Notes on a marriage

It’s been almost nine years, now, since Dick and I started sharing a razor (neither of us shaves very often) and a toothbrush (if you think that’s gross, I won’t tell you what we shared in order to get three kids). We even shared an application of Outlook for awhile, but eventually we bought a new harddrive for the broken computer and separated at least that much of our tangled lives.

Last month I was reading through the emails from our courtship in search of the purchase date of my wedding ring for the ultimately-unnecessary insurance claim. First, I have to thank my mom for printing out and saving all those emails, and second, I have to wonder why she bothered.

I’m glad to say I never compromised BYU’s reputation as a very dry campus, but I must have been high to use some of those big words whose meaning is now lost in the post-pregnancy brain cell drain. (even so my vocabulary still has fewer holes than Dick’s–thanks to all those Saturday mornings spent reading while hiding out from my mom, who wanted me to do chores; now I hide from Dick and the girls).

The closest reference to my ring was a fictional sketch Dick had written about our meeting with Tim (owner of Sierra West Jewelry), in which he used words like tits,* which reminds me that Dick was once one of those fiction writer-types interested in things like voice and mood.

Was I ever that young? Did I ever really think my life, my ego were that important? Was I ever that optimisitic? That hopeful, that idealistic? Thank God (literally) that I still think that marrying Dick was the single most significant, right decision I ever made. And bless Dick for being surprised when I mentioned over dinner that we had changed so much as to be unrecognizable.

Motherhood, for those of us who make it a career for a large part of our lives, has changed me more than being a wife has. So maybe Dick hasn’t changed as much, since he’s always had a career outside. We both enjoyed Elder Oak’s talk about divorce last Sunday, partly because we like such a relevant, modern topic, and partly because we’re happily hopeful (smugly satisfied?) that it isn’t relevant to us personally.

On a rare joint trip to Wal-mart a couple weeks ago, I learned that Dick’s favorite brand of toothpaste is Aquafresh. Who knew? I had assumed for nine years that he preferred the same kind I like, Crest.

When we got family pictures taken at Christmas time, the lady never suggested a couple pose, and I was so (%$#!) frazzled that I didn’t think of it. So at our Easter session with Auntie Liz I made Dick wear the same clothes from Christmas and we tried to get some shots. Guess we’re not that photogenic (not to mention technologically challenged) in our old age. We’ll have to try again sometime. After all, we are still a couple, even if we’re also a family.

*Endnote: Dick is horribly upset that I’ve repeated this word (but it’s in that story, I can show you). I am horribly upset that he would want to censor our lives (censor my writing!). He doesn’t remember ever writing a story like that, and now he is a staid married man, a technical communicator rather than an artiste, and I am compromising his dignity. Holy cow! Prove my whole point for me, would you!