by bsquared5@aol.com | Oct 4, 2018 | Thoughts
In the primitive playgrounds of my childhood, my father pushed the hot metal merry-go-round at breakneck speeds, my brother and I shrieking and holding on for dear life. We learned to hold tight to the nearest pole, arms and legs wrapped like baby monkeys around our feeble anchor. Had we let go, we would’ve been flung into the whirling scenery, small human projectiles. When the spinning stopped, the background kept going, and we staggered like diminutive drunks, our arms akimbo attempting to balance.
That’s the best feeling I can conjure for what it’s been like for the past few months. In the space of one summer, we had two graduations (one from college, one from high school), a wedding, an out-of-state move, and finally, packed our last fledgling off to college. When that merry-go-round stopped spinning and the busyness subsided, we blinked at each other in the quiet, clutching hands for stability. Our nest of four had suddenly become a party of two.
The old spots I used to rely on to prevent dizziness in the spin of parenthood were missing, and for several weeks a sense of disorientation and unease was unshakable. We knew the house would be quieter, but we didn’t anticipate the other changes that made us feel shifty and uncomfortable, like wearing a sweater a few sizes too big.
The contents of the pantry and fridge changed. No one drank the milk each morning (or early afternoon) with cereal, so we no longer keep the familiar half-gallon on hand. In fact, entire aisles at the grocery store are now obsolete. Obviously the diapers and baby products were abandoned long ago, but off the list went the requisite teenage boy snacks. We notched up the a/c upstairs, the bedrooms uninhabited. We only need to climb the steps when we need a suitcase from the bonus closet, so might as well save on the electric bill. It takes longer to amass a full load of laundry, and the dog needs extra walks because the boy who could always be counted on to play tug-of-war or chase isn’t blowing off steam in the afternoons after school.
We still liked each other, the spouse and I. We had to say that out loud every now and then as we renegotiated and adjusted our routines and rhythms. Our dance steps were a little off–we stepped on each other’s toes as our expectations of ourselves and each other shifted. Our conga line had become a tango, and the tempo had changed. Admittedly, there was a bit of tip-toeing around, eyeing each other sideways and trying to gauge moods and emotional availability. This is the same thing that happened when they were newborns. Children up-end your life both coming and going, it seems.
After twenty plus years of mentally juggling four lives, my attention was my own once more, and it was strangely unsettling. “Give me a week,” I announced. “Of sitting in this before you need me for anything.” I wanted to feel the house’s stillness, mull things over in my mind about our next chapter, and yes, be sad over losing the way things had been for so long. So I did, and I was. But my curiosity about what lay around the corner and my pride and excitement for the paths our kids were on burned away the fog of melancholy soon enough. They’d launched, and the two of us back at headquarters were still full of pluck and vinegar.
A Scrabble tile rack with a handful of letters sits on our bookshelf. I use it to spell out one-word attitude reminders like “joy,” “kindness,” and “love.” For the longest time, I’d place a word for the week and come back to find it had been rearranged into some garbled nonsense or, more often, an “alternate” word choice. Kindness became “dinkness,” for example. This, of course, was my son’s doing: his idea of subversive hilarity. What even IS that? I’d cry in mock outrage. We’d go back and forth at it, each of us changing the word and seeing how long it would take for the other to discover the sabotage.
When we moved this eager sapling boy into his dorm earlier this year, he got the last word. I was too busy checking off lists as we packed to notice the Scrabble defacement. It was days later, when my eyes wandered to the shelf as I waited for my coffee to brew, that I had to laugh. He came home briefly the other day and I caught him smirking in the kitchen.
“What?”
“You’re not very observant, mom.” He glanced at the shelf. I smiled up into his triumphant blue eyes.
“Oh, I noticed it. I just thought I should leave it there.” I got a rare hug. Perhaps he felt, too, how the familiar house had changed in his absence, how the buzz of activity had lulled to a low hum.
In the days to come, as we enjoy our new routine and menus and discover this new rhythm in our roomier nest, that tile rack will remain unchanged. It’s a good reminder to us to keep laughing, even when it stings a little, and to treat one another gently. No matter how strong we are, there are times when we can all use a little human dinkness.
by bsquared5@aol.com | Jun 29, 2016 | Thoughts
If you don’t count song lyrics, I have a short list of things I’ve learned by heart: the 23rd Psalm, a brief poem from my childhood, the Preamble to the Constitution, and Antony’s soliloquy from Julius Caesar. Oh, and the Pledge of Allegiance. Because ‘Merica.
Ancient Greeks used to believe the heart was the seat of intelligence, emotion, and memory. In some ways, that may be true. In many cases, people who have had heart transplants report having at least temporary memories of things that happened to the donor.
This week, we are celebrating our 25th anniversary, and while we may not have exchanged hearts in a literal sense, we do share decades of memories. If such a thing can be true of people and not just poems and pledges, I know him by heart. The date of our ceremony is engraved on the rings we wear, but we started learning about each other about 7 years before that, essentially growing up together since meeting in high school.
On a stifling hot June afternoon, we got married under a canopy of trees in a state park across the street from my parents’ house. After the promises and shy public kiss, we walked hand-in-hand down the aisle to the Beatles singing “Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I’m 64?”. I was barely 22. He was in the middle of vet school. He had hair. I had a waistline.
We had exactly one fabulous week at the beach, where we both got alarmingly sunburned and had to drive 10 hours home trying not to let our skin touch the seats of the car. Good times.
Cue the sound of crashing expectations. Those first years were sweet, but tough. Tuition and car insurance led to cereal for dinner occasionally. Late nights studying for vet school made for lonely channel surfing instead of foot rubs and cuddles. Stress from work came home with me. We fought. Sometimes badly. This was a far cry from hours of sharing dreams and giggles on the phone at night and going out on dates each week. Now we shared finances, family, furniture. Everything, it seemed, had to be negotiated, compromised.
Eventually, we leaned in. His infinite patience and our shared sense of humor buoyed us. That, and the fact that we treated the union as a third party, something separate from ourselves that needed care and attention. Looking at our wedding photo back when we were fresh and doe-eyed, if I could have shared some wisdom with the Young Us, it might include the following.
- Congratulations! You are now a complete family. Notice children have nothing to do with this, so when people ask you when you plan to start a family, tell them you’ve already checked that off. If later on you feel the need to procreate, rock on. But you’ll just be expanding the family you’ve already made. When the kids leave home, I still got you, babe.
- Your spouse cannot and should not fill all your needs or empty spaces. While you might make a great team and complement each other in all the right places, you still need friends, interests, and soul-filling that have nothing to do with one another. (Ditto for children, by the way.) It’s not in the marriage job description for him or her to make you happy.
- Have a focus outside yourselves that you can look outward toward together. I’m not talking about a weekly trip to Home Depot for the latest DIY project. I mean a common service to your community/world at large, so you can remember that there’s a whole lot going on outside your little bubble of two. Pray together.
- Learn how to fight. Even if you can’t imagine a cross word in your lovey-dovey state of bliss, it will come, and arguments shouldn’t shake your whole foundation. You’ll disagree about something–in-laws, money, sex, division of labor, children, or asinine stuff like rinsing out the cereal bowl or peeing with the door open–and if you know each other’s battle mode and can see beyond the conflict, the casualties are fewer.
- Assume the best. Beyond the morning breath, snoring, hair in the drain, and the way she sings off-key is the person you chose for better or worse. Remember their best self. Don’t see them as they really are, see them as their best version–Spouse 2.0– and stockpile your grace. Hope like crazy they’re doing the same for you. You like someone because. You love someone although.
- If you got married for safety or security, it’s too late for a refund. You should’ve read the fine print. Love is not safe. Human love is never pure or perfect. It comes with truckloads of imperfection. Love like this is the biggest risk out there. If life is kind and nobody gets hit by a bus, the payoff is golden. You get to be those adorable old people that everybody envies walking hand-in-hand in the park. You’ll hold up your hair and he’ll automatically zip up the back of your dress. You’ll straighten his tie and admire how good he looks in a suit.
- Being a person is hard sometimes. When you lose a job, or a parent, or a child, or if there are surgeries and procedures and prognoses involved, hang on. Love is not the honeymoon at the beach. Love is the roof sailing through the wind in the tornado, and the two of you huddling together in the closet, not letting go. Be each other’s weight-bearing wall.
- Find other people who are doing it right and copy them. Don’t make it harder by trying to do it all by yourselves. Ask for help if you need it. Sometimes an objective voice is critical.
- Forgive. Forgive lots of times, and then forgive some more. Kindness goes a long way. Speak life to each other. The world is hard. Be each other’s safe place.
So, the Preamble, Psalm 23, a poem, a bit from Shakespeare, and Bob. The things I know by heart. Happy Silver. 
by bsquared5@aol.com | Jan 24, 2015 | Thoughts
When you live where we do, you get used to hearing tornado warnings on TV, usually in the spring. I’ve lost count of how many tornadoes have swept through our area with the accompanying hail storms, wind damage, and insurance claims. The weather man’s refrain is stuck in my head like an 80’s song. “Find your safe place. Go to an interior room with no windows. Cover your head.” For now, that place is our closet, where many times we have crammed in beneath the hanging pants with our sleepy children and uncooperative pets in the middle of the night.
Some friends of ours relocated here from out west, and they recounted their reaction the first time they heard the unfamiliar urgent warnings. As they should, they took it seriously and huddled in the bathtub together, hunkering down. “Cover your head,” the weather man said, so they earnestly scrambled to follow directions. They ended up making their children wear bike helmets while they each donned 5-gallon buckets from Home Depot. I always chuckle when I remember their story, imagining the newspaper photos and puzzled looks from the authorities if their house had been swept away and they’d been found that way, staggering out from the wreckage topped with buckets.
In the movie Unbroken, depicting the incredible life of Louis Zamperini, there’s a scene where he and two other men from his unit are stranded on a life raft in the middle of the ocean. As they’re floating along with the sharks, figuring their odds of survival are slim, one of his buddies says to Louis, “I’m glad it was you.” If your plane is going down and you’re faced with many lean days in the middle of nowhere, you hope you’re paired with someone decent, level-headed, and strong.
I think of myself as a realist, which is why when it comes to relationships I tend to discard Nicholas Sparks and other sappy fodder. In my experience, real life tends to be more like Louis’ lifeboat or the tornado closet. Don’t get me wrong. I believe in butterflies and a twinkle in the eye. Even, perhaps, in love at first sight. But pheromones and weak knees aren’t going to get you through the storms. And as anyone who’s been married more than a couple of years can tell you, butterflies have a short life span.
I always thought the traditional marriage vows should be more specific. Maybe if they were, fewer people would actually marry for superficial reasons. Instead of:
I, (name), take you (name), to be my (wife/husband), to have and to hold from this day forward, for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish; from this day forward until death do us part,
How about:
I, (name), take you (name), to be my (wife/husband), to have and to hold from this day forward, through infertility, miscarriages, and the loss of a child; through late nights worrying about a sick baby or a wayward young adult; through special needs and learning disabilities; through bankruptcy and job loss; through bad investments and mounting debt; through annoying habits, hair loss, and weight gain; through scary diagnoses, surgery, and recovery; through loss of grandparents, parents, and others; through bad decisions and character flaws; through dementia and cancer, stubbornness and selfishness. I pledge to love and cherish you, to be faithful to you no matter what, and to hold you up when you’re weak, scared, or too tired to go on. Forever and ever, Amen.
In the movies, they say, “You’re not the person I thought you were.” They say, “You’ve become someone else.” They say, “I’ve fallen out of love with you.” Unless they’re stuck in the ridiculous body of a 100-year-old sparkly vampire, of course the person you marry will change. Don’t you hope they will? If you’re not different at 50 than you were at 20, then you are stagnating. If life, loss, and parenthood doesn’t change you, then you’re more of a statue than a human being. Newsflash: real marriage is not like the movies. It doesn’t wrap up after an intense star-gazing courtship and end happily at the altar while the credits roll. That’s just the start. You’re fresh off the assembly line and have just hit the road. Once the warranty runs out, you can expect the new smell to wear thin and a couple of dings to appear on the bumpers. That doesn’t mean it’s all a big mistake or you’ve missed your destiny. It may just mean that you’re doing it right.
Gold, like that ring on your left hand, is a soft metal. It bends. It is easily hammered, forged, changed.
Long-lived, married love is not the butterflies, although they’re there in the distance. It’s often brilliant and easy, comfortable and true. It’s a choice you make every day to stay. To be faithful, to make an effort, to be available, to help each other grow. It’s something you cobble together, every day, day after day, by choice and sometimes by sheer force of will as you grit your teeth and bear down. And if you do that, over and over, day after day, then sometimes, in moments that may startle you, the butterflies revisit. They alight when you see your husband patiently helping with math homework or when he fills the car up with gas, when your wife rocks and sings to the baby, when you see him decked out in a great suit, or when she’s curled up asleep on the pillows. If all you’re after is a constant stream of giggles and stolen kisses, then you’re a string of affairs waiting to happen.
You can’t always predict the way a person will react to disappointment or tragedy. But watch the way they handle a traffic jam, plans that changed at the last minute, lost keys, or a phone call to Comcast. Witness their response to someone else’s sadness or bad news. Is there compassion? Patience? Empathy? Even-temperedness? If necessary, would you want to be in a lifeboat with them? If you heard the weatherman say “Hunker down, folks and find your safe place,” would it be with them?
Sometimes when we’re dating we may be so busy star-gazing and dreaming about the warm, sandy beach honeymoon and the picnics with flowers and wine, that we forget about the likelihood of hurricanes. And sometimes, despite our best efforts, we can be blindsided by a tsunami that devastates everything in its path and leaves us clinging to a tree for dear life. Sadly, some storms, with some people, just cannot be survived.
After being married only a few years, I once said to a group of women that your husband (spouse) kind of has to love you, they’re like family. A woman I’d just met corrected me sharply. “Oh, no, they don’t,” she said. “You were born into your family. Your spouse has a choice to make.” Her husband had recently left her. Take away lesson: for better or for worse, but never, never for granted.
At the end of our wedding ceremony, my husband and I walked down the aisle to “When I’m 64” by the Beatles. Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I’m 64? We have quite a few more years before we hit that mark, but so far I’ve always been able to look over and say, “I’m glad it’s you” when the high winds have started to howl. Sometimes we may look silly stumbling along with buckets on our heads, but I’m grateful that we are each other’s safe place.
by bsquared5@aol.com | Aug 29, 2014 | Thoughts
My best friend’s parents will have been married for 50 years this month. Fifty years. Living side by side while they jockeyed through careers, children, parents, finances. Fifty years of tolerating, compromising, communicating, sighing, partnering, and in their case, laughing. “Aren’t they lucky?” you might think, but luck has nothing to do with it.
I first met them when they were about 20 years into their journey, having moved from Ohio to Tennessee. By that time, they already had three girls and a boy, ranging from high school to kindergarten. Their home was full of noise, laundry, chore divisions, and chaos. I loved it.
I’m from a big family too—I’m the fourth of five—but by the time I met the Bettler’s, my older siblings had already left home and we were down to just my younger brother and me. Our house by comparison was very, very quiet. We had easy dinners for four each evening after school, while they had Kitchen Productions—each family member playing a role in the cast of some hilarious unscripted play that unfolded nightly, with multiple “exit stage lefts” as one left to go to some sports practice, another had to finish an assignment, and the others argued over who was supposed to cook the side dish and who was supposed to load the dishwasher. Glorious.
He was a chemist and she was going back to teaching now that her nestlings were all school aged. The way they complemented each other was obvious. She organized. He guided and coached. She planned and nurtured. He listened and offered comic relief. A well-oiled machine. I thought of them as my second parents since their oldest daughter and I were best friends, and we were at their house so often that I’m surprised I didn’t find my name on the duty roster.
After I left for college and they moved up north, I didn’t see much of the Bettler’s anymore, but they were always in the back of my mind as I kept up through my best friend. I got the annual informative Christmas card like everyone else, followed the multiple marathons that Bud ran—still runs!—and always looked forward to seeing pictures of him in whatever goofy hat he decided to don for the latest race. Barb was proud of her students and the Odyssey of the Mind competitions she headed on their behalf. And the grandchildren! They multiplied quickly over the years and were scattered all over the place, necessitating frequent trips to spoil them all just right.
When I lost my own mother too early—she was 55 and my parents had been married 33 years—I immediately thought of Barb as “mom.” Whether she knew it or not, when I had my own children and started juggling life, I often thought of her and her family and asked myself what Barb would do in a given situation. I was at the end of my rope at one point, wrestling with worry over my teenaged daughter, and I wrote asking her advice. She didn’t get ruffled or act appalled at the ruin I’d apparently made of my child. In her calm, sweet way she made me feel like I was “doing ok” and that it would all work out, which it did. When I found her note in the mailbox that day, I cried all the way through it, feeling as though my own mom had been able to give me a reassuring hug and listening ear.
A few years back, our family was on a quest of visiting all 50 of the United States. We were able to stop in at their house in Delaware and spend a warm, hospitable evening as we checked off another state. Being the Steve Martin of Granddad’s, Bud knew just what to do to engage my son, Ben. He treated my children like interesting, intelligent people in their own right, and Ben, now almost 15, still refers to that visit and the cool joke book that Mr. Bettler gave him.
Only 5% of couples make it to their 50th anniversary. For some, like my parents, the C-word dashes their chances. For others, they get married at a later age and time just doesn’t allow them to make it that long. But in the majority of cases, most people just give up. They let the tedium of everyday life and the stress of children, money, jobs, and car trouble make them forget that once upon a time they actually liked each other.
What’s so readily apparent when you meet the Bettler’s, whether today or over 30 years ago, is that they actually DO like each other. They always took time to work on their marriage in spite of life’s busyness, treating their union like one of their children, needing to be fed, cared for, and nurtured. They are true spiritual partners, helping each other grow to be better, serving together in their church and community with the Stephen Ministry and other avenues. Mentally, they are equal and active, always learning new skills or developing new talents like photography. They share books. Physically, they stay active together, running or ball room dancing or traveling. Emotionally, they support one another, whether through retirement, the death of a parent or the birth of a grandchild. They’re social butterflies, meeting new people and finding other people interesting. It’s no wonder that they have been able to reach the fifty-year mark, really. They have been the perfect fit for each other in every area that matters. Because they’ve been solid, they’ve been able to raise four successful, independent, thoughtful children who are decent and good.
My husband and I are not quite to the quarter-century point in our marriage. We often look to the Bettler’s as an example of where we’d love to be in another 25+ years—still enjoying each other, still active and happy, and still working on tolerating, communicating, and appreciating each other, able to laugh often, especially at ourselves. We have a sign above our bed that bears a line by Robert Browning: “Grow old along with me, the best is yet to be.” Bud and Barb have lived that out in their life together, and it’s been beautiful to watch. I look forward to the Christmas cards and their tales of family and joy for many more years!
Happy Anniversary!
