in the honeymoon phase, right?
I guess I feel like we have above-average gratefulness for one another because we've both experienced really low points in our lives and we've both had past unhealthy relationships and we're just so glad to have found each other and are basking in the glow of a positive, healthy, caring, nurturing, loving, godly relationship. I feel like we're both hyper-aware of not taking each other for granted.
I feel like I have the best husband in the entire world. He's a delightful melange of handsome and sweet, sexy and mild-mannered, hard-working and creative, sensitive and resolute. He loves to see me smile. Going to Kroger with him. Having a soul food picnic with him (barbecue chicken and pork loin, cornbread, collards, blackeyed peas, mac and cheese, baked beans). Playing the guitar and tambourine and singing together near the fountain in front of our department. Watching a movie on my laptop with ice cream sundaes. Riding the campus bus together. Reading our devotion together while we have our morning coffee. Taking evening walks beside the train tracks. I love sharing my life with him.
When I think of the "marriage is hard" warnings from time to time, it makes me wonder if one day the other shoe will drop. If one day, I'll wake up, sniff the air, smell the end of our honeymoon phase, and then steel myself for the beginning of the hard days. Part of me is waiting for the hard part to begin. Part of me is wondering if we're living in a fantasy whose days are numbered. Because, according to the experienced ones, marriage is supposed to be hard. Right now, I feel like I'm falling more and more in love.
But here's another admission: I think we're special.
What I mean is, I have this feeling that we're different than the people who've supposedly been there and done that and know how "hard" marriage is. Maybe it's silly and naive and perhaps even a little self-indulgent, but that's sort of how I feel. I guess I don't think that facing life married will be any harder than facing life single. I faced life single for a pretty long time and sometimes it was hard and sometimes it was exhilarating, but most of the time it was somewhere in-between. I imagine marriage to be more or less the same.
Call me naive, but also I have this unfounded, fanciful belief that we possess above-average gratefulness for one another. I cannot remember a day we haven't said "I love you" (several times a day) to each other since we started saying "I love you." Even the times we've argued ended up in "I love you"s. I guess we haven't had a super blow-up argument yet, but I wonder if we ever will. I know, I know. We're still in the honeymoon phase, right?
I guess I feel like we have above-average gratefulness for one another because we've both experienced really low points in our lives and we've both had past unhealthy relationships and we're just so glad to have found each other and are basking in the glow of a positive, healthy, caring, nurturing, loving, godly relationship. I feel like we're both hyper-aware of not taking each other for granted.
I feel like I have the best husband in the entire world. He's a delightful melange of handsome and sweet, sexy and mild-mannered, hard-working and creative, sensitive and resolute. He loves to see me smile. Going to Kroger with him. Having a soul food picnic with him (barbecue chicken and pork loin, cornbread, collards, blackeyed peas, mac and cheese, baked beans). Playing the guitar and tambourine and singing together near the fountain in front of our department. Watching a movie on my laptop with ice cream sundaes. Riding the campus bus together. Reading our devotion together while we have our morning coffee. Taking evening walks beside the train tracks. I love sharing my life with him.
When I think of the "marriage is hard" warnings from time to time, it makes me wonder if one day the other shoe will drop. If one day, I'll wake up, sniff the air, smell the end of our honeymoon phase, and then steel myself for the beginning of the hard days. Part of me is waiting for the hard part to begin. Part of me is wondering if we're living in a fantasy whose days are numbered. Because, according to the experienced ones, marriage is supposed to be hard. Right now, I feel like I'm falling more and more in love.
Sunday, July 05, 2015
Inner Smile
I'm currently obsessed with this song. The original comes from the soundtrack of one of my favorite movies, Bend It Like Beckham, and then I realized the band had done a soulful 60s remix of it. I like it better than the original.
Everything about being in this particular moment in time, this Sunday evening, relaxing at home with a cup of tea, makes me smile.
Husband and I visited some friends for the 4th of July weekend, came back, silently but companionably unpacked our stuff and slipped into chill mode. Except now I'm still in chill mode and he decided to skate for a while. I have a skateboarding husband. That makes me smile, too.
I've been kind of sedentary this summer. Hunched over my laptop grading stuff for this online class, editing and doing other side projects...I can't gain even a smidgen of weight without it being noticeable. I'm getting a little soft around the middle. Better start doing some crunches and planks or people (those same "people" to whom I address passive-aggressive rants) are going to take it upon themselves to ask if I've got a bun in the oven.
I do fantasize about having a baby, though. Even though in real life I am deathly afraid of having one right now. But just the idea...what if I did? The knowledge that I could realistically turn up preggo simultaneously thrills and terrifies me.
When we were in Pittsburgh last weekend, we went to church and during worship, hubs was holding his sweet little baby nephew. Just the way that he was tenderly holding him made estrogen come running out of my pores. I must have been looking at him with serious mother hunger in my eyes because a lady sitting in front of me who must have been observing us for a minute touched my arm, smiled and said, "I know that look." For some reason, I felt like I had been caught red-handed. Why is maternal longing something I want to hide?
I'm afraid to romanticize having a baby. But I just can't help but imagine our baby possessing an otherworldly beauty, and I know that the baby will enter the world with SO MANY people loving the stew out of it. Like, I don't think there will be a being more loved in the world than our baby.
But, back to earth. There are dissertations to finish and jobs to procure. For now, though, I smile. I enjoy this little piece of peace.
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