To Sixty-Five Years (Or More)

When a couple signs up for pre-marital counseling, the priest or minister covers a wide range of topics, including emotional compatibility, life goals and strategies for fair fighting. Some pastors even get overly involved in the relationship of their clients:

My husband and I got a semi-deluxe version, which thankfully did not involve being spied upon by Robin Williams. It did, however, include advice regarding financial planning and decisions, as well as a warning that which way to mount the roll of toilet paper in the toilet paper dispenser could become a serious issue if not definitely determined at the onset of our marriage. There were a few things, though, that we didn’t discuss with our pastor – including how to make enormous life decisions regarding career changes and long-distance moving.

Since these are the things that have been serious issues for my husband and myself over the past year and a half, I’ve been feeling more than a little bit lost. It’s incredibly difficult to balance your own emotional needs with that of another person’s so completely, especially when the two of you may have very different needs that are at odds with each other to a significant degree. For example: my husband ultimately needs to settle down in a warm place where the days have more than eight hours of daylight all throughout the calendar year. He gets unbelievably stir-crazy if it’s cold and dark by the time he gets out of work, and here in the Hudson Valley, it gets dark around 4:30 in the afternoon during the winter. Because of his extreme aversion to winter, my husband feels that it is necessary to choose a warmer locale where we will retire eventually – whereas I desperately want to stop moving around so much. I need to be able to put down roots again, without the fear of being eventually uprooted – torn away from any community ties that I have established. I am hesitant to try to make friends in New York again when I think about the fact that I may have to leave them someday, just as I have had to leave behind dear friends in Michigan and in Washington D.C.

In order to find a solution that allows us to stay happily together, we need to figure out a compromise, which we’ve been working on – a long-term plan that will meet both our needs. But we haven’t really felt as though a lot of people can give us advice on this subject because our conflict is about the possibility of another geographic transplant, which is something that has really only become a necessity for people of our generation. As careers have become more specialized and particular industries have become rooted to specific geographic locations, it has become harder and harder to build a career and earn a living unless you move for your job. If you are married, this means that you will ultimately have to prioritize either the husband or the wife’s career, and the other spouse will have to search for whatever work that he or she can find once you are settled in a particular geographic location.

Now let me be clear – our original decision to move away from Michigan wasn’t about prioritizing either of our careers over our family ties. It was about making sure that we can pay the bills, obtain health insurance to pay for my medical bills, save enough money to support a family, and then stockpile for our retirement – because by the time we’re in our sixties, social security and Medicare will practically have run out. I may like shopping and owning pretty things, so having extra income is nice, but if I could live near my friends and family, I would try my very hardest to give up my addiction to shopping at Target and on Amazon. I would give anything to live near my college roommates, to be around as my nephew grows up; I wish I could have been in Michigan during the last few years of my grandparents’ lives. But there just aren’t that many jobs available in Michigan.

My husband and I have both had to make a lot of sacrifices, both in terms of leaving our families and in terms of giving up some of our career dreams. We have both ended up with jobs that we didn’t really plan on having – I landed in the non-profit sector instead of academia, and he applied to a vague job description that turned out to be for an analyst position in the cosmetics industry. His career shift has definitely been a bigger surprise than mine; we obviously discussed change and compromise during pre-marital counseling, but neither one of us anticipated that my beer-drinking, football-loving husband would end up working for a make-up company. It turns out that compromise and sacrifice can land you in some pretty unexpected places.

All these compromises and surprises have had a huge influence on my identity and concept of myself, of course. And I can only imagine how much it may have spun my husband’s head to become an employee of a cosmetics company, since he’s such a boy. Now we find ourselves in New York, both with different careers and different prospects for the future than we ever imagined, and perhaps the biggest surprise of all is that my husband finds himself greatly enjoying his job. All these unexpected twists, however, mean that as we continue down our career paths, we’ll be traveling farther and farther away from our originally-imagined lives as university professors. This has the potential to be a great adventure – but also to be the potential to cause conflict at every juncture and every unforeseen decision that we face as a couple.

When my husband and I fight for prolonged periods of time, I start to panic. What does this mean for our marriage? How can we resolve a conflict this huge? Will we end up getting a divorce? I never imagined myself as someone who would even entertain the thought of divorce, but I have to admit that every once in a while over the past nine months, the possibility has crossed my mind. Not that I think I would actually ever divorce Jeremy. I know that both of us are miserable when we’re apart for more than a day or two, so I doubt I’d have the strength to leave him, even if we had “irreconcilable differences.”

But just the fact that divorce has crossed my mind freaks me out and makes me question who I am. I didn’t think I was the kind of person who would ever give up on someone that I love as deeply as I love Jeremy. But sometimes it’s not simply frustration with my husband that throws me for a loop and makes me think the dirty word divorce – it’s the question of whether or not I am betraying myself or doing something that is emotionally unhealthy for myself by putting Jeremy’s needs and desires before my own. That’s why compromise is important – you have to be able to figure out how to keep your commitments without doing yourself any emotional harm.

How you deal with your commitments, not just in a marriage but in all aspects of your life, is really a big part of who you are. I’ve thought about that fact lot in the last nine months, both because Jeremy and I have had to hash through a lot of decisions about our careers and moving across state lines, but also because my grandparents’ deaths made me realize how they were such amazing examples of commitment.

My grandparents modeled deep love and steadfast dedication to their children, grandchildren and their community, making the major decisions look effortless – when in reality my grandparents must have struggled in their marriage just as much as Jeremy and I sometimes struggle now. Of course, I heard my grandparents bicker on a pretty regular basis about things like whether or not my grandpa should use certain language (having her husband use words like “fart” in public was an embarrassment to my well-mannered grandmother, but he liked his fart jokes). But I never once heard my grandparents fight about big things, even though they must have.

So now when I am afraid that Jeremy and I won’t be able to resolve something as big as a conflict over whether or not we should move again someday, I think of my grandparents – and how happy they were on their 65th wedding anniversary. We gave them a fancy party and a big cake, and because they were the cutest 80-somethings on the planet, they fed each other. It was a little awkward – but all the more adorable because of the shaking hand extending the forkful of cake to the unsteady chomp.

I want to be just like my grandparents – committed to my husband and my family’s happiness, through whatever unexpected conflicts and challenges may arise. And when I think of them, I’m pretty sure that even without too much specific guidance, if I always keep their memory in my mind, I’ll end up feeding my husband cake on our 65th anniversary too.

Get Up and Do a Little Dance

My grandfather died on May 11, 2010 – eleven months ago yesterday – surrounded by most of his immediate family. My husband and I were not there, though, because at the time, we lived five hundred and twenty miles away in Washington D.C. My brother tells me that after he had passed away and the minister had gone, my family was sitting quietly in the hospital room, not quite ready to leave my grandpa’s side. Suddenly, my grandma perked her head up a bit and looked around the room. From the confines of her wheelchair, she declared, “I ought to get up right now and do a little dance.”

Everyone looked at my grandma in shock and amazement. She loved her husband a great deal; they had been married for over sixty-five years and had not been parted literally since World War II. Everyone expected her to be mired deep within her grief – but that came later.

She looked at all of them and explained her statement: “Just to keep things interesting.”

That was my grandmother’s quirky sense of humor, though – and her desire to entertain others. She and my grandpa shared a similar desire to make people laugh – grandma would tell stories and say unexpected things, while grandpa wore funny hats and told corny jokes. I’m sure that I inherited my own desire to be a storyteller and my no small ability to entertain a room full of party-goers from my grandparents, who always bantered with everyone, from waiters and waitresses to their buxom nurses and handsome young doctors.

I was crying while driving home from work yesterday, thinking of how it had been eleven months since grandpa died and even longer since I had seen him in March of 2010, when I remembered this story about my grandma. And suddenly I knew that she and grandpa would want me to “get up and do a little dance” for them.

I just don’t really know what that means.

I do know, though, that despite my grief – which sometimes makes me want to stay curled up in bed – and despite all my insecurities about my new job and my questions about the future, I sometimes get out of bed and keep going simply because I know that they would want me to live my life. The desire to make them happy is so deeply engrained within me that no matter what else I am feeling, I still want achieve certain things that would have made them proud of me. I get up and keep going, but that isn’t exactly the same as “doing a little dance.”

So now, I am trying to figure out exactly how to start dancing again.

Another Glass of Chocolate Milk

I can’t imagine receiving a better compliment than, “You’re so well-adjusted!”

That’s right up there with, “I love your new haircut!” and “You’ve lost weight, haven’t you?” I would love to hear the words, “Lauren, you’re such a stable person. I wish I were as grounded and well-adjusted as you are!”

ad·just verb/ə-jəst/

adjusted, past participle; adjusted, past tense; adjusting, present participle; adjusts, 3rd person singular present

1. To alter or move (something) slightly in order to achieve the desired fit, appearance, or result. Examples: He smoothed his hair and adjusted his tie. The interest rate should be adjusted for inflation.

2. To permit small alterations or movements so as to allow a desired fit, appearance, or result to be achieved. Example: A riding harness that adjusts to the correct fit.

3. To adapt or become used to a new situation. Examples: She must be allowed to grieve and to adjust in her own way. His eyes had adjusted to semidarkness.

I’m not sure if I qualify as “well-adjusted” or not, but I feel like I’m adapting to my new job fairly well, all things considered. And my boss seems to agree with me. “It doesn’t seem like you’ve had too much trouble adjusting to the schedule here,” she said the other day, with a smile. I can tell that it was meant to be a compliment and that she’s pleased with me. She knows that I’ve had a very flexible schedule as a graduate student and a professor for the past few years, and that coming in for a nine to five work day is a big switch. Then yesterday, she told me that it seems like I’ve hit my stride over the past couple of days. I’ve come up with several ideas for press releases and public relations strategies that have made her happy, so I guess she’s right – I’m getting into the groove of this job.

Please just ignore the fact that I’m sitting around in my flannel pajamas at 2 o’clock on a Saturday afternoon, drinking my third glass of chocolate milk, and downloading the rather inane Nancy Drew movie that came out a couple of summers ago.

I’m not in the mood to do a whole lot with myself right now – not even read. That’s the real shocker in fact – Lauren doesn’t want to read? My husband had to check my temperature when I told him that I wasn’t interested in any of my new books at the moment.

But please take note of that example sentence from the definition of adjust: "she must be allowed to grieve and to adjust in her own way." Sometimes I adjust (and definitely grieve) by watching marathons of television procedurals, particularly Law & Order – which was basically how I spent most of my afternoons last November and December after my grandmother died. Sometimes I decide to re-read my collection of Nancy Drew novels, and sometimes I reorganize my iTunes library while I chug chocolate milk. Very rarely do I decide that I’m going to conquer a Dostoevsky novel while I’m in the midst of serious emotional upheaval. Young adult novels and my Harry Potter DVDs are usually very comforting, as is shopping. (I’ve got a bad habit of buying useless, pretty things when I’m upset.)

But sometimes, I don’t even feel like reading any more – and that’s how I can tell that I’m not as “well-adjusted” as I might appear to be. Here I am, inside on a sunny Saturday afternoon and I can’t even justify my reclusiveness with the statement that “I just feel like finishing my book.”

I’ve also gotten out of the habit of writing when I’m upset, at least when the emotion is the strongest. During high school and college, I used to journal every day – there is an entire shelf of spiral-bound notebooks in my old bedroom at my parent’s house that no doubt contain the very self-absorbed heartaches of a hormonal teenager. But it was a healthy habit, I think – one that I dropped like a hot poker when we moved to Washington D.C. and I found myself not only upset, but excruciatingly alone. I no longer enjoyed wallowing in my emotional pain, nursing the heartache as though I were watching an over-dramatic soap opera about someone else’s life. I wanted to forget the sharp edge of loneliness pressing relentlessly into me like a knife against my rib cage, so I stopped writing about it – I tried to stop thinking about it all together.

I’m not really sure what made this week so tiring, so difficult that I feel as though I want to lay around in my pajamas and thoughtlessly guzzle chocolate milk, overlook the stacks of unread books that have been calling my name all week, ignore my blogs and even put off watching my more interesting, sophisticated Netflix DVDs in favor of youtube videos and silly tween movies. But I’ll know that I’m out of the woods when I stop relying on my coping mechanisms and get back on the horse – blogging almost every day, speeding through novels on my lunch hour.

In the meantime, I’m going to remind myself that I don’t have to be on top of my game all day, every day. I am allowed to have a bad week in which I don’t get too much done, and following major life changes like the deaths of my grandparents, moving from Washington D.C. to New York, and switching careers, I’m even allowed to have a bad month or a bad six months. Sometimes it’s fine to chug chocolate milk, and most importantly – it’s okay to not be okay.

Really, then, only one question remains important at this moment – how much chocolate milk can I drink before I make myself sick?

Nostalgia

[Note: some of this recaps my previous posts on the differences between living in Washington D.C. and in Nyack.]

When my husband and I drove down to visit friends in Washington D.C. a couple of weekends ago, we shared an uncomfortable moment – an uncomfortable moment that has stretched into an uncomfortable situation.

After spending a fun evening with friends, my husband was practically glowing. As I reported in a previous post, he had a big grin on his face as he earnestly told me that coming back to D.C. felt “like coming home.” There was an awkward pause as my enjoyment of the evening suddenly shriveled up and a hard knot formed in my stomach. I had to swallow hard and hold my tongue – I didn’t want to ruin his joyful little moment.

Honestly, I do not want to move back to the over-crowded urban parking lot that is the Washington D.C. metro area. I cannot stress enough how much this really effects your quality of life. Everywhere you drive, there are too many people. It takes an hour to get to work, to a friend’s house, or to the mall – unless you live a block away from your job or just down the street from your friend. But odds are, you don’t. Our best friends live in Virginia, in fact, half of our Friday night was always spent sitting in traffic so that we could hang out with them. I went to school less than 12 miles away from our apartment, but it always took me at least 50 minutes to get there… and that wasn’t even traveling on the infamous Washington D.C. Beltway. (I’m from the Motor City, so I am a big fan of freeways – but that’s assuming that a freeway is serving its purpose of allowing you to go faster than you would go on the surface roads…)

I didn’t really realize quite how miserable I was living in D.C. until we moved to New York, at which point I regained my sense of happiness at living in the world around me. Welcome to Nyack, Lauren: a little village on the bank of the Hudson River just thirty miles north of New York City, with access to all the amenities that you’re accustomed to but none of the over-crowding and stand-still traffic. I can breathe again.

But I’ve said all this before – this is old news. (I try not to repeat myself, but I’m a little bit giddy and obsessed with the freedom that I’ve found living here amongst the Palisades Cliffs and by the Hudson River.)

The new development, though, is this uncomfortable gap between my perspective and my husband’s perspective, between my desires and my husband’s desires. He’s ready to move back to D.C. in a couple of years (or somewhere even further south, for the warmer weather and longer days). I, on the other hand, am ready to buy burial plots at the cemetery on the western hill overlooking Nyack and settle in for the long haul. I had envisioned walking with my kids along Piermont Avenue to Memorial Park – pushing a stroller and stopping by the little stone library some afternoons. I had pictured dropping them off at the beautiful brick high school in the foggy mornings, and watching football games and track meets on the sweeping lawn in front of the building. I had started planning to make connections around the non-profit scene in New York City; I saw myself going to a lot of fancy parties in cocktail dresses and smiling and eating canapés, all while raising money for worthy causes. All of these visions of my future are very much rooted in the particular town where we currently live – whereas my husband’s dreams for the future are distinctly about being elsewhere. And I first started to realize this that evening in Washington D.C.

I went to bed that night trying to ignore the knot in my stomach. I woke up and showered and got dressed, all the while still feeling hollow. Despite the great time we’d had with our friends the night before, I was hoping that my husband would enjoy the rest of the weekend with family and friends, but be content with our new home in Nyack.

I was up before he was, though, because I was meeting a good friend of mine for coffee and as I drove across the Key Bridge and into Georgetown, I gazed around at the familiar roads lined with trees that were already beginning to blossom – and I felt a little flutter in my chest.

As I drove toward the familiar Starbucks on MacArther Boulevard, I couldn’t help but thinking: this is the route I drove every day with Chloe and Chloe and Mia (yes, two Chloes) in my backseat, on our way to the Smithsonian Museums. These are the flowering trees that welcomed me every spring morning on my way to school and to work, reminding me that March and April are so much warmer and more joyful in Washington D.C. than in wintry Michigan. These are the homes of the families whose students I used to teach, and up that hill is the school where we held summer camp. There is the CVS in the old MacArthur theater, there is our favorite Asian restaurant, where we went for Max’s birthday and I got a flat tire, and there is Jetties, the sandwich shop with the amazing Thanksgiving turkey dinner sandwich (complete with stuffing and cranberry sauce ON the sandwich).

I had suddenly discovered the problem: I had felt at home in Washington D.C. – just not in the place where we actually lived. I felt at home where I worked and where I went to school – forty-five minutes southwest of our apartment. I felt at home surrounded by my summer camp kids, who wanted me to bandage their knees and tell them stories and teach them how to make jewelry. I felt at home, knowing that I was good with those kids and that their parents appreciated everything that I did with their children. I felt at home working with Eleanor, who was always more of a friend than a boss, like an aunt or even an older sister who welcomed me into her own family.

I also felt at home going to school down the street at American University, which I described a little bit in a previous post – but my description of the campus doesn’t really explain that I felt comfortable there because I was respected for my scholarship, my knowledge about certain types of literature, my proficiency with research and teaching. (And I could run up and down the halls of the Literature Department in my bare feet with the Professor’s kids. That also made me feel quite comfortable.)

The flutter of nostalgia in my heart kept growing, and when I reached the Starbucks and was swept into Eleanor’s hug, my nostalgia was in my throat, practically choking me with happiness. I felt it now – I felt like I was home. Call it a cheesy Steel Magnolias moment or something, but Eleanor really feels like family to me – and more than just a random part of my family. Eleanor reminds me of my grandma. Their personalities aren’t exactly alike, but they are similar/complementary in many ways. The two of them would have gotten along fabulously, and I always wished that I could have introduced them. (I can picture them linking arms, my grandma intimately leaning toward my friend and wanting to discuss my many good qualities and accomplishments.)

They would have gotten along so fabulously because at the heart of it they had the same expansive love for other people – and they both love me. That is why talking to Eleanor is a lot like talking to my grandmother. It’s the way that they both love me, the way that I can really say anything and they understand it in a certain way. I may have learned to distance myself from most people while living in Washington D.C., but Eleanor is an incredibly easy person to talk to and to love. I have all but forgotten what it feels like to have that kind of woman right there with you, talking to you about hormones and chocolate binges and career options and husbands and car accidents and fear and grief.

So now I am incredibly confused. My morning drive along Canal and MacArthur Streets, the pale pink flowers budding on the trees, my hours spent in Starbucks with Eleanor – all these things awakened a nostalgia that in some ways, I wish had remained buried. Even if we could afford to live down by Georgetown (which we can’t), we would still have to deal with traffic in order to visit friends or even make a Target run (across the bridge in Virginia). Even if we could live near our best friends in Alexandria and I could spend evenings out drinking with my literary buddies at AU again (and believe me, literature people are hilarious when they’ve been drinking), I wonder if my soul wouldn’t slowly start to shrivel up again from spending so much time behind the wheel of a practically-stationary vehicle during my commute. I wonder if my husband wouldn’t spend a few months dealing with the same kind of commute and come to the conclusion that we had made a terrible mistake moving back into the urban sprawl.

Most of all, I’m afraid that no matter where my husband and I decide to spend our future, one or the other of us won’t be truly happy with what we’ve chosen.