Posts tagged love

Every night we read one chapter in a book before we go to sleep. They’re usually of the Christian-Marriage-Relationship sort, but last night Dan wanted the Christian-Marriage-Relationship-Sex one. Whoo! He had enough of the Dobsons and their old married people blah blah blah and was ready for something a bit more…interesting. I groaned and he snickered as he grabbed my phone and hit the Kindle app, all ready for his naughty bit of education for the evening. His face quickly fell as he read the chapter: Knowing Who You Are.

Wow. We had come to the (what turned out to be one of the most important) chapter in the sex book where they talked about husbands stating who they are, what they want in life and how to share it with their wives so they can be a better lover. Whether he knew it or not, this was exactly what we both needed to hear last night. By the time he had finished reading, we had talked a lot, thought more and even sniffled a bit. The “mood” was quelched (momentarily), but let me just say that I really like this book.

What Wives Wish Their Husbands Knew About Sex
Don’t let the boring, churchy cover/title fool you. It’s real, honest and written by guys who know what they’re talking about. Which isn’t to say the Dobsons are clueless by any means, but unlike them, this book is really in-touch with the modern Christian guy and guys in general, and certainly doesn’t tiptoe around sex in Christian marriage. It’s usually really hard for us to read sex books in general because there isn’t any grounding for the act itself—-it’s just animal instinct and pleasure, and reading it leaves us feeling a bit nauseous. Not to sound like an Amazon review (too late!), but finding this book has been a breath of fresh air because it’s meant that the giant sex guide (or The Big Book of Smut as I call it) that we got as a wedding gift gets to stay under the bed.

And these guys not only talk about sex and love, but what makes a good lover. How to build your relationship with your wife so you’re happier as a couple and therefore honestly happier in bed. I can’t even count the times I’ve stopped Dan mid-sentence to say, “That’s exactly what’s going on with us right now! Listen to these guys!” It’s just really awesome how many good conversations this book has stirred up, and I can tell Dan has formed a kind of respect for these authors, more so than any of the others we’ve read so far.

So even though I might not know what all I want my husband to know about sex right now, we have a reference so we’re both learning together. And if my husband ever complains about the lack of “action” in our literature, I’ll let him know he’s more than welcome to dig around under the bed and wrestle the smut book away from the spiders. (Hopefully they’re the only ones who’ll ever have to look at it again once we’re finished!)

Most relationships tend to feel like carnival rides, with the ups and downs and whirling about. But as I get to know him, it has been feeling more like one those scrambler-type contraptions where the arms swing out wildly, thrusting the revolving cars in one direction and tossing it wildly back again in the other. When you ride with a friend, you eventually get squashed up against the wall, and while it’s a bit awkward and feels like you might have broken a rib, it’s still lots of fun and you both want to do it again. But in this case, he’s usually riding by himself and I’m the one left standing at the gate, watching as his car swings by and we’re close enough to touch…and then he’s gone again.

It’s like he doesn’t know how to not distance himself times. He forms his everyday conversation with articles and facts because growing up, no one asked him what he thought or how he felt or what he wanted, so it doesn’t even occur to him to talk like that to others. He’ll talk about silly things he’s done and elements of games and shows and books he likes, but never about his life. Never about serious things or sad things or dreams he has for us as a couple…just generic banter about things that interest him. But he doesn’t realize how much he interests me. I want to know about his thoughts and his heart. If I wanted to know what Joe Schmo wrote about such and such, I’d look for it and read it myself. I understand that guys usually aren’t big sharers, but it helps me know he’s aware of things when he goes beyond what he’s read online today. It is a sign he’s thinking of himself and about and us and our future. When you pay attention to the world around you, talking about it should come naturally, and since I know he hasn’t been walking around with his eyes closed for 27 years, I want to hear proof, not secondhand stories!

Which is why dinner surprised me last night. With an odd, uncharacteristic creak, I saw his old shell of facts and articles slipping off his back. He asked me what I thought on a facebook post that was causing controversy, which started up a true conversation, where I talked and he responded, and he talked and I responded.  We discussed religion and our childhood and our views of the world growing up, and after months of talking to an Internet search engine who loved me, I was finally talking to a real live person. He’s done it before, but it’s so rare that it always takes me by surprise and leaves me wanting more.

But it takes a long time for him to trust someone enough to talk like that. He’s like an Ent in more ways than I care to count; slow to talk, slow to decide, slow move, even slow to eat. You’d never think he has ADHD, really. But that’s my husband. He loves me, but he’s been hurt by people he’s loved in the past so I suppose it makes sense that he’s slow opening up. I’ll just have to have patience, ho hurrr, and show him love as much as I can when he gets close—-as he did last night—-so that one day the ride might be able to slow down and I can get on, and we can lovingly crush one another’s ribs as we’re flung through life together.

The great thing about getting married at a little-known park a few blocks from your house is that you can go there anytime you like and it will still be your wedding place. Churches are pretty, but 10,000 people might get married there in its lifetime and they will go there every Sunday and the industrial Berber carpet and padded chairs will forget you were ever there in all the traffic—-if such things can retain memories at all.  But with a park, the chances of anyone else getting married in that exact same sandy, ant infested patch of Bermuda grass that you did are very slim. The trees and earth, even in their winter slumber, will remember you and will secretly belong to that moment forever.

Which is why last night, on the date marking our second month of marriage, we walked together to the park. We exchanged lace and suits for puffy down coats and hats, but I had stuffed my grandma’s wedding handkerchief in my pocket—-a little token that I had with me walking down the aisle in October. When we got to the place, we split up and he took his spot beneath the trees and I came down the hill in the dark, white lace handkerchief draped humorously over my green stocking cap. The park was silent and dark and geese squawked somewhere out of sight. Nothing hinted of a windy, warm October afternoon 2 months ago, but in the silence I could imagine the red and cream paper lanterns swaying in the trees, sweet, sad fiddle music and the rows of smiling people watching my dad and I make our way up the bumpy runner. Dan would be waiting for me then, dressed in a sandy suit, untidy Dennis the Menace hair gleaming like the halo of a 6 year old in a Christmas play. Tears streamed from his ice-blue eyes and his smile radiated with every ounce of happiness a person could contain. Our pastor’s son would preside with words of wisdom that we would repeat, hardly hearing them….

I was still only halfway down our darkened “aisle” before Present Dan, at the altar spot, reminded me that I needed to trip a little bit on the invisible runner if we were going to make this legit. (Hurrah for being eternally ungraceful!) So after an over-dramatic stumble, I walked up to my husband of 2 months and we happily skipped all the ceremony bits we could barely recall. Flipping the handkerchief up, he went straight to the part where he could kiss the bride, with only geese and raccoons to cluck if it went overlong.

We stood there in the frigid December air for what seemed like ages. The park shelter that once held a wedding party was once again dirty and inhabited by the brown paper bags of hobos’ empty whiskey bottles. The small patch of forest that had walled the place into seclusion had a gash cut into it by a newly finished road that let in ambulance sirens from the hospital across the river. The stupid neon sewer pipes from the McLean/Central intersection pierced the once tree-lined horizon like the tacky skyline of a Star Trek planet. The grass where we stood was dead, but then, it was dead when we got married too. We had changed in the past 2 months, but not as much as our surroundings it seemed. Still, it was our spot, and with or without an overpaid videographer, I’m sure I’ll remember how it looked that day forever.

*

We slowly walked back down the aisle, extremities half-frozen and ready for the warmth of apartment and bed. Halfway home, we passed Dan’s old apartment complex and a part of me still twinged with the old familiar fear that he might have to go back to that place and leave me for the night—-but we kept walking. Christmas lights turned unremarkable Craftsman bungalows into fairytale cottages and we longed for each one as we passed. At 11:00 we reached the front steps and the cat greeted us noisily as we locked the front door. We brushed our teeth and fell into bed with the devotional book my mom gave us. Between the dishes and tacos, French movies, weird British sodas and long walks, that night encompassed married life as we had hoped it would all the months prior to October 2nd, 2010.

***

Admittedly, two months is hardly a landmark, and today only marks our first year together. Still, something tells me it’s a good idea to stockpile memories in writing why they are still fresh, and gauging from the length of this post, I’d say they are ripe for the picking. Marriages are a bit like parks, after all, and we will go through winters and the color will leave the world for a bit. But when we’re standing together in the dark and cold, we can still walk to that patch of grass in a half-forgotten park where once upon a time, on a golden Autumn day, two stories ended and one story began, “And they lived….” And the earth will be there to help us remember.

The thing I’ve realized about getting married is that it’s like NOTHING you’ve ever experienced, and it definitely doesn’t feel like watching a wedding in a movie. No, this is a whole new beast. But we humans like generalizing things based on what we know, so I’ll try anyway.

Five months away, getting married does feel like watching a romcom. You associate with the general lighthearted excitement, drama and romance that the quirky blond experiences prior to the wedding, but in the end, the credits roll and it’s not you and those few emotions are all you can associate with that great event so far away.

Two months to go, however, getting married starts to feel a lot like watching a Wes Anderson drama or some gritty indie flick with weird, raw emotions, fears, longings and a whole bunch of other crap you don’t really want to understand. People cry and fight and die and sometimes things don’t go happily ever after in the end. And while the movie invokes deeper emotions than the romcom, it’s still a stringy brunette marrying Owen Wilson, and it’s easy to fall back into the comforts of Romcom dreamland after the gritty nightmare fades a little. However, something much bigger is looming ominously overhead, and whatever it is won’t let you sleep in romantic idealism long.

Four days away, that’s when you start feeling like someone plucked the stringy brunette out of the gritty indie drama and shoved you up on the screen and conveniently forgot to give you the script. You still sort of feel like the Romcom Bride; your hair got screwed up and your face looks vaguely like a pizza, but you’re definitely not in that genre anymore, Toto. Families are selfish and filled with hate and they won’t come happily coming together in the end. They’re doing construction by your ceremony and the park isn’t quite as pretty as you remembered it. Money is scarce and your fiance is stressed to the max.

And hell, it’s you getting married! You are going to be living with this random man you’ve picked out of millions and you will have to choose to love him every time he talks about video games instead of real life. It’s funny when the guy talks about nerdy things and embarrasses the girl in the romcoms, but it’s a little different in real life. You and he have to work to make this work because life won’t fade to black after he kisses you and swings you around in front of a happy, clapping audience.

No, getting married is nothing like anything you will ever experience sitting in the dark of the matinee. Two days to go and all passivity vanishes when you realize that you’ll be giving your very heart and soul to someone outside of your warm, protective shell self, and that’s dangerous and risky. But when I look at him and see the warmth, love and loyalty in his soft blue eyes, I have no doubt that he will wrap my heart in a blanket and carry it as carefully as a clumsy, nerdy puppy-man can. I know he might stumble, and I’m sure he might chew on my nerves a from time to time, but through it all, he will be doing everything he can never to drop me. Just knowing that makes all the worries, fears and doubts roll away like the names of stringy brunette actresses and their fade to black lives.

So I say, let’s do this marriage thing. No more fears, no more doubts—-just happy stomach butterflies. I’m ready to live and no amount of pessimism is going to ruin our fun.

Today I’m blind. My glasses disappeared between taking them off last night and waking up this morning, which makes zero sense in my mind. But then again, it is me and I’m capable of losing just about everything, everywhere, anytime.

That being said, am so glad I have another pair of eyes who can find all my lost things, (phones, keys, purses, pizza pans, everything in my fridge that isn’t on the front of the shelf, and my senses, usually), and if worse comes to worse, tells me he’ll find it later and drives me to work and gives me his lunch.

I don’t know how I can be loved so much.