Frog Kissing

A dear friend and co-worker just married, which always makes one think, doesn't it? About marriage? About what you thought it was before you did it, and what it turns out to be?

There are days, I admit, when it's a good thing I took a vow to stay. Because somedays it takes a vow to keep you going. But after 12 years I've learned to wait it out, because we hit pockets of good -- really good -- when I'm bowled over by how great he is and how lucky I am.

I think it helps that I waited. I married at 33, didn't meet him until 30. And though sometimes we look at each other half in accusation and say "Where were you when I was looking for you?" the subtext being, "did you have to wait to find me until I was this tired?" (It does seem that people who marry young get a few more carefree years, or at least a good head start.) I also realize that I just wasn't ready to appreciate normal.

I had to date exotic, (ah yes, I recall my mother's frantic plea, "well, is your new boyfriend at least American?"), had to try on hyper-athletic, frustrated-artistic, funny-but-too-cutting, solicitous-to-the-point-of-creepy-and-controlling, and lots and lots of just 'enh. Next!'

It took all the weird extremes to make me appreciate normal. Steady, honest, salt-of-the-earth. As tolerant of my flaws as I am of his.

Which means, in the end, it's not that you kiss a lot of frogs until you find the handsome prince. If you're lucky, you kiss a lot of frogs until you find a frog you don't mind kissing.

Schadenmelon

Maybe it’s a Southern thing, but certain foods are forever associated with specific people in my mind. My sisters? Chocolate covered cherries. My grandfather? Lima beans. And I never eat watermelon without thinking of my mother.

She grew up on a farm in Georgia that had a big watermelon patch. Every summer as she cut a watermelon open for us (outdoors, in our oldest clothes, with a lot of paper towels, and a big old knife) she would tell us how, when she was little, she would go out into the field and just break open a whole watermelon. She would sit right there and just eat the middle, the very sweetest part, and walk away leaving the rind for the hogs. And then she would watch us as we dug out every bit of sweet flesh, down to the rind, scraping with the sides of our spoons to get every last bit of pink off until the last few bites were half-bitter. She would shake her head as though we were falling from grace before her very eyes.

So this weekend, as I sat down to a piece of ripe red melon, of course I heard my mother’s story in my head. And just when my spoon went beyond the very sweetest heart into the second-best-but-still-pink part I wondered why I still never stop where she did. I could. I’m a mom now. No one would tsk. But I never do.

And I wondered, what is the drive that pushes me past the perfect moment? Why do I keep eating the pie when I don’t really taste it anymore? Why stay in the tub until all the bubbles are gone? Are there people in the world who only want the cream? Who stop at the top? And what makes them tick that isn’t in my clockwork?

Is it optimism that this time what goes up might just keep going? Is it a need for contrast, the darkness that defines the light, the bitter that sets off the memory of the sweet? Or are some of us just too dense to know when to go?

I’ll bet the Germans have a word for it. They came up with schadenfreude, joy in someone else’s misfortune, surely they have something to sum up this propensity to pursue pleasure to the point of disappointment. Until I find it, I’m calling it schadenmelon. Sometimes the joy we remember is sweeter than the one we experience.

45 RPM

Most of the times that I claim to be glad to be aging, I’m lying.

Sure, age brings wonderful mental attributes. For instance, I seem a lot more patient. But actually I think that’s because I don’t move very quickly any more, so I just react to everything a lot less. It reads as patience, though, so I just take the credit.

And wisdom comes with age, y’know. But wisdom is easy. Wisdom is just experience someone else hasn’t had yet.

It’s true I have more influence with my clients than I did when I was younger, but that’s because they’re more or less the same age I am and we know we’d better stick together or the young will take over the world. They already have cooler phones than we do.

But the physical side of aging is a jolt. I don’t exercise much or stretch every day, so getting up is crinkier and slower. Exercise would help but every time I go (which is twice in the past year) I feel like crap for the next three days. Frankly, I don't have that kind of time.

But happily, over vacation, I discovered the one absolute joy of being older. You see, I went to visit my family in my hometown, and it being midsummer, we went to the country club pool to swim. I have been going to that pool since I was a teenager and I have hated it for 33 years. Nothing to do with the pool itself, mind you, or the club, it’s a lovely spot in the mountains and clear and cool and green all around. But the deck is ringed with chaises and all the time I was a teen those chaises were filled with girls I knew from school. And to my childish mind they were all judging me. So going to the pool was never about swimming or tanning or socializing. It was about sucking in my stomach. Especially on the way to the snack bar for one of those really runny cinnamon iced buns. I know, it’s a contradiction to feel fat in the tum while eating a sweet. But if you don’t know that particular combination of mixed feelings, you're not really human and you should go away now.

This time however, I went to the pool in a way I never had. I went as a 45 year old woman. And you know what I discovered? The joy of looking “good for my age.” There were my contemporaries – the same ones in whose eyes I had judged myself chubby and revolting. And they were every bit as old and tubby as I am. And suddenly it didn’t matter a damn. I hopped in the pool, I paddled about a bit and cooled off, I sat in the sun and chatted...and I went to the snack bar. But I didn’t hold my tummy in. And it felt so…free. Try it sometime, when you’re 45. It’s quite nice.

The unperfect husband

I had a very interesting conversation the other day with a multi-millionaire businesswoman. We were talking about the work/marriage balance and she started in on the whole 'he doesn't help around the house' yada yada. But I just don't buy it.
Sure, as a roommate, my husband is more likely to leave a chocolate cake plate on the end table, more likely to forget we have a hamper when his socks have just hit the floor. But considering what his place looked like when I first met him... (imagine a table chucked high with every key, tool, newpaper, roll of duct tape, CD collection, empty snack bag with four crumbs in the bottom and twice-weekly pizza box a guy can accumulate in three months. In the middle of the living room. The bath tub? Thick, grey, sticky. Like one of those super-scum tester tubs on an infomercial. I have to stop thinking about it now or my breakfast will back up.) ...he's evolved into a miracle of neatness. And he's got the far side of the bedroom so mostly I just don't look.

So my point is, I don't expect him to be the person who notices the magazine pile needs sorting or the jackets are colonizing the comfy chair. He just wouldn't. If you buy into the whole indignant neatnik wife act you could get and stay really ticked off. But I look at it like I look at my office staff. I wouldn't ask my bookkeeper to be my art director -- it's not her skill set. Picking up and straightening up isn't in the hub's skill set. It is, very much, part of mine. And as a wise friend of mine pointed out, 'hey, you'd pick up the clothes and file the papers anyway, even if you lived alone. It's who you are. You can't blame your partner if it's not who they are.' And it's not like I didn't have ample warning.

But of course, it wouldn't be fair if he did nothing. So what do I get in exchange, in the marital/housekeeping tug of war? He's an amazing handyman. He just rebuilt one end of the beach house where the foundation had rotted away, re-channelled the plumbing, welded the new pipes, installed a new door, re-sided the house and built a deck onto it. Alone. In two weekends.

While he was busy we talked about dyeing the white cushions in the living room to cover the stains. I brightened up at the thought of my potential craft project until he pointed out, 'honey, I just can't see you pulling it off. You'll get bored halfway through and I'll have to finish. And I don't have time right now.' And he's right. I am the quick picker-upper, but I'm not your sustained-well-executed-project person. It's not my skillset. Halfway through baking cookies I get bored and wander off until someone smells them and asks me if I'm making something. "Oh! Yeah!" I laugh as I run to the kitchen just in time. I only manage to make the kid's pajamas because I cut them out one night and three months later remember to sew them while the pattern still fits. And pjs are easy because no one sees the hem.

It's a great thing living with someone who isn't perfect. It means I don't have to be perfect, either.