Cusp

We’re riding up Lake Shore Drive in the dark, past 10, after drinks and dinner downtown—Indian or Spanish or Italian. Going home. The lake is opaque, a huge wild darkness on my right; on the left are the twinkling high-rises, the quiet canal, the empty softball fields. The traffic flows smoothly. I play deejay with the iPod: Iron and Wine, the Civil Wars, the Shins, Mason Jennings, Rocky Votolato. The music has changed with time, but we’ve been doing this Saturday-night drive on a regular basis for more than 10 years, just the two of us. Sometimes we sing along:

Life keeps on changing
Tell it to stay still, but it won’t listen
I just want you near me like you are now, for good.

***

It’s been more than two years since I mailed our initial application to adopt from Korea, and we are finally, truly, on the cusp of becoming a family of three. The utter on-the-cuspness of these January days is almost hard to comprehend. I feel compelled to clean out closets and organize drawers. Our extra bedroom is slowly becoming a nursery. There’s a new dresser and lamp, children’s books on the shelf, toys in the closet, gray and yellow and light-orange paint chips on the walls.

I have a coupon for the Gap, and I spend it on tiny track pants, little waffle-knit shirts and an orange T-shirt with a bicycle on it.

There’s a to-do list on our kitchen counter that has items such as “attach bookshelves to wall,” “send Mom addresses for baby shower,” “write list of questions for Will’s foster family.” There’s also a list of restaurants to visit one last time, before restaurant-going becomes a pastime that’s on hold.

On weeknights, while John works, I go to the gym, or meet pals for dinner, or cherish my alone time. I feel slightly freaked out about all of this going away. At the exact same time, I am so ready for everything to change.

***

It’s funny how so many of the best moments of this adoption process have occurred in my office at work. For instance: Yesterday, an email from our social worker, with a video of Will’s first birthday celebration, or dol, taken in November at his foster family’s home. He’s in his hanbok, sitting in his high chair. He smiles, looks around, pounds the table. He can’t reach the traditional dol objects, and his foster brother helps him stand up. He chooses the thread, which signals a long, healthy life, and he looks quite pleased with himself as his foster mother cheers. His foster brother kisses him on the head. Will bonks himself in the face with the thread package. I am utterly transfixed and moved and proud, a little jealous, overwhelmed with love. I watch the video nine times that day.

***

I turn 36. It’s the loveliest of weekends, sunny and crystal cold. It includes a birthday box from Mom and Dad, a beautiful bouquet of flowers from John, a manicure, calls from friends, dinner with family, impromptu drinks with the downstairs neighbor who’s also celebrating his birthday, two outdoor runs, lots of sleep, shopping downtown, dinner at a fabulous Spanish restaurant, drinks at an old jazz club, lunch and a lakefront walk with a friend, and John’s delicious parmesan breaded chicken with homemade tomato sauce. My cup overflows.

***

For my birthday, I wanted a ring with a citrine, which is Will’s birthstone. I scrolled my way through Etsy, and my eye caught a silver honeycombed ring sprinkled with a few small yellow stones. I loved its unique, modern look, so I clicked through to read more about the jeweler—a Korean man who lives in Seoul. Obviously, I bought it.

When the ring arrived, with a beautiful handwritten note of thanks, I emailed the jeweler, told him how much I loved it, and explained why I’d wanted a citrine ring. I told him that Will is in his city right now, and how excited I am to go there. He emailed me back: “Thank you. I hope God bless you. Please take care of him.”

I hope I can do that soon.

One decade

Ten years ago today, John and I were married. The wedding was in a Catholic church in our neighborhood in Michigan. The reception was just down the street on the grounds of an old mansion. It was outdoors, under a lit-up white tent, surrounded by green grass and candlelight. It rained during the ceremony, briefly, but it stopped just before we exited the church in a gentle storm of bubbles and cheers. Wine flowed at the reception. There was a lot of laughing, especially at the toasts. The dance floor was full at all times. The blessings of that night were so amazingly great I could not wrap my arms around them. I couldn’t fathom the joyfulness.

Ten years ago, I was 25 and John was 26. (Where we lived in western Michigan, we felt we were on the “older side” to be getting married; we’d already attended many, many weddings together.) He was a staff accountant who’d just passed his CPA test. I worked in corporate communications and had recently graduated from filing papers and proofreading emails to editing and writing for employee publications. I was Catholic and John was Christian Reformed.

After our wedding, he moved into my one-bedroom apartment on the second floor of a rambling old Victorian house. A raccoon lived in the turret above our bed. We had no Internet connection. I had been wanting to move to Chicago for awhile, and John, who had never left his hometown, not even for college, was game. We looked for jobs, combing the classifieds at work and at the local library’s computers. By late fall, after a few trips around the lake to interview, we’d found work at a CPA firm and an academic press. We moved to the city on Nov. 30, 2001.

Our first apartment had huge windows and one tiny bedroom. When the back window was open, you could hear the crowds cheering at Wrigley Field. During our two years there, we started to put down roots in Chicago. We settled into our jobs. I began attending grad school for a master’s in writing. We decided to become Episcopalians together. We went to Wrigley bars, and we discovered “new” food—Thai! Middle Eastern! I started to run along the lakefront. When the woman who owned our apartment decided to sell it, we decided to move and buy a condo of our own.

We relocated about a mile and a half north. Two bedrooms now, and central air, and free washers and dryers in the basement! We’d stay in this building for six years, becoming close friends with several of our neighbors and getting involved in our block club. John was promoted, then promoted again. I started a new job at a marketing/publishing firm. We had Moose, our beloved greyhound; he lived with us there for four years, until bone cancer took him. Stella joined us a few months later. I graduated with my MA. John brewed homemade beer. I realized I could run three miles at a time, and we started doing 5K races together. We celebrated our fifth anniversary. We turned 30.

The housing market fell, the government offered a credit to first-time homebuyers, and we decided to sell, and to stay in the city. We fell hard for a place just a bit west of us, and the stars aligned, and it was meant to be, and we sold our first condo and bought our second. Three bedrooms, our own washer and dryer, and the huge deck we’d been wanting for years. It was our dream home, and after almost two years there, it still is. In it we’ve watched Stella blossom into a dog who’s no longer afraid of her own shadow. We’ve entertained friends, planted flowers, and mowed the (OK, very small) lawn. And we made the decision to become parents through adoption.

In the past ten years, we have traveled to the Outer Banks, New Hampshire, Key West, Colorado, New York, St. Augustine, Las Vegas, and San Francisco. The British Virgin Islands, the Bahamas. France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Italy. Next year, Korea.

Of course, I can’t fully describe a decade in one online post. In the past ten years, we have laughed a lot. We have felt grateful. We have worried, and cried, and faced some hard things. But we’ve still, always, felt grateful.

Now, on June 22, 2011, we are 35 and 36. We are both managers. (We have gone through ten married tax seasons together.) I’m a half-marathoner. John is an accomplished guitar player. We’re better cooks, we’re more well traveled, we have different ideas about religion than we used to, although we’re still at the same moderate-liberal spot politically. My hair is grayer, John’s is a little more sparse, and both of us have laugh lines around our eyes. Although we’re healthy and in good shape, I should say that my back hurts if I stand at a concert for too long.

I have a partner who is adventurous, patient, understanding, fun, honest, loyal, and supportive. He is a man who is going to be everything our child could want in a father. I look at the past decade, feel extremely satisfied with it, and feel excited to turn the page. I will never stop realizing how lucky I am to turn that page with him.

Italy: Nine snapshots of twelve days

One
The bar on the first floor of our B&B is tiny, with round tables for two outside, faded newspaper clippings of football stars on the walls inside. In the morning, we pay for coffee and a cornetto at the register, then go to the bar and place our order, two café lattes. Old men are drinking espresso and eating pastries, greeting friends loudly in Italian. In the afternoon, we look down from our window and see people sharing a drink and a chat, reading the newspaper. Way into the evening and beyond midnight, youngish, coolish (but not obnoxiously trendy) people are drinking beer and wine, smoking, debating, laughing. We join them, pay for our Peronis from the same man at the register, spill out with the Romans into the narrow cobblestoned piazza (the tables have long been taken), sidestepping passing scooters.

Two
Inside the Colosseum you can see below where the floor used to be, to the crumbling, grassy tunnels where animals and gladiators awaited their fate, listening to the roar and crash of the crowd above. Our tour guide, a young South African woman, explains that the Roman people so adored gladiators that when the winners bathed in olive oil after a fight, their attendants would carefully scrape the oil from their skin into bottles and sell them to an eager public. She tells us about matches between lions and crocodiles, shows us where the emperor used to sit. The dust of the Forum coats her turquoise leather ballet flats.

Three
In Pompei, dogs. For years, strays have roamed the ruins, and now there’s a movement for them to be adopted. A nonprofit group makes sure the dogs are fed and cared for while working to find them forever homes. We see several of these dogs wandering among the devastated houses and eerily empty lanes, snoozing in the sunlight against a 2,000-year-old wall.

Four
As we ride the tiny elevator up to our room in Positano, the hotel employee who’s bringing us there remarks that she has the same purse. H&M. We get off on the fifth floor, and she leads us down the hallway to a door at the end, #540. The room is dim and cool, with a coral and blue tiled floor. Curtained double doors lead out to the terrace we requested. She opens the doors and we step outside, and I literally gasp, become choked up, swallow back tears at the pure beauty of what’s before me. In the bright sunshine, the town of Positano tumbles down the cliff to the diamonded blue sea below, pink and white houses everywhere, green mountains, little boats so far below. I have never seen anything like it. John opens the bottle of limoncello.

Five
Hordes of older American tourists everywhere. Denim capris, Reeboks, baseball hats. They speak so loudly; we can’t get over how often we can hear every word. They talk about the price of a Burger King Whopper in euros. They cannot get over the fact that they have to pay (50 cents) to use a public bathroom. That the light wasn’t working in the bathroom. When they’re seated next to us in a restaurant and hear us talking, they say, “Oh good, Americans!” On the train to the airport, they ask a white South African couple “how [they] ended up down there” (they were, you know, born there) and ask if South Africa is “third world.” We’re never quite sure what our ratio of amusement to horror should be.

Six
There are dark clouds gathering over the medieval hill town of Montepulciano, but we park the car and begin to climb the steep streets anyway, looking for views and red wine. I tug on my black raincoat, grateful that I wedged it into my suitcase at the last minute. We approach an old church and see a young girl sitting on its steps with a man we assume is her grandfather. She has a small jet-black crow perched on her arm. I have to stop and look at this, the little girl in her school clothes with her pet crow. She feeds it pellets of food. The crow gulps them down, then attacks a faltering moth on the steps. I am still watching. She sees me, gestures me over, and asks “English?” “Si,” I say, “Do you speak it?” “Ehh,” she replies, shrugging. She motions for me to sit down and gently pushes my arm onto the stone step. “She’s showing you how to get the crow to come to you,” explains John. I rest my forearm on the step, and the crow nimbly climbs onto my arm and perches there, dainty claws gripping my jacket sleeve. I stare at it in wonder, and it stares back. The girl tells me that its name is Giulia.

Seven
Merely ordering a “latte” in the morning will earn you a glass of warm milk. The word “café” is key.

Eight
On our last night in Rome we wander down toward the Colosseum and take our chance on a restaurant that’s bustling with outdoor seating on a Tuesday night. The host explains in broken English that we’ll need to wait for 10 minutes for an outdoor table. He ushers us inside to the bar. Unfathomably, he brings us slices of warm garlic bread and two glasses of prosecco on the house, to enjoy while we wait. We are aghast. This little neighborhood place, which serves only appetizers and pasta, ends up being one of our best meals in Italy. As non-Italians we are in the minority. The 2006 reserve Chianti is so good we take a picture of the bottle. The foccacia bread is warm and studded with rosemary; my gnocchi has been baked in the oven. We sit and sip our wine, watching Romans walking home from work, gathering at the fountain near the restaurant. We eavesdrop without understanding.

Nine
Many times he walks ahead of me; I dawdle, staring up at the buildings, stopping to make a photograph. He is the keeper of the map and almost always knows where we’re going, except in Trastevere, where the ancient crooked streets would confound the most seasoned explorer. He wears a gray cargo jacket and expensive aviators that he drops twice on the cobblestones, no damage. He always suggests a drink after dinner. He’s interested in history, explains to me why medieval people lived in tower houses, why the windows were so narrow (so that armored knights couldn’t fit through them). He makes fun of the reverent way I say, “Mmm, wow,” after my first bite of something particularly delicious. He does not make fun of me when I’m too scared to climb the narrow bell tower in Siena. Sometimes we snipe at each other. Then we eat gelato (I introduce him to pistachio), and all is well. He is not gifted in languages, but he listens to Italian for Dummies podcasts and after a few days, he can pronounce “Dov'e il bagno?” with ease. He wants to see the Sistine Chapel. He drives the Fiat in Rome like he’s been doing it for years, in three-lane traffic where the lanes aren’t marked and scooters are weaving with abandon. After nine years of marriage and five trips to Europe, we still go together so well. I cannot imagine any other traveling companion.

It’s all going to turn out beautifully

This photo of us was taken in May 2009, at a bar in the Jordaan neighborhood of Amsterdam. It was very late at night, and we were there with a Dutch friend, in one of our favorite cities, drinking beer in a snug, dark little bar with nary another American in sight. I love this image because of the happiness it captures. We were both fully thrilled with where we were and what we were doing, and it shows.

***

Valentine’s Day has never been a big deal in our little family. We usually mark it with a good meal out—it’s a bright spot in the long tax-season winter, especially when it falls on a weeknight, since John usually doesn’t get home until 10 or so on weeknights. An exception is made on Valentine’s Day, though, and his office empties out around 7, all the accountants hurrying home to their tax-widow spouses. We usually hit a local BYOB Italian place for some good catching-up conversation over a bottle of cabernet and a long, comforting meal.

This year, of course, Valentine’s Day was on a Sunday—the one day of the week that John doesn’t go to the office. We slept in. He made breakfast: waffles with strawberries, fresh turkey sausage from the indoor Green City Market, mugs and mugs of coffee. We ate at the dining-room table by the windows, turning our newspaper pages, watching the dog watch the turkey sausage.

I did the dishes while he did some work. We went to Bed Bath & Beyond to buy new pillows, an outing that we were both pretty pathetically excited about. (No need for a dozen roses; a new pillow will suffice!) I went for a run in the cold sunshine. He took a nap. I finished a freelance project. A quiet, good, peaceful day.

***

We had reservations for a five-course meal, paired with wine tastings, at a local winebar. It felt decadent, going out to dinner on a Sunday, and the two hours we spent eating figs and goat cheese and brie/potato soup and lobster gnocchi and short ribs and pepper beignets and oatmeal risotto were pretty damn enjoyable. We talked about upcoming visits from friends. We compared work stories. We reminisced about travels past and dreamed about travels future. There was a lot of talk labeled “future.” We laughed and smiled and rolled our eyes at each other a little, that particular brand of gentle exasperation that comes after so many years together. He didn’t like the white-wine pairings. I didn’t care for the short ribs. We both wanted the lobster gnocchi to go on forever.

Seated next to us was a foursome made up of two couples. When we got up to leave, one of the women, a young blond with a round, cheerful face, said, “How long have you guys been together? You seem like you’re on your second or third date.” A high compliment, for sure, and we told her we’d been married for eight and a half years. “So what’s your secret?" she asked.

“No kids yet,” John replied with a grin. And, hey! It turned out that the other woman at the table was pregnant. But she also had a good sense of humor, so no harm done. I added, “We do things together, and we do things apart. I think that makes a difference.”

There was some more small talk, and then our coats were buttoned, our gloves pulled on, and as we turned to leave, the blond girl said, very earnestly, “Whatever it is you two are hoping for, whatever you’re dreaming of…it’s all going to turn out beautifully. Like the most beautiful work of modern art you can imagine. It’s going to turn out beautifully.”

I don’t know if this person was drunk, or if perhaps she says this to everyone. She seemed sincere, and her tablemates weren’t fazed. I, however, was teary-eyed, and oddly buoyant-feeling. We walked home in the dark icy air, arm in arm, to our new home, closing in on our mid-thirties, going on nine years of marriage. I suspect we were both fully thrilled with where we were and what we were doing, and it showed.

I think I get an “A” in the compromise department

These are the television shows I watch regularly:

• The Daily Show
• The first half of The Colbert Report (then I get tired and go to bed)
• Most HBO shows, when they’re on: The Sopranos, Rome, Big Love, Entourage, Real Time with Bill Maher, Curb Your Enthusiasm

I also recently committed to 30 Rock and The Office (not as good as the original, but still pretty awesome). And I try to catch Check, Please! and Rick Steves’ Europe on Saturday afternoons. But that’s it. If John’s flipping channels and he stops at some history or nature program, I’ll usually watch—and I recently saw The Dog Whisperer and loved it—but I just don’t watch much TV (even though there are shows out there that I’d probably love: 24, Lost, Grey’s Anatomy). I don’t know; a lot of American TV makes me feel dumb, and sad about my fellow Americans. I like to read books and magazines (and yes, that includes InStyle; I'm not a total snob!). I get my news from NPR, the 'net, and the newspaper.

You may have noticed that the above photo depicts a rather large flat-screen television. It is in our living room. It belongs to us. Rather, it belongs to John. He bought it with part of his annual bonus. When we have friends over, I tell them that it’s not my TV. That it was one of John’s fondest dreams to have a 42-inch flat-screen television, and I gave in. Compromise is the secret to a good marriage, you know, I tell them sagely.

I’m getting used to our latest acquisition—concerts and movies and travel shows do look glorious on it, and being able to DVR shows for later is nifty—but it was difficult for me to allow the TV into my 900-square-foot home. I can distinctly remember standing with John in Circuit City, feeling helpless and a little desperate as he talked about warranties with the sales dude. I showed him a nice 30-inch screen (too small). I pointed out that our living room wasn’t that big (We won’t live there forever, he replied). I asserted that having a huge TV makes it look like we spend our lives glued to the tube (I do watch a lot of sports, he reminded me). I said that I thought the TV would make us look like materialistic assholes. He disagreed.

I really, really didn’t want that TV. And he really, really did. And I gave in.

I felt very conflicted about this for awhile. Should I have stood my ground? After all, it’s my house, too. Was it weak to give in? John and I have an exceptionally equal partnership, but I knew that damn TV would make him as happy as a clam. I also knew that he worked incredibly hard all year and deserved every cent of his bonus, and I wanted him to spend part of it on something he really wanted. I wanted to see him happy.

So I capitulated, I surrendered, I gave in. I made him promise that when we move, the monster will go in the rec room or den. And I declared myself the sole chooser of the new armchair we had space for after rearranging the living room. He didn’t stop thanking me for days; he was incredibly grateful and appreciative. I think he understood the situation, and that did make me feel good. Even though I still kind of hate the TV, I do love the person who wanted it.

It was Sunday night, our second day in Spain

Walking home from the gym in the early evening, I note that the air in Chicago, in October, feels so different from that in Barcelona… lighter and crisper, and certainly colder. And I wonder where he is right now, what he’s doing, if he kept my picture, if he ever even looked at it. The stranger who stole my bag right out of my hand.

It was around 10:30, 11 p.m., and John and I were in Barcelona, walking back to our hotel after dinner. It was Sunday night, our second day in Spain. It should have been our third, but our flight on Thursday had been cancelled because of mechanical problems (a thousand poxes on United, by the way). So we left a day late, lost a whole day of our vacation, and spent much more time at O’Hare than I want to remember.

The one consolation had been a six-hour layover at Schiphol Airport. We took the train into Amsterdam and spent a few gentle hours wandering around the Saturday-morning city: the quiet canals, a few bikes whirring past. Tall, narrow buildings leaning on their old foundations, shopkeepers sweeping the sidewalks, a few tourists snapping photos. The sky was blue, the morning light sifting through the trees lining the canals, us cradling our coffees and just wandering, wandering, on intuition and memory, no maps in hand. We’d stayed a few days in Amsterdam in 2004 and loved it, and this was such a gift, these unexpected few hours of strolling. We took photo after photo.

Anyway. Barcelona, Sunday night, 10:30, 11 p.m. We had enjoyed a great meal of tapas, split a bottle of Rioja, and I’d successfully communicated in Spanish with our bemused waiter. Now we were tired, satiated, and strolling back to our hotel, in a pleasant residential neighborhood just east of the Placa de Catalunya. We were about a block away. I was carrying a small purse under my arm, containing our camera, my driver’s license, my credit card, my debit card, a pocket translator, powder and lipgloss, and around 80 euro. (My passport was in the hotel safe.) It was still warm out, and I took the purse from under my shoulder to carry it in my hand, holding onto the straps. A few minutes later, we heard the roar of a moped, and a guy drove onto the sidewalk and snatched it away. It happened in an instant—one second I had my purse, the next I didn’t, and the guy was gone.

I have never felt such shock. I immediately began screaming “Thief! Thief!” and John took off sprinting, his sandals flying off his feet, yelling “Hey! HEY!” But of course there was nothing we could do; the moped was gone. It took me a few seconds to register the loss of the camera, and I think that’s what made me start crying. My camera. Our pictures. I stood in the street and sobbed. John came back and put his arms around me.

The whole thing was witnessed by a guy walking his dog (a greyhound—I tearfully explained to him that we had one, too), who seemed shocked that this had happened in his neighborhood. But I’d been warned to watch out for pickpocketing in Barcelona. After four trips to Europe and five years living in a big city, I truly didn’t think it could happen to me—I was aware, I didn’t dress like a tourist, I kept my bag on my lap when we ate in restaurants. If I’d been wearing a moneybelt, my cards and cash would’ve been safe, but the biggest, most upsetting and costly loss was our camera.

The two hours that followed are a dark blur to me now. We tried to find a police station that the greyhound owner said was nearby, but we couldn’t. We went back to the hotel to retrieve the piece of paper containing my credit card numbers and the 1-800 numbers to call; luckily I’d written them down just that morning. We attempted to use a public phone on the corner. We learned that you can’t make 1-800 calls from Spain. We went to a nearby Internet café to access my cards’ websites and find the right numbers. I called and cancelled my cards. We learned, to our great relief, that John’s debit card had a different number than mine, so we still had access to our bank accounts. Finally, around 1 a.m., we collapsed in our hotel room. I felt guilty, uncomprehending, in shock. John was angry at the thief. We lay down and turned on the TV for company, watched an old Spanish-dubbed episode of Knight Rider. It was the worst night of “sleep” I’ve ever had.

*****

Thankfully, the rest of our trip was trauma-free. The next morning we went to El Corte Ingles, Spain’s major department store, and bought a new camera. The saleswoman didn’t speak English, but we were able to muddle through. With the bad dollar/euro conversion, and the fact that we had to buy new batteries and a memory card, this was a pricey excursion. But it’s a nice camera.

Then we picked up our rental car and left Barcelona for the Costa Brava, the beautiful coast a few hours north: medieval villages, laid-back beach towns, the Mediterranean. Our base for three days in the region was an 800-year-old stone house in the quiet village of Peratallada. It was a good place to start putting the experience behind us, but it did take a few days. I often had flashbacks of the moment my purse left my hand, light as a feather. The sound of mopeds made my stomach tighten. It took me awhile to fall asleep at night. I knew John was thinking about it, too.

But as we saw more beautiful places, did more interesting things—hiked in the Pyrenees, immersed ourselves in beautiful, graceful, vibrant San Sebastian—the event fell further and further behind us. And now, almost three weeks later, it’s lost its bite; it’s a vacation story to tell. The financial cost of it still stings a bit, but I wasn’t injured. He didn’t get my passport. We had only two days worth of photos in the camera—what if it had happened at the end of the trip? (But oh, that morning in Amsterdam… it hurts to lose the evidence of that.)

My credit cards have been replaced, and I went downtown for my new license yesterday. Before that, every time I opened my wallet I was jolted anew to see the empty slot where my license used to be, where my own face used to look back at me. It made me think of some of the photos in my camera, the ones I took of myself in the hotel mirror, the ones John took of me… did he look at them? If he kept the camera, is he still? If he pawned it, does someone else have them now? It’s a strange thing to contemplate, and I haven’t quite stopped contemplating it yet.

Note: I’ve begun uploading some of my Spain photos to Flickr; it’s still a work in progress.

Five years

He did not want to move to Chicago. I know this. He would have been happy spending the rest of his days in the Michigan town where he was raised, went to college, and began his career.

It’s a nice town. But I couldn’t see myself staying there. I wanted Chicago, a publishing career, a big city where I could blend in (where it didn’t matter that I’m not a Calvinist of Dutch descent, like so many of the folks in John’s hometown). I wanted to go. And he agreed to go with me.

If I ever had doubts about what kind of person John is, they were banished in November of 2001. He left a decent job, a bunch of college friends, his family, and the town that he’d lived in for 26 years to move to another state—because I wanted to. I knew there was a chance that it wouldn’t work, that he’d be miserable, that we’d move back. But that didn’t happen. We both have great jobs, strong careers, good friends—we’re part of little communities in our building, our neighborhood, our workplaces, our church. We’ve built a good life here, something that belongs to the two of us. And because we moved a mere five months after we became husband and wife—on June 22, 2001—we’ve built a marriage at the same time.

I have been married for five years today. There is something almost nonsensical about that statement—how can it be possible that this much time has passed, that I’m 30 and he’s 31; was it really five years ago that we stood up in a small Catholic church and promised to spend the rest of our lives together? In that Michigan town, where people often married while they were still in college, I felt old and worldly to be marrying at 25. I had waited. I had lived alone for two years, supported myself, backpacked in Italy solo for two weeks. And now I was embarking on the next chapter of my life, a much longer chapter that would contain plot points I couldn’t even imagine.

I look at photos from our wedding day and I’m taken aback by how young and eager and fresh-faced we look. I think my face shows the joy I felt that day. It was the most joy-filled day of my life so far. I was so ready to bind my life to this person’s life.

John is a man who has never expected me to vacuum or mop the floor because I have ovaries. I have never felt denigrated because he makes more money than I do. The equal partnership we’ve created is incredibly precious to me.

He does, however, ask me almost every day what’s for dinner—even though we do the weekly grocery shopping together, and he does most of the cooking.

John plays the guitar. He taught himself when he was in high school. He can play Dave Matthews, Jack Johnson, REM, Bruce Springsteen, the theme song from Brokeback Mountain. When we had just started dating, I told him that I loved the song “Blackbird” by the Beatles, and he learned how to play it for me.

He was somewhat shy when we first met. He used to ask me if I would hold his hand. I always said yes.

On our third date (a swing-dancing lesson at a local bar—yes, it was 1999), he brought me a bouquet of carnations “just because it was a Tuesday.” He loves making chocolate milkshakes with malted mix. He loves Guinness and shiraz, guacamole and apples and salmon and chocolate pie. His favorite restaurants are Italian, Spanish, and Cuban.

Sometimes, in the middle of the night, half-asleep, he’ll put his arm around me and kiss my shoulder.

He cried with me when Murphy died. I had never seen him cry like that before.

His favorite part of summer is camping. He loves it all—the fire, the grilling, the beer, sleeping in a tent, playing his guitar under the rustling trees in the dark night. I first told him I was falling in love with him during a camping trip. He proposed to me on a camping trip. (He is lucky I like to camp.)

He has a sensitive stomach. He gets heartburn (especially when he eats my mom’s food), and he has asthma. He hates cigarette smoke.

We have gotten drunk together in pubs in Ireland and Maine, and we’ve soaked up the sun on the shores of Cape May, Key West, Tortola, and the Outer Banks of North Carolina. We’ve driven up a mountain in New Hampshire, hiked up part of a mountain in Colorado, and explored the cities of Dublin, Paris, Amsterdam, and Bruges. He is a good traveling companion, even though he likes to take mid-afternoon naps and I don’t.

I always know where he’s been in the condo, because he leaves the light on in that room.

He threw me a surprise party for my thirtieth birthday. I didn’t write about that here, did I? That boy organized a huge party for me at a neighbor’s house, and he invited friends and family from Michigan and Chicago, college friends and work friends and church friends and neighbors. He sent out invites, did all the shopping, agonized that I would find out, but I didn’t. The party was an incredible success, and I was nearly drowned by the realization of how much he loves me, to do something like that.

When he cooks, I do the dishes, and vice versa.

He is almost equally good at every sport he attempts to play. He loves softball and runs his work’s team.

He wholeheartedly supported my decision to go to grad school. Tuition wasn’t cheap, but he never complained about the bills. I don’t think I realized how lucky I was to have that support.

He doesn’t watch much TV besides sports, HBO, and The Daily Show. He loves the original series of The Office and taught himself to play “Freelove Freeway” on the guitar, much to my endless amusement.

He’s a CPA, but I pay our bills every month.

When he gets home and Moose comes to greet him, he says, “How’s the boy??” and rubs Moose’s head against his leg.

He enjoys playing with our neighbors’ toddler, picking her up and swinging her around to make her squeal and laugh. He is going to be a wonderful father someday.

He’s a huge fan of Bruce Springsteen. When we first started dating, I was like, “Springsteen? ‘Tunnel of Love’? Whatever.” He made me a mix tape, and then I started to get it, the supreme awe that the Boss can command. We own every Bruce Springsteen album ever recorded.

He also likes folk music, as I do, and I’m really grateful for that.

Right before we were engaged, I had to have a painful and somewhat scary biopsy done. That afternoon, he sent me an email that I can quote here verbatim, because I printed it out, folded it up, and have kept it in my wallet since that day:

Date: May 24, 2000
Subject: You’re invited
A date: this afternoon on the back deck at [123 John’s Street] with 22 oz of New Holland Zoomer Wit and malted-mix ice cream dessert (whatever’s left) at 4:00 or 4:30. Please RSVP by email.

*****

On our anniversary two years ago, I wrote this:

I’m still not sure what lies ahead for us—we’re not even 30. But I’m beginning to realize that the unknown isn’t scary, and the unknown doesn’t really matter. Because whatever happens to us, neither of us will be alone. And when death does part us, we’ll have created something beautiful and complex and strong and weatherbeaten and true—a marriage—and it will be one of my life’s greatest accomplishments.

Now we’re done with our twenties, and there’s still no way to look into our future together and know if it will be peaceful or turbulent, with illness or health. I don’t know how or when the family we’ve created will grow. But I still believe that the unknown isn’t truly all that scary, because whatever happens to us, neither of us will be alone. One of the reasons I love my life so much is because he’s in it.


(Thanks to Eliza, whose beautiful Father’s Day entry about her dad inspired the format for this journal entry.)

Springing

Winged women in Grant Park, II
Originally uploaded by strass.

Spring is springing in Chicago. Now that it’s light here until 7 p.m. (oh blessed, blessed daylight savings), Moose and I are venturing back out to the lakefront parks and beaches when I get home from work. We go slowly, Moose stopping to sniff every tree trunk and bush (and, okay, beer can), me pausing to examine a miniscule bud on a tree branch, just waiting to burst open and turn the landscape green again. But the greening has begun, actually… a dusting on the grass, a pushed-up daffodil stalk, the stem of a fragile purple crocus. I hear more birds now, or maybe I’m just listening for them harder.

April is a good month. There’s more light, more color, more tastes of warm days on the horizon. April means getting out my spring coat, even if I can’t wear it every day. It means getting home from work and not having to flip on the lights in our condo. It means opening the back door and letting the breeze in, hearing our 18-month-old neighbor giggling outside as she stumbles around under her dad’s watchful gaze. It means not having to put on my mittens and Moose’s fleece coat every time we go for a walk. It’s that first smell of freshly mown grass, of dirt, of someone grilling down the block. It’s sitting in my office on a Friday afternoon and seeing the lights of Wrigley Field in the distance, knowing the Cubs are playing their home opener, knowing I have tickets to three games this year.

And of course it’s the end of tax season, so close on the horizon. Which is always a bit of an adjustment—after all, I’ve had the place to myself on weeknights since early January—but a welcome one. Now I’ll have someone to cook me a well-balanced meal, to fire up the grill and marinate some chicken or pork. (I just don't do well cooking meat products, especially for one.) We’ll eat dinner together and go for jogs. I’ll find his softball bat lying around, and I’ll smile because the weather’s warm and my husband’s not working 70 hours a week and returning Blackberry emails at 11:30 p.m.; he’s reading and brewing beer and playing a sport that he loves with friends. Sometimes it feels like a big, heavy blanket is lifted off our lives, come April.

In which I prattle on about weight and marriage

I think I’ve always been afraid of becoming overweight. I’ve never had an eating disorder, but it’s safe to say that not a day goes by when I don’t think about how my body looks or mentally tick off everything I’ve eaten in the past 24 hours. Kinda sad, isn’t it? And it’s so habitual now that I don’t even notice I’m doing it.

As a child I had “baby fat,” as Mom termed it. In photos from that time, I look very… round. Most of the pudge was shed by the time I hit junior high, and I skipped through high school at a delightfully average size: 7 or 9 in juniors, 6 or 8 in women’s clothes. I ate cheese fries for lunch. I hated playing sports. I had the blessed metabolism of a teenager.

In college I began to pay more attention to my size. I took full advantage of the pasta bar and frozen yogurt machine in the dining hall, but I also didn’t have a car and walked a few miles a day to and from class and work. I sometimes used the weight room and the indoor running track. My clothes size remained a 6 or an 8.

Much is said about the jolt of entering the “real world” after college, but one of the biggest changes for me was my new sedentary lifestyle, driving everywhere in my leased Saturn and sitting in a cube eight hours a day. Together with my roommate, I began exercising five days a week—walking, jogging, flailing along with a kickboxing video. I gained a few pounds during this time, but I also gained a really terrific habit: ever since 1998, I’ve felt like something’s missing if a few days go by without exercise. It’s ingrained in me now that this is something I should do.

*****

This topic’s been on my mind lately because of a fascinating post (and follow-up post) that I read at another blog, Morphing into Mama. The post generated quite a bit of commentary on the Internet, and several other online writers tackled the subject as a result. I don’t usually write about these types of things, but this time I wanted to.

I’m not sure I agree with MiM’s term of “false advertising,” although I know I’d be annoyed if John stopped exercising and caring about his appearance after we were married. But more than that, what I’ve been thinking about is this determination I have to not gain weight. As if my life would be over if that happened.

I don’t know where this determination comes from, exactly. I’m sure it’s part insecurity, part “the media tells me I need to be a stick figure.” I know that part of it is for health reasons. My job involves reading a lot of health information, and one of the things that’s really struck me is the danger of heart disease. It’s the number-one killer of American women, and having a waist size over 35 inches significantly increases your risk. I don’t want heart problems. I want to feel good, have energy, be in shape.

Of course, part of my determination is also a desire to look good. I’m 30; I know I don’t look like I did in college, and I’m not attempting to. But I want to look fit. I want to wear clothes that are somewhat hip. I don’t want to look matronly or older than I am. And yup, I want my husband to like how I look, to be proud of my appearance. Some people think that husbands should like how their wives look no matter how much weight they gain. That being able to do that is part of a mature, loving relationship. But I’m not sure I agree with that. I wouldn’t expect John to be just as happy with my appearance if I gained 50 pounds; I wouldn’t be as happy with my appearance. And I don’t know if that’s caused by vanity or insecurity or shallowness or what. Maybe I’m not the “feminist” I’ve always thought myself to be.

After I read that post on Morphing into Mama, I asked John his opinion. “Would you be upset if after we got married, I ‘let myself go’ and gained 50 pounds?”

“Well… yeah!” he replied, without much thought. “I’d wonder what was wrong, and why you were letting that happen.”

His answer didn’t offend me; it would be my response if the tables were turned. I’m not sure if this “says something” about our marriage. Obviously we wouldn’t stop loving each other if one of us gained weight, although I wonder if we’d be less attracted. But I’ll still love John when he’s bald and love-handled, and I expect him to love me when my body changes after childbirth and when I have gray hair and sagging skin. Botox is not in my future, thanks.

*****

When I’m really busy, with work and school and freelancing, exercise does fall by the wayside. But I’m active. I walk the dog every day, I try to take the stairs at work, sometimes I lift weights while watching The Daily Show. I belong to a small, cheap gym that’s within walking distance of our place. I use the treadmill in our building’s basement. I’ve started jumping rope sometimes. Are my workouts two-hour marathons? No, more like 30 or 40 minutes. Do I always feel like doing this stuff? Hell no. Sometimes I have to literally force myself to lace up my New Balances.

But I know that my metabolism is slowing down. I’m still a size 8, although my body doesn’t look the same—my waist is a bit thicker, and cellulite has rippled up in unexpected places. Some of my older pants and skirts are a bit tight. On Monday, I ate three chocolate chip cookies, a handful of chocolate Easter eggs, a Rice Krispies treat, and some mint chocolate-chip ice cream. So believe me, I am not the most disciplined girl on the block.

But I’m working at it—both for me and for my spouse. I don’t think John is shallow for being glad that I haven’t gained weight. I’m not ecstatic about how I look, but I’m satisfied. I feel pretty good. Perhaps, in the end, that’s what matters?

Last week in church

Originally posted to Diary-X

Last Sunday we didn’t go to church in the building with the red door and the steeple. Instead, we slept in an extra half-hour, and then I suggested bagels. Ah, bagels. I am a simple woman who considers a freshly baked pumpernickel bagel with a smear of plain cream cheese and a strong black coffee to be an immense treat. Luckily I married a man who agrees, so we decided to walk the 15 minutes to our local bagel shop. “Let’s bring the dog,” John suggested. The mild autumn weather was still warm enough to allow breakfasting outside, so we explained to Moose that we were all “going for a walk! Going outside! You wanna go outside? Huh? Do you?” He considered our proposal and agreed that it was a good one.

The three of us rarely go for walks together. I know that sounds kind of strange and sad, considering the amount of walks a city dog gets every day, but dog-walking often feels like a chore (especially those early-morning strolls, which John and I take turns doing). So when Moose realizes that both of us are accompanying him on one of his constitutionals, his liquid-brown eyes light up, his bony butt waggles furiously, and he races down the stairs ahead of us, spinning in excited circles on each landing. (This is particularly funny given that 90% of the time he behaves much more like this.) A threesome walk usually means a trip to the dog beach or a ride in the car, which are both Extremely Big Events in our dog’s life.

But on this sunny Sunday morning, the destination involved breakfast. We set off around 10 a.m., stopping to admire our neighbor’s baby and to let Moose exchange sniffs with the beagle that just moved in next door. The leaves were beginning to turn color in full force, and as we walked down the sidewalk we passed beneath a row of brilliant yellow trees. The ground beneath our feet was crunchy and bright, and I stopped to pick up a particularly fine yellow leaf. I planned to carry it along for awhile and admire it. John turned around to see where I was, and he smiled. “I knew you’d be doing that,” he said, glancing at the leaf in my hand, and I smiled back. This is what it means to be married, I thought, to have a person who knows you that well. For a second I felt such overwhelming blessedness and good fortune that I could hardly bear it.

We walked under the el tracks, past the dry cleaners and the record shop and the flower store owned by one of our neighbors. We gaped at the stately old mansions and petted passing dogs. We turned on our neighborhood’s main shopping street, pausing to look in the windows of the expensive shoe store, choosing which ones we’d buy—black leather ankle-height boots for John, maroon and pink suede Pumas for me. And finally, we reached the bagel shop. John waited outside with Moose while I went in to order, remembering to pick up a “doggie bagel” from the jar by the register. Then, with our bagels and coffee and dog, we sat down on a nearby bench and proceeded to eat. Moose stood by patiently, waiting for bits of food after scarfing down his own snack. The sun was warm, and John was wearing his sunglasses, and I had on a red hooded zip-up sweater. People stopped to smile at Moose and ask questions about him. My coffee was rich and hot, and the leaves on the trees were russet and gold, and I couldn’t think of anywhere else I’d rather be than right there, on that bench, with my family. There are a lot of hard things in life, things that make me worry, things that hurt. But there are also moments when it’s ridiculously easy to forget they exist.

On Memorial Day

Originally posted to Diary-X

On Memorial Day, John and I decided it was time for the annual beautification of our miniscule back deck. We drove over to our neighborhood garden store and ambled among the outdoor shelves in the sunlight, choosing the perfect white and lavender impatiens for our railing trough and a few bright-red geraniums for our hanging pot. The place was crowded, and we waited in line with two gay men holding a huge stone fountain, sunglassed yuppies with slats of gerbera daisies and pansies, and older couples grasping carts of ornamental trees and ivy. Everyone seemed very happy, and how could they not be? Sunshine, dogs and kids and puddles from the hoses, mild air, flowers everywhere.

Back home, we crouched on our deck, with its view of apartment buildings and the top tips of the Golden Arches and a blue smidge of Lake Michigan, digging our hands in the new dirt and planting our flowers. John scrubbed all the pigeon crap off the wooden floor. We set up the trough on the railing and hung the geranium pot. Now we just need to bring up our deck chairs from storage, and voila—our tiny patch of urban summer living is ready to go.

It was a good weekend. John and I kicked it off with our first babysitting stint—we watched our neighbors’ seven-month-old baby girl, who is nicknamed Sly. Her parents were dying for a dinner out, and we were happy to lend an (inexperienced) hand. Observations:

--It is hard to refrain from using my “talking to dogs” voice with babies. (“Do you like your dinner? Do you? Do you? Oh, such a good girl!”)
--Babies in sleep sacks are insanely adorable. It’s a baby in a bag. So. Cute.
--A seven-month-old can have a surprisingly firm grip when she wants to feed herself that spinach-and-oatmeal dinner combo.
--Good God, but it takes forever to feed a baby. With every spoonful that goes in, about half comes back out, and then must be wiped from the chin and cheeks and spooned back in… rinse, repeat.
--Diapers nowadays do not have band-aid–like adhesive strips like the diapers I put on my Cabbage Patch Kids in 1984. Instead they have some sort of magic velcro that doesn’t actually look like velcro. Imagine how long it took a 29-year-old and a 30-year-old to figure this out. No, longer than that.
--A baby head pressed against your cheek is a really nice feeling.

Anyway, Sly went to sleep around 7:15, at which point we gorged on homemade ravioli and watched The Office Special while watching our friends’ cat play in a box. Good times.

On Saturday, one of my dearest college friends and her husband came for a visit, having successfully deposited their 19-month-old at his parents’ house in the suburbs. We started drinking at 3:30 and headed downtown for dinner at 7:00, returning in a few hours to pick up with the drinking again. Many bottles of merlot and shiraz (“It tastes… musty… at the back of my throat. Sort of like dust.” “I’d say you’re a Malbec-spert!”) were consumed, new words for the Oxford English Dictionary were invented, the merits of soft porn were discussed in detail. I love my friends.

Sunday was a wine hangover and breakfast out and the new Star Wars movie. Monday was flower shopping and freelancing and then, biking ten miles round-trip down to Navy Pier, where I’ve never been before because it is a-swarm with tourists. So many tourists! But it was a fun, holiday-ish place to wander around, and the views of the skyline from there are awe-inspiring. We soaked up the sun and breathed in the wafting scent of elephant ears and stopped for burgers and beers at a tavern, which did slow the bike ride home a bit, but nevertheless was the perfectly right choice.

“Lost in wonder, love, and praise”

Originally posted to Diary-X

Three years ago today, I stood in front of friends, family members, one priest, and two photographers and agreed to bind my life to John’s. “I will love you and honor you all the days of my life,” I told him, and he promised the same. I was so incredibly happy that I was actually bouncing up and down a little in my big white dress. I remember that John was very tan, and his grin—one of the first things I’d noticed about him two years earlier—was very wide.

Later, he told me that during most of the ceremony he was afraid he was going to throw up. He gets nervous like that sometimes.

It’s kind of cliché to say that your wedding was the happiest day of your life, but honestly, June 22, 2001, was the most joy-filled day I’ve yet spent on this earth. In almost every picture taken that day, I’m wearing a face-splitting smile. Our guests sang the opening hymn, "Love Divine, All Loves Excelling," so lustily that our priest complimented them. His homily was perfect, although sadly I can’t remember much of it today. While we took pictures at the altar after the ceremony, the skies opened up and it poured dark rain. But half-hour later, when we stepped into Uncle Chuck’s old blue Mercedes to head to the reception, the sun was breaking golden through the clouds. Our reception, held under a white tent on the lawn of a Victorian mansion-turned-restaurnat, looked exactly as I’d hoped it would: candles glowing on the tables, white lights hanging everywhere, all set against a backdrop of green grass, green trees, and an old mansion. The DJ played only the songs we’d requested (there was no Hokey Pokey, no Chicken Dance, no bouquet toss, no garter shenanigans). People danced. Friends and fathers gave hilarious and emotional toasts. I wanted that night to never end.

We left for our honeymoon the next morning, setting out on a 16-hour drive to the Outer Banks of North Carolina, where we rented a beach house in the village of Duck. I still remember balancing my journal on my lap somewhere in the mountains of western Pennsylvania, frantically scribbling down every memory I could summon from the night before. I wasn’t sure what lay ahead for us, but I didn’t want to lose one moment of what had just passed.

Put plainly, our first three years of marriage have been good ones. We annoy the hell out of each other sometimes, but yet we can travel in foreign countries together with success. We make each other laugh and we make each other think. Sometimes we become frustrated with each other’s faults, real and imagined. I have been known to raise my voice. But when we argue, we have lines we don’t cross, and I’m proud that we stick to those. I think of our union as one of best friends, partners, lifetime roommates with “benefits.” It’s a model that works really well for us. Sometimes I look at him, and I know, in my mind and in my gut, that I’ve sealed myself to a person who will always be with me and honor the vows we made. And sometimes, when I’m kneeling in the pew after communion on Sundays, I pray for the humility and grace and strength to be worthy of that love, to not take that love for granted. It’s so easy to take love for granted.

I’m still not sure what lies ahead for us—we’re not even 30. But I’m beginning to realize that the unknown isn’t scary, and the unknown doesn’t really matter. Because whatever happens to us, neither of us will be alone. And when death does part us, we’ll have created something beautiful and complex and strong and weatherbeaten and true—a marriage—and it will be one of my life’s greatest accomplishments.

Tax Day, and catching up

Originally posted on Diary-X

From now until January 2005, my husband will get home from work before six o’clock, not after nine o’clock. He will sleep in with me on Saturdays, and we’ll make scrambled eggs and coffee and read the paper together. O happy, blessed Tax Day! This time of year, the end of tax season, always feels like the start of my summer. Later sunsets, warmer weather, and someone to grill me a chicken breast. Life is good.

So last week was Holy Week, and…

…John, who suffers from pretty bad heartburn, had an endoscopy, which went fine (or as well as things can go when you’re sedated and have multiple tubes snaking down your throat). John has no ulcers to speak of, so the doctor’s just going to up his heartburn medicine. He also commended us for placing cement blocks under the head of our bed—apparently this is a great way to combat heartburn. I’m getting used to slowly sliding down the bed as I sleep, waking up with my feet dangling off the bottom. Oh, the sacrifices one must make in a marriage…

…I started my spring class, a poetry writing workshop. And I don’t think I’m the worst poet in the room. (This is the kind of thing I worry about, tiresome perfectionist that I am.) I’ve taken many a fiction writing workshop, but never poetry, so I jumped at the chance to learn the craft. For my first poem, I wrote about Moose. I know, I know: isn’t that something a crazy dog lady would do? But I didn’t want to share deep dark family secrets or embarrassing emotional stuff right off the bat—I hardly know these people. I was actually proud of my work (it’s not a sappy, I’m-a-freak-about-my-dog kind of thing). I’m debating whether or not to post it here. Not sure yet…

…I went to my first neighborhood block club meeting. It was held in an old Jewish synagogue. There were about twenty people in attendance—a few white yuppies, an Indian guy, a Vietnamese guy, a black guy, an older white woman, an older gay man, a grizzled guy with a long ponytail who took copious notes, and a blue-haired dogwalker wearing biker half-gloves on his hands. It was a good feeling to be there; it gave me a sense of community. And I also enjoyed being inside the synagogue, looking at the Hebrew carvings, reading the announcements for Passover events. I just finished the book Girl Meets God, so I felt like I had some understanding of what takes place in a Jewish house of worship. (I recommend that book, by the way. It’s so refreshing to read intelligent spiritual writing that’s not all touchy-feely, syrupy evangelistic stuff—and that doesn’t have an axe to grind. The author is very real, very human, and not sanctimonious at all.)…

…I went to our church’s Good Friday service alone and knelt in the darkened sanctuary, listening to the story of the Passion and, as I do every year, trying to understand the magnitude of what I profess to believe. Then, less than 48 hours later, we celebrated Easter, incense and fancy hats and smiles and alleluias and an embarrassing moment in which I actually teared up during the hymn “Jesus Christ is Risen Today,” and had to stop singing and bite the inside of my cheek in an effort to compose myself. I have no idea why that happened…

…the pigeons had babies. The three of them are mashed together in the nest, ungainly and matted with scrawny necks and big black eyes. Their mother keeps a careful eye on them from the rooftop next door. I’m tempted to walk up to the nest for a close look, but then I picture Momma Pigeon swooping in and clawing at my eyes, so I keep my distance. (She's somewhat evil looking—charcoal gray, with those glittery red pigeon eyes.) A few weeks ago I wished the pigeons were perched over our door instead of our neighbor’s, but now that I see the tributaries of bird poop running down her screen door, I’ve changed my mind…

…while I was walking Moose one afternoon, we passed a scruffy-looking man on the sidewalk who paused to ask this question: “Have you ever eaten dog meat?” When I replied that I hadn’t, half-amused and half-horrified, he kept on walking. These are the times when I’m grateful Moose doesn’t understand much English beyond "dinner" and his own name.

Two tables

Originally posted to Diary-X

We were sitting at the kitchen table in the apartment that we shared, Rachael and I. We had graduated from college two months earlier and were living on the first floor of an old Victorian house near downtown Grand Rapids. We had real jobs in the real world—she worked in public relations for a think tank (I never did understand what its employees were supposed to be thinking about); I was a glorified admin assistant in a corporate communications department, scrounging around for opportunities to write and edit in between filing and answering the phones. It was late July.

We had made a chicken Caesar salad for dinner. In the middle of our meal, Rachael put down her fork, turned to me and asked: “Is this all there is?”

I knew that she was not talking about the food. (In our apartment, there was always a box of Rice Krispies and a bag of marshmallows for post-meal sweet cravings. The girl was a Rice Krispie treat-making machine, and I happily kept her in business.) No, she was talking about how the weather was warm and green and sunny, and we were spending our days pent-up in gray upholstered cubes, like we would be in the fall, and winter, and spring. I suspected that sitting in a desk chair for eight hours a day was having an adverse effect on my weight, and I felt old and tired by ten o’clock at night. Gone was the off-campus house full of girls, the spontaneous late-night chats in someone’s bedroom, the communal meals in front of Simpsons re-runs, the cigarette shared on the front porch, the flurry of someone always leaving or getting home at all hours of the day or night. Now there was routine. Mind-numbing routine. We were done with school, we were living adult lives in the adult world, and, well, it kinda sucked. Was this how it would be from now on? Was this life?

“I hope not,” I answered. Her expression mirrored my feelings: a little sad, a little worried, a little disillusioned.

I remembered that conversation this past weekend, on Valentine’s Day, sitting across from my husband at a little table at Vivo, an Italian restaurant in the West Loop. It was around nine-thirty, and we were waiting for our entrees to arrive. There was a half-finished bottle of Chianti and a tall, half-melted red candle between us. The movie Roman Holiday was being projected on sheets of white gauze hanging from the ceiling, so whenever I looked over John’s shoulder I was treated to mopeds and Audrey Hepburn and the Spanish Steps. We were surrounded by several of the Beautiful People, and we’d attempted to disguise ourselves as two of them. We were having fun.

And suddenly, that kitchen-table conversation from almost six years ago flashed through my mind. And I thought, if this is all there is, I am happy with that. Life is good. I have this man, this man across the table from me in the black v-neck sweater, and he loves me and I love him and he will always be with me. I have a good job where I don’t file or answer phones, and I fill my spare time with challenging freelance work and classes that I’m taking toward a master’s degree. I belong to a spiritually and intellectually stimulating church. I own a home that I love. I live in an exciting city and I see new and different things every day. We have enough money to go out and celebrate our relationship with a damn good meal.

If this is all there is, I’m satisfied.

Version 28.0

Originally posted to Diary-X

Just a few days ago, I was a 27-year-old Roman Catholic. Now I’m a 28-year-old Episcopalian. Funny how life works.

John and I officially joined the ranks of the Episcopal Church on Sunday, in a very moving ceremony officiated by the bishop and attended by my in-laws. My parents didn’t come. I don’t think this was out of snobbery or disappointment or a desire to boycott the occasion; they’re just not big travelers, and they have an old poodle that deteriorates rapidly when kenneled, and there was a lot of snow. And anyway, I was simply being “received” into the church (that’s how Catholics and Orthodox who are already confirmed—I was at age 13—make the switch to Anglicanism). John was being confirmed—renewing his commitment to our faith and making the adult pledge to live a Christian life—and that’s a much bigger deal.

The bishop, a somewhat flaky yet reassuringly warm, twinkly-eyed man born in Panama, laid his hands on John’s head, while his parents and I placed our hands on his shoulders and the congregation looked on. The bishop said, “Defend, O Lord, your servant John with your heavenly grace, that he may continue yours forever, and daily increase in your Holy Spirit more and more, until he comes to your everlasting kingdom.”

“Amen,” we all replied.

When John turned away, I think there were tears in his eyes. I know there were tears in mine, and his parents were bright-eyed.

When my turn came, the bishop clasped my right hand in both of his and said, “Amy, we recognize you as a member of the one holy catholic and apostolic Church, and we receive you into the fellowship of this Communion. God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, bless, preserve, and keep you.”

“Amen,” we all replied.

And when we returned to our pew, I reflected on the year-and-a-half-long journey that led us to this day. It wasn’t easy for me to decide to leave my family’s denomination, and I imagine John felt a twinge or two as well. It's been a kind of uprooting. But I know that my faith has grown exponentially since we discovered this little Episcopal parish, and I’m proud that we did this together, for each other; that we’re adopting this as our family faith. (I don’t think you need children to be considered a family.) It’s something that we can both share in equally. It’s a place where we can both feel at home. Sunday was a happy day for us.

And then yesterday, I did the whole turning-28 thing. Unlike last year’s birthday depression, my day was actually quite pleasant, largely because I had the foresight to take it off. (I did have class at night, so it wasn’t a full holiday, but I slept until 10 a.m. and if that’s not a holiday, I don’t know what is.) I drank my coffee leisurely, without having to clutch it between my knees on the train, and I read the Travel and Perspective sections of Sunday’s paper. I talked to my mom and my grandmom. I played with the digital camera. I bonded with Moose. I watched the (heaps and heaps of) snow fall. I read Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, which I love for making me literally laugh out loud. (Thanks, Al Franken, you national treasure, you!) I climbed around on the Stairmaster for awhile. I ate a chocolate doughnut. I listened to Alison Krauss. When I got home from class, I discovered that someone had placed a delicious chocolate pie, courtesy of Mrs. Smith (venerable lady of the freezer aisle), in the fridge. It was a good day.

My parents sent me a nice little birthday check, which I used to purchase a $160 coat that was 60% off. (Lord how I love January sales.) It is an exceptionally cute ski jacket, perfect for the girl who does not ski yet wants to keep warm and, of course, look cute. It is pale lime-green with a thick white stripe and dark-blue fleece lining. It has a fold-away hood and a myriad of zippered compartments. And while I’m walking Moose or grocery shopping or heading out for coffee, it protects me from the death grip of cold that has been cruelly squeezing Chicago in its fist for a few weeks now.

You know, I feel good about being 28. Is it any scarier than 27? No, not really. As my friend Jess put it, “I think it’s a good age. I feel pretty mature and as if I’m even more settled in to WHO I AM.” That’s not something I could say when I was 22 or 23, and even though back then I was partying, cheap mixed drink(s) in hand, until 2 a.m. on Saturday nights, I would trade those hedonistic days for the wisdom I have now in an instant. It’s a shame that our society doesn't view getting older as a beautiful, rich and rewarding thing. After all, in the end, aren’t we the sum of all the years we’ve lived? The more years you’ve got, the more interesting you’re going to be. And a good gin and tonic is a good gin and tonic at any age.

Brush with suburbia

Originally posted to Diary-X on June 11, 2003

We were supposed to go camping last weekend—we had reservations at a park in Wisconsin. But the weather forecast was iffy, and, well, waiting out a rainstorm in a tent with a wet dog is not my idea of a good time. So we stayed home instead. And the sun shone all day on Saturday.

We slept in, and made a breakfast of scrambled eggs, hash browns, and fruit smoothies, and drank multiple cups of coffee, and read the good sections of the Tribune. We took the dog for a jog by the lake, and I sat at Starbucks for a few hours doing homework while John watched the Cubs/Yankees game on TV.

Later in the afternoon, we pondered the all-important question: where should we go for dinner? I suggested something radical, something totally new: “Let’s go to a suburb!”

Now, Oak Park isn’t really a suburb. I think of it as “urban suburbia”—it’s right on the western border of Chicago, and two different el lines have stations there. It’s one of the areas where we’ll search for a house, whenever that time comes. Actually, that time could come sooner than we’ve planned. The woman who owns our condo recently told us that she may sell it next winter, and we don’t want to buy it—it’s too small for anything long-term. The thought of enduring the nightmare of moving again, simply to bide our time in another apartment for a year, is loathsome… so if she does put our place on the market, we’ll probably try to buy something. (We’ve considered buying a two-bedroom condo in the city, but something about that just doesn’t feel right to me. There’s only so long you can live in a two-bedroom condo. Condo buildings usually don’t have fenced-in yards for dogs, which is something I want if I’m paying six figures for a home. And who wants to pony up those $200+ assessment fees every month?)

So. We’ve heard great things about Oak Park, but we’d never been there, so we decided to make the trek west last Saturday. We left around 6 p.m., driving down Lakeshore Drive, admiring the deep blue of the lake and Lincoln Park spreading out on our right. We chugged through downtown, momentarily slowed by crowds from Gospel Fest and the Printers’ Row Book Fair. We got onto 294, also known as the Eisenhower. And then we crawled. And crawled some more. My husband is not always the most patient of guys, and traffic brings out the worst in him. He was not happy that it took us about an hour to get to Oak Park. While I’m usually a glass-half-full kind of girl, my excitement was quashed a bit, too. We felt so… far away.

Oak Park is a really, really pretty town. There are canopies of tall green trees everywhere, and cute old houses lining up behind cracked sidewalks, and corner stores and elementary schools and venerable stone churches. The downtown is picturesque and walkable—lots of cool-looking restaurants and stores, little art galleries, an old movie theater, an opera house. Big, beautiful green parks are everywhere. North of downtown, there are some truly magnificent (and $800,000+) homes, many designed in the style of Frank Lloyd Wright. It’s a cultural town, a historical town, and it has excellent access to the city (by train, it probably takes about 20-25 minutes to get downtown).

We drove by a house that we’d seen on a realtor’s website. It was built in the 1930s, a two-story bungalow, and it had a front porch with a bench swing. It was on one of those leafy sidewalked streets. The neighbors had “No War” signs in their front yards. As we drove by, we saw that it had a back porch, too. And a little fenced-in lawn.

Two porches. Two. I immediately saw us sitting on the back porch after dinner, drinking beers, John playing guitar, Murphy chasing squirrels in the yard.

We went out to dinner at a casual alehouse that got a positive review in the Tribune. We sat outside on the deck and ate mediocre meals. Something felt a bit strange to me… I couldn’t put my finger on what it was. Then, suddenly, I figured it out. We were surrounded by people who were either in their 40s and 50s or in their teens. There were only two other couples on that crowded deck that were our age. And I realized that in our neighborhood, everyone’s in their 20s and 30s. We hardly ever see children or teenagers or people our parents’ age. I’m not sure I’d ever noticed that before.

After dinner, we drove around town a little longer, then headed back to the city, a shorter drive this time. We felt tired and decided to go home and relax on our rooftop deck with some drinks. We hauled out our camping chairs and set ourselves up in the dark, looking out over the Chicago skyline, the buildings rising up dark and bejeweled in the night sky. To the west, less than a mile away, the lights were still glowing at Wrigley. (On the following night, we’d hear the immense roar of the crowd coming through our living room windows as the Cubs walloped the Yanks.) We could hear faint sirens and car horns, and the “brrr” of a low-flying helicopter scuttling past on its way to the hospital. We could also hear the wind. The skyscrapers twinkled. The sky above us was huge and black.

“I like it here,” I said.

“Me too,” John answered.

“I don’t think I’m ready to buy a house,” I said. “I mean, having a porch would be nice, and a yard. But I’m just not ready to leave this.”

“Me neither.”

“Anyway, we have a porch now,” I said, sipping my beer and looking out at my city. “And a view.”