It Is Accomplished

Still can’t believe that you two are now just friends

You’ve got no lover and he’s free at weekends

I know he said when you first met

That you must always play the hand you get

But you're two years on a losing streak

Get back together

Get back together

It's something you could do next week

Get back together

Get back together

Why don't you get back

Try to get back together?

From the song “Get Back Together”

by Everything but the Girl

My husband moved back in yesterday. With my roommate older brother not yet really moved out, currently traveling in Europe with his two kids, and Hurricane Helene barreling down on us, causing David’s flights to Milwaukee (weekend Packer game and early celebration for his mother’s 101st bday!) to be cancelled, rebooked, then cancelled again, it’s not exactly ideal circumstances. 

Yet I recall when we first moved in together loooong ago in late Fall of 1997, it was also not ideal. We chose to take that big step way back then not necessarily because we were ready (though we had been dating each other exclusively for over a year) but mostly because my job situation was changing and I needed a place to live. In other words, it was a major relationship decision made largely for convenience. OR you could say we were “trusting the flow” as we later came to frequently say about how best to navigate life. You pick! 

This time again, we may not be ready - or I am, my attitude is “let’s rip off the bandaid and try cohabitating again already!” FFS but he’s been weirdly reluctant after convincing me to stay in it, had said he thought we should take a little more time - but here we are. And as he stressed about his storm-botched travel plans I’ve been a help and a comfort to him. Which is, at the end of the day, all we really want from our life partners right? To be a refuge from the storms of life for each other! Well, maybe not ALL we want, and there is the rub. 

Still, I can’t help but feel a certain sense of accomplishment and happiness, somewhat tempered by the chaotic circumstances. As we together put back up on the wall our beautiful wedding certificate, featured in the photo here.

Within the last year I lamented (probably more than once) to a friend (probably more than one friend): WHY is this relationship so HARD, why does this seem so much harder for ME than for anyone else? (meaning, this whole marriage business) Can you hear the whine in the words? My friend promptly responded that there was at least one simple answer to that question - because I didn’t leave. Until I did, for about two weeks, and then decided to try again. Because I stayed in it.

For good or for ill, I never fully gave up, have continued to stick with this marriage and maybe that is where the sort of weird sense of accomplishment comes from today. And maybe it’s all wrong and of course it can still go sideways, but for now, I hold on and feel hope, in this safe harbor of a relationship, while the storm rages on outside.

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You can’t see bread rise, but it rises. If you could watch a lump of dough in the time-lapse photography so prevalent in the schoolroom filmstrips of my youth, you would see it rise. If you took time-lapse photos of a marriage, what would you see? Mutual diminishment? One partner slowly devouring the other? A mere string of fights and fucks, signifying nothing? Or would you see something strong, growing slowly? ~ Claire Dederer Poser: My Life in Twenty-Three Yoga Poses (page 243)

The Big “Bangs!” Day and The Big D

(Trivial topic Trigger alert) 

About a week and a half ago, I got bangs! This MAJOR hair style decision was a long time in the making, and I probably had some extra trepidation because the last time I made such a big change to my hair, I chopped it completely off and pretty much immediately regretted it. 

I’m not known for big hairstyle changes and I haven’t had much success in this area so I felt weirdly brave doing it. Approaching it I kept thinking of it as the “Big Bangs! Day” - making myself laugh and feel very clever.

I’m happy to say that this time I did not regret it! Although it is taking some getting used to, because with my completely un-straight hair texture bangs are a bit unruly (like me) and a bit unpredictable (like life). And at first it felt like nothing so much as a small furry animal sitting on my forehead. Every day they turn out a bit different (again, like life).

So much wisdom to be drawn from a single haircut!

(And-now-for-something-completely-serious alert)

So.much.Death.

Since my mother died back in April of 2022, it’s like she opened a portal and everyone else just filed in after her. At least as far as her 7 remaining siblings are concerned.

Aunt Joan back in May of 2023, Uncle Doug last September, Uncle Tim so suddenly this past June and now, my poor Aunt Sheila, who was in so much pain and in the hospital for over 5 weeks. Thank goodness we were able to visit her when we were in town last July for family reunion BBQ but we didn’t realize it was the last time. Even if I thought it might be, I wasn’t ready for it to be the last time. But you never are.

And it was a double-whammy, with my Uncle John dying that very same night. While not one of my mom’s siblings, Uncle John was married for decades to her sister, my Aunt Patty, and so this one hits just as hard. He’d been living with terminal cancer for years, and so yeah sure, we knew he was going to die sooner rather than later but then the end came faster than expected. It sadly, so often does.

This all happens while I’m honestly still trying to come to terms with my friend Danielle’s death last February - so sudden, so shocking, so still completely unexplained: a mutual friend recently told me she heard the coroner’s report finally came back “death by natural causes” but how natural is it that a seemingly healthy, fully functional 50 year old woman just up and dies?!?! It doesn’t make any sense.

It’s easy to feel that Death doesn’t make sense, and yet it’s the most natural thing in the world. I think about the first breath we all take when we are born and that last breath we will take when we die. And all the breaths, the highlights and significant moments, the mundane days and trivialities, including every good and bad hair decision in between! We don’t usually realize it, but we are lucky to have any and all of it.

Emily: “Does anyone ever realize life while they live it…every, every minute?”

Stage Manager: “No. Saints and Poets maybe…they do some.”

~ from the play “Our Town” by Thornton Wilder