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let me eat steak

Nathan and I are friends with another couple who drive us crazy.  It's frustrating to be around them because they bicker all the time about work: 

"The baby needs changing." 

"I changed him last."

"But I gave him a bath!"

"TAKE THE DOG OUT!"

"I"M COOKING DINNER!  YOU TAKE THE DOG OUT!"

"Did you pick up my dry cleaning?"

"Why should I pick up your dry cleaning?  You never..."

It just goes on and on.  I can only imagine what sex must be like between them:

"It's your turn to be on top."

No, it's your turn. I was on top last time!"

"Yea, but I ..."

You get the picture!  This is a marriage disaster in the making.  Nathan and I adhere to very arcane sexual stereotypes which help us to avoid arguments over the workload.  I clean, cook, do laundry, and scrub dirty kids while he pays bills, cares for the cars and lawn, removes ticks, and takes out the trash.  Nonetheless, you'd be just as likely to see Nathan scrubbing a floor or me mowing the lawn if that's what needs doing at the time.  This weekend Nathan cleaned out the refrigerator because it was teeming with pharmaceutically-suited food.  And last night, Nathan, who can sleep through three little girls performing The Nutcracker on his bed at noon, climbed out of bed as he pushed me back into it every time one of our sick kids cried.

Even though our jobs are generally defined, neither of us would ever tell nor even expect the other to do something.  Nathan would never tell me to iron his shirt even though that's a task I always do. If he needed an ironed shirt, he would just get out the iron, hold the shirt up to the television or wall, and iron more wrinkles into it himself.  I would never tell Nathan to take out the trash if he'd forgotten.  I'd simply let it pile up and stink on the side of the house until the next week.

When I was first married, I was mystified by the expert advice you hear all the time, "marriage is hard work."  I used to wonder, what exactly is the work?  Give me a checklist or a job description and I'll do it!  It dawned on me last night, as Nathan and I worked side by side taking care of two miserable, sick kids, exactly what the hard work is.  It's the cleaning out the fridge, rocking the baby in the middle of the night, ironing shirts, scooping dog (and child) poop, and cooking salmon when you hate it work.  It's wanting your partner to have a little free time or fun or sleep more than you want it for yourself. 

I guess what I'm trying to say is that there are two kinds of people:  there's the person who takes the best piece of steak and there's the person who makes sure the best piece of steak goes to the person he loves.  The secret to a great marriage is to marry the guy who leaves the best steak for you, and to be the girl who only offers her guy the best piece of steak.   What I know for sure is that I am truly the luckiest girl around, because I married a vegetarian.      

jagermeister's my bitch

My husband Nathan had a night out on the town recently.  Without me.  He came home inebriated at three in the morning.  How many times have we seen this scene in a movie: man comes home very late and doesn't want to wake beautiful, selfless wife of four rotten kids.  Man takes off shoes and holds them dangling from one hand as he tiptoes through the semi-dark bedroom until he reaches the bed where he lowers himself gently onto its very edge without so much as a breath or a squeak? 

Not Nathan.

Nathan bangs his way across the bedroom floor, flops onto the bed, scrambles into my sleeping space, burrows his head in my pillow and blows his stinking, stale, twelve proof breath all over me.  Then he throws his ten pound please-don't-be-mad-at-me arm across my waist, hums a few bars of Sweet Caroline, and passes out instantly, his drunken snores ricocheting off the insides of my brain and ripping a hole in my ear drum.

He just can't help himself.  He's a happy drunk.

I, on the other hand, having already been asleep for four hours, was done for the rest of the night.  I lay there next to Bluto himself planning the kind of revenge that involves nudity, a feather, black shoe polish, a camera, and an e-mail campaign.

Have I mentioned to you people lately that I'm a saint?

take a leap of faith today

The best relationships in my life are the ones in which I have allowed myself to be vulnerable.  This doesn't come easily to me as I'm one to erect protective walls.  Being vulnerable means admitting weakness, need, mistakes, and fear.  A willingness to be vulnerable leads to a willingness to take risks.  Without risk, we can't have trust, and without trust there's no need to even step into the relationship ring.

I learned all of these lessons the hard way, as all the best lessons are learned, in my relationship with my husband Nathan.  It took me years of being cherished gently to learn how to be vulnerable.  Inevitably, in order to trust, I had to take a risk.  One of the reasons I think our relationship is still growing is because every day we both wake up and take a leap of faith.  Nathan's leap of faith inspires me to be the best person I can be, and I think that works both ways.

As I'm in the business now of raising menches, I've been trying to apply some of these life lessons to my relationships with my children.  Is it necessary for me to be vulnerable with them?  Do I construct walls between us? 

I recently spent some time talking to a very special teenager; as the job of raising menches requires constant research, I try to use primary sources whenever possible.  I hammered this kid with lots of what-makes-you-so-great questions.  He said four little words during our conversation that were truly illuminating: My parents trust me.

I've been thinking about this for days.  I use a metaphor with my children concerning trust that, until now, I've been quite proud of: Trust is like a light bulb; once it breaks, it doesn't light up again.  What a crappy metaphor!  If Nathan or I had adopted this attitude in our relationship, would we still be married today?  I'm quite sure I hammered the hell out of that light bulb the first year we were together!

The question I need to be asking myself as I reflect on my parenting, is not whether I am being vulnerable with my children, but am I allowing them to be vulnerable with me?  Am I leaving room for their weakness, need, mistakes, and fear?  Again, in my attempts to protect them, I've been building walls around my children.  I've been scaring, cajoling, and threatening them into staying behind those protective walls, when the most important thing I can do as a parent is to let them make their mistakes, take their blows, face their fears, while cherishing them gently.  I need to step back, stop trying to micro-manage, and let them be!

A better metaphor for trust might be that it's like a rechargeable battery; let it completely run down and you've got to put in the time recharging it.  This allows my children to be vulnerable, allows them to take risks (which still scare the hell out of me,) and will eventually lead to their own ability to trust, in themselves as well as in others. 

It's our continued leaps of faith as parents that inspire our children to be the menches we want them to be. I think the hardest part about taking the leaps is the knowledge that someday I'm going to touch down in an empty nest.        

friendship shadows

I had a best friend once.  We were as close as siblings.  We finished each other's sentences.  We laughed at each other's jokes before we even got to the punch lines.  We fit together like Tetris pieces.  But I was a girl and he was a boy.

For a long time this wasn't a problem.  Oh, a few boyfriends or girlfriends got jealous, but this just brought us selfish joy.  And then we each fell in love, for real, with other people, and it just didn't work anymore.

I remember a day the four of us spent together.  I could see the shadows of pain flickering in his wife's eyes every time I answered one of his sentences, and I knew I couldn't go on slipping into her shoes every time I felt like it simply because they were so comfortable and fit like skin.  It wasn't good for either of our marriages.

I haven't spoken to my best friend in nearly ten years and making that break was like cutting off my arm or my leg with a butter knife.  To this day I still feel the shooting pains in that phantom limb.

Can two heterosexual members of the opposite sex be best friends through other relationships?  Is it fair?

old love letters love on

Recently I was cleaning out a cedar chest and amidst the college papers and pressed christening gowns I found an old bundle of love letters from my first real love.  During our courtship I studied abroad for a semester, and throughout that six-month period this young man sent me dozens of letters.

For six months the blood continued to pump through my veins merely for the arrival of those letters. 

The letters are  now tied up with a ribbon that once held together a bouquet of flowers my old lover had given me for no reason at all.  Each letter feels as fragile and soft as the skin on an old woman's neck and the ink is slightly blurred from all the folding and unfolding.

I've lost the desire to fold and unfold those letters now.  I haven't opened them to read those memories in years, and I certainly don't want my children to find them when I'm gone and feel even the slightest pain over my love for a man other than their father.  As I hold them in my hands I consider tossing them out.

I feel my heart start to thump and beads of sweat dampen the hairs on my neck as I move the bundle toward my heaping trash bag.  And then I move the linen tablecloth and the crocheted baby sweaters and the box of baby teeth and I bury my treasure of vanity at the bottom of the orderly chest.

Why can't I let go of words that have faded from my life like sunlit dust? 

Because when I occupy the darker, more lonely corners of my life those tissue paper memories are my proof that I am lovable, that I have been loved fiercely by another, and they are tied up with my hope that somewhere in another dusty chest someone is cherishing a bundle of carefully folded love letters signed by me.