I hate that it is the number one thing that Tom and I fight about too, because we don’t have one of those marriages. We have a happy marriage.

But bring out the budget talk, or, worse, the Freelance Eviscerator Taxes, and . . .  Let’s face it, it’s mostly me. (Because I always do the taxes.) (And because I am a shrew the likes that would make milquetoast Bianca look good.)

Do you fight about money the most? (If you never fight, and by fight of course I mean “discuss rationally and lovingly but from understandably different points of view” then try to make something up, because I already feel bad enough.)

As soon was we walked in the door afterwards, rushing to change into comfortable clothes (pajamas) and to make lunch for the family before we just stuffed our faces out of the refrigerator, I told Tom my thoughts and he listened, nodded and then we started talking about something else.

He was in a grumpy mood today, but he was still the only person I could tell what I was thinking, and really, the only person I wanted to.

And even though he was grumpy, he made us read scriptures as a family tonight, which is a new program, finally successful, in which he or I (usually he, because he is the Mary to my Martha in this household, how can you think of reading scriptures when this house is such a mess?) read the chapter ahead and then tell it as a story to the girls, who now know more about the early Old Testament than I did until college. We have Sally read pertinent passages, and they have to answer three questions at the end (Susan’s idea). I think  family scriptures at the end of a long Sunday and three hours of church is an abomination but I still love Tom, and I hope he keeps making us do it.

p.s. I’m glad our first date, twelve years ago today went well, and that you weren’t scared when I told you two days later that we should get married, even if you think now that you were the one who proposed. Whatever.

I think this pregnancy it’s worse. Before I would dream that he had died in a horrible car accident, the kind of waking nightmare you have when your husband is twenty minutes late coming home from work and you’re stirring dinner on the stove and the kids are wild in the background and you wonder how you’d ever cope since he’s surely dead on the highway because he isn’t answering his phone and he hasn’t called to explain that he just had to finish that one application before he could leave his desk.

This time it’s always divorce, and it’s always much worse, and I wake up feeling so sick at heart. I feel, in fact, just like I felt in March two years ago when my mom called me before church and told me that Marcy’s husband had left her. Then, nothing we could say was any comfort. We all agreed it would’ve been easier if he had died, loving her.

Now, my sister is getting married this summer. She is different: stronger, not emotionally insecure. She’s not a doormat anymore, she can tell a guy to take a hike if he isn’t good enough for her, if he doesn’t love her and respect her as she now knows she deserves.

Her fiance is a very nice man. He’s divorced, also, with three kids, also, and they have lots of other things in common, including exes who make very nice villains of their separate pieces. I have seen him with Marcy’s kids, and he is as good with Marcy’s kids as my husband is with ours, or almost; some of that just takes time. He and Marcy are more alike in the ways that matter than she and her first husband were. I think, in general, that they will have a good marriage, if anyone wanted my opinion on it.

At Thanksgiving (the first time I met him and his kids) Marcy told me she had given him one of my posts to read (the one about how blended families can be beautiful), and she said she liked my most recent post (the one about the snowy day), because it had my usual blend of frustration with motherhood ending in acceptance and [joy].

And then she said that her fiance (who is the residential parent) used his wife’s blog against her in the custody hearings. I quickly joked that Dick wouldn’t ever have to do that — he knows if he ever left, I wouldn’t dream of fighting him for custody.

But I can’t forget that conversation, at 4:18 in the morning when I’ve woken with the copper residue of fear in my mouth and the tearful certainty that in reality my husband would never, ever leave me, and more, if he ever did, that he would never take these words of mine, these words that I have labored so strenuously to deliver, honestly, onto the page.

Because there have been times when I resent my children, when I resent motherhood, when I think what could have been if I’d pursued my other dreams instead. And if I thought my husband, my Tom, who in our first year of marriage, ever since that tender beginning, labored beside me our final year of college, when we holed up, side-by-side, stopping only to eat and drink and talk, once in a while, to share the questions and answers we were so elegantly, passionately weaving into our papers and essays, if he were to belittle and demean the offerings of my heart, however so pitiful and inadequate they are once sprung from my short fingers, I would never be able to forgive him. I would know, finally, that he didn’t understand, that he never would, never had, never wanted to, and how could you ever stay married to someone like that?

Of course divorce is always betrayal, and it’s a better betrayal than the betrayal of self or of the children one swears on one’s life to love and protect, and the question of who betrayed whom first is one that only God and the families of the first-betrayed really care about anymore. And sometimes it is a betrayal forced though the first-betrayed would have forgiven anything if only the betrayer would reconsider.

I remember thinking, right before Tom and I were married, that marriage wouldn’t be such a significant, and potentially joy-giving institution, if it weren’t also such an unfathomable risk. The more of yourself you commit, the more you stand to lose if you are betrayed; if you commit less, there is less to be betrayed, but also much less to make the marriage worth desiring. Total giving of self, of merging of dreams and hopes and plans and subduing of extraneous, give-up-able wants, is vulnerability defined, and also the only hope for making a marriage so good, so life-sustaining, that the thought of losing it, fueled by raging fetus hormones, is enough to make one wish it were morning and no longer night.

Then I told her all about Penelope’s discussion of The Pioneer Woman, because we both love The Pioneer Woman. (Who doesn’t?) Poor Chrysanthemum probably gets a little tired of my telling her stuff during our walks. But the juxtaposition of Pioneer Woman and Penelope Trunk is absolutely fascinating. Pioneer Woman lives on a ranch, has kids, writes a popular (understatement) blog. Penelope Trunk lives now on a farm, has kids, writes a popular blog. They’re similar in age and superficial candor and charm in their writing. Penelope writes about more hard things, more sad things, than Pioneer Woman, or maybe she just writes about them more darkly.

Penelope’s post about the Pioneer Woman pointed out several things that Pioneer Woman does on her blog that make her so likeable (presumably in contrast to Penelope’s more abrasive, though equally appealing persona). Pioneer Woman never “disrespects her guy” and she’s optimistic. The difference between the two blogs boils down to this: “that [Penelope is] drawn to writing about the fights, and the Pioneer Woman is drawn to writing about pies, and feeding the Marlboro Man.”

The women differ in other areas: Penelope works more than full-time at her fancy career and Pioneer Woman homeschools her four children (though surely she also has a lot of household help, and spends plenty of time working on her blog and recipe book business). But the thing I think they differ in most is that Penelope is so unhappy much of the time and Pioneer Woman is not only happy but content and satisfied (though never smug, which would be unforgivable). If I thought their blogs were mirror images of themselves and their lives, I’d want to talk to Penelope every day, but I’d want to be Pioneer Woman.

(I’m really not a blog stalker. I just take my fictional characters very seriously. If I could choose anyone to be, it’d be Anne, or Valancy, or maybe even Emily, though she was monumentally too proud. Probably Valancy. Because of all that money.)

Reading Penelope I always think of how I want to do this little or big thing differently. Even though, like her, I am drawn to writing about the hard things. Of course I love and appreciate my husband. Since he doesn’t wear chaps and I don’t know how to work my camera, and because of course I love and appreciate him, what interests me is the things he does that make my otherwise-fairytale life frustrating in the extreme. Like, he won’t take a class to learn how to finish our basement even though our fourth kid will be squished in our current 1600 square feet.

But I want to be happy, like Pioneer Woman. Somehow I want to retain my critical, curious thinking like Penelope but gain a joie de vivre over every little thing like PW. Because what I like about Pioneer Woman most, maybe, is that even though she’s obviously rich and lucky (and talented), I still don’t hate her. Somehow she has me convinced that even if she were stuck in a dingy tenement with four rickets babies, she’d still be making a beautiful life.

So I have a goal to disrespect my guy less. Beginning with three things recently that made me glad to be once again bearing his child. (Here, if I were Pioneer Woman, I’d say something about my ovaries singing, or something.)

His touch: I have been less-than-not-interested in anything relating to connubial bliss for the past month. He brushes against me in the hall and my tummy quivers, and not in the good way. Then last week, as we lay in bed, him on the laptop, me reading a book, I reached for his hand and just felt his palm. His skin was warm and pleasantly dry. A little rough from work, but smooth and tingly. I rubbed it for a couple minutes and then turned back to my book. He laughed: “That’s enough holding hands, huh?”

His little women: Of course we want a boy this time around. Of course. But now that I know how different each child is, that we won’t be repeating ourselves with another little girl, I am eager either way. Tom said last Sunday morning that he’d had a dream we had our baby, and she was old enough to be crawling around, and she was so cute. When we think of names, at the dinner table, he says silly things like Zeus and Wolf, and then he says he really likes Mia too.

His devotion: Lucy had croup Saturday night, and Tom was up with her several times, wrapping her in a blanket and sticking her head in the freezer. She breathed easier downstairs (where it’s always cooler), and he wanted to be sure he heard her if she needed him, so they slept on the living room couch. Then he got up early and took the other kids to church.

(These are old pictures, but there’s something about snow that makes my camera not work.)

So Mr. Bennet is kind enough to not type away at his computer in front of me during normal business hours.

Last week I took Sally and Susan to that Thanksgiving Point thing, but I didn’t take Spot. It was actually for kids five and over, so Susan was pushing it. I told her to just say that she is five, but she said, “No Mom, I won’t do it.” Points for honesty, timeout for disobedience. (And a wash on sheer stubbornness.)

But Spot had to stay home. I asked my sister to watch her for the day, and then Mr. Bennet decided to take a vacation day from his day job so that he could give a 90-minute webinar through his professional association (like the AMA only not for doctors and not limited to Americans).

Mr. Bennet had no control over the webinar technology or how the webinar was set up. He did have a say in what to do with Spot. I suggested he could get a neighbor girl to watch her just during the webinar, but Spot is in general an easy child, so he thought he could work and parent at the same time.

And she was pretty good. She watched a movie downstairs and then went out in the backyard. About five minutes before the end of his presentation, Spot came back in crying. Mr. Bennet ignored her as he confirmed that no one had any more questions and wrapped up. Afterward, he discovered she’d been stung by a wasp, and felt bad for assuming she was just indulging in a temper cry.

The immediate feedback from the webinar was positive, but today he was informed that a woman who had encouraged three of her colleagues to take the seminar was very disappointed and wanted a refund. Many of her concerns were valid, concerning the overall setup (which didn’t allow for much interaction) and the focus of the webinar being different than she expected. Fair enough, refund her money.

Then she complained about the crying child.

I don’t know who I feel compelled to defend here — my kid whose hand swelled up to three times its normal pudginess or my husband, who has almost no experience as a work-at-home parent but handled things okay, I thought, or myself, who as the mother was off gallivanting with her two older children and left the youngest to not only get stung by a wasp from that hive I have sprayed already this summer but also left her poor, over-worked husband to do two jobs and open himself up to criticism for being a father. (And why do I feel guilty for either of those?)

Mr. Bennet says he wishes more people were understanding of children.

It makes me grateful that in my own work, as unprofitable as it may be thus far, I can tell a reporter or a PR rep or a sponsor or a fellow blogger to hold on a minute, my kid needs me. How lucky is it that I can tell the whole world to kiss my tookey if they don’t like hearing my baby cry when she needs her mama?

Also? That even when Mr. Bennet or I fumble the baton as we pass it to each other, we are a team. Don’t nobody mess with my team.

I make it a point to be honest and candid here, to be real. And that has led to two major problems. 1) It perpetuates one of the myths of our marriage, that I am always the “bad guy” who yells and swears and overreacts and criticizes the way you “park” the car. And 2) it sometimes paints you as a bumbling, typical guy who couldn’t find the grocery store if he were starving (possibly true) and who always forgets to take the trash out (quite untrue, recently).

The problem is: it’s much easier to be honest about what’s wrong. It’s easy to make jokes about ineptness or exaggerate faults for effect or confess to mistakes and inadequacies.

It even seems more authentic, more true, somehow, to paint a picture of unflinching reality, of Valentine’s gifts un-purchased and gourmet meals uncooked, floors un-mopped and thank-you’s unsaid. Of prayers mumbled as our heads hit the pillows and socks left under the bed.

And maybe it’s easy to expose these foibles, because, as urgent as they are in the moment, as maddeningly infuriating or calamitously disappointing they are during the day, — in the dead of night, when I can reach over and rest my hand on your strong chest or when I plug your nose to STOP THE SNORING, there is no one I’d rather have in my bed, in my mind, and in my life.

It’s actually almost frightening how together we have it. Frightening, to me, because I know I don’t deserve it. I don’t appreciate it enough. Well, I do, but I don’t always show it.

I’m afraid if I tell the truth about how wonderful you are and how lucky I feel to have you, it’ll sound like I’m bragging, or gloating, or blowing my own horn, because surely — somewhere in my youth or childhood, I must have done something . . . something good.

See, just here. I’m stuck. The emotion swamps me, and unlike anger or righteous indignation, swamping love is harder for me to articulate. And it’s harder to feel unself-conscious. I think, maybe I should just tell this to you privately.

But I’m not private about the problems.

Why do compliments and happy-for’s seem tacky to me, but not complaining? (Surely it’s tackier to complain about one’s spouse?)

Well, here goes:

You might forget to take me on a date, but you always remember to take the family to the dollar theater.

You may carp about cleaning house on Saturday mornings, but the girls love going to your basketball games.

You ask me to stop swearing in front of the kids, but you make an honest goal to help more around the house.

You might not smell the baby’s dirty diaper, but you are never too tired to clean up the vomit while I comfort the sick kid.

You forget to buy me a present, but you always encourage me to have what I want.

You might be directionally challenged and sometimes completely oblivious, but I have never doubted your love and your patience and your faith and your goodness.

I have never been afraid to trust you with my thoughts, my feelings, my heart, my body, my love, my children, my dreams, my goals, and my future.

I trust you more than I trust myself. Even though you’re not perfect, and even though there have been times I’ve wished you had told me things before you told me, and even though I now know that some men are happy to break their promises, I would stake my life on your honor.

And if, for any reason, I had to start dating again tomorrow, I would spend years searching for someone exactly like you.

I don’t know if you’re as satisfied and content with me as I am with you (I don’t know how you could be, though I hope you are), and DANG it is such a cliche, but I love you more now than I ever imagined when we had our first date 11 years and 4 days ago, and sweetheart, I loved you a lot then.

love,

Shannon

Today was so nondescript I couldn’t answer when Dick asked how it was. I am menstruating, to put it clinically, and the weather is gray. Spot has finally toned down the whiny squeak that had me wanting to stab myself in the femoral artery. Sally spent the afternoon at the table making her own Valentine’s Day cards and a customized Valentine box. I think she found an old shoebox in the basement.

I found a week-old note from her teacher that said the kids should make and bring boxes for tomorrow. They should also take their stuffed animals yesterday. Susan traced her name on the colorful Maisy cards I bought. Spot’s diaper rash is back, but we distracted her by requesting the Elbow Dance, which is exactly what it sounds like and way too simple to be the cutest thing I’ve ever seen a two-year old do.

I made cookies and fed the girls hotdogs left over from yesterday’s Blue and Gold Banquet (more on Boy Scouts later). I read three (or four, I’m not really sure) rubbishy novels, and I washed (but didn’t fold) two batches of laundry, plus the sheets on my bed (as I’ve been meaning to for days). I hate it when Dick wakes me in the middle of the night. I enjoy the connubial bliss, but I’d prefer it not to seem like an afterthought.

Now the kids are down. The dishwasher is running, finally, and the flexible spending reimbursements for 2008 are submitted. I haven’t started on our taxes or made my church-lady-fellowshipping visits for the month or finished any of the 94 posts languishing in my draft folder, but these things are on my To Do list, and that feels sufficiently optimistic.

And my kitchen floor needs to be mopped.

Dick is back from his church-family-fellowshipping visits now, and upstairs working on some freelance project, pausing occasionally to tell Susan that, yes, she can get out of bed to go potty. My brother, who is in medical school, called to ask me today for my feelings on the proper plural form of the word scala, which I’ve never heard, though it reminds me of strata. I told him to look on dictionary.com. My sister, who’s in college, IM’s me to ask what she should do her history research paper on. I suggest Theodora, the courtesan who got Justinian, emperor of Rome, to buy the cow when surely he could’ve just gotten a weekly delivery of milk. I tell her I’d love to write a historical novel about Theodora.

But my kitchen floor needs to be mopped.

I get distracted by my Google Reader (it doesn’t take much. In fact, sometimes I sit here, hitting refresh, hoping someone, anyone will have written a post I can think about instead of this stupid kitchen floor that needs to be mopped). My house has been clean recently enough that I remember the feeling of righteous pleasure it brought, though I don’t want a clean house to be a priority, because DAMN, I hope (HOPE) I have some more interesting priorities.

A new post on Freakonomics leads me to a post by Arnold King about the causes of the rise in equality, one of which is the marriage of intellectual equals. When, instead of well-educated men marrying women to grace their homes, they marry well-educated women who will presumably grace a matching corner office. How does he put it?

That is, when highly educated men start looking for wives who are stimulating companions as opposed to kitchen-floor moppers, this reduces cross-class marriages and thereby raises inequality.

This is possibly a better dichotomy than the old Virgin-or-Whore classification of females, though it’s certainly no better than that other age-old division: the Brains-or-Beauty choice Shallow Hal had to confront.

This, on top of Rachel Cooke’s Sunday diatribe about The dummy mummy decade: Boring, selfish, smug: How a generation of women became obsessed with motherhood, is TOO MUCH.

You know what?

I had kids because, at the time, each time (four times, one miscarriage), it was a biological imperative. I could not resist the hormonal demand for flesh of my flesh. And then I chose to stay home because it works in the partnership that is my marriage.

This wasn’t what I planned for when I was taking AP Chemistry, Biology, English, American History, and Calculus. Staying at home full-time wasn’t on my mind when I took the GRE or when I wrote my undergraduate honor’s thesis. Being consumed by childhood concerns and attuned to childish voices wasn’t what I expected when I thrilled to Thoreau’s injunction to live deliberately, to examine life stripped of the trappings of power and prestige and shallow, superficial concerns.

But it works.

Strip away the carpools and the cartoons, the playdates and the PTAs, and you have life: raw, unbearably fresh, growing, sneezing, negotiating of relationships, innocence and laughter, hurts and tears and ills-that-mommy-can-fix-and-those-she-can’t LIFE.

You couldn’t get any closer to real, important life if you built a cabin in the woods and lived there alone for two years.

And you know what else?

I can mop my DING and also DANG kitchen floor tonight and still run intellectual rings around my husband, with his Ivy-league MFA and his guest appearances in Vienna.

And finally?

He’s man enough to love it.

Jane

Things like NOT LOCKING the car when it’s in the garage or TURNING THE LIGHTS OFF in the car (so your wife doesn’t have to ride her bike 10 miles in the snow, pulling two solid kids along in the bike trailer, up over Unity Pass, elevation 5070) or FINDING A PLACE WE’VE BEEN TO SEVEN TIMES or SMELLING THE DIRTY DIAPER WITH HIS OWN NOSE.

And poor Dick might justifiably shake his head when I crash into the garage:

Or when I lock the keys in my car at the gas station or forget to pick up Sally on early-out day (for the fifth time in two months) or when I drag him to family functions at the last minute or when I forget to turn off the oven that’s on LOW to speed the rising of my rolls:

But when all of my featherbrained-ness happens in a very short week, compounded by HIS featherbrainedness, honestly, I just want to go back to bed and sleep until April.

And I fear for our children. I fear that one day Sally will be reading a book and forget to breathe and turn blue and asphyxiate and die. Because it’s complicated to read and breathe at the same time. Or, you know, drive and plan a blog post.

So here are my tips for the week:

1) Close all doors before pushing your dead car anywhere.

2) Turn off all the lights in your car so the battery doesn’t die. (twice).

3) Turn off the oven if you have plastic in there.

4) Change the baby’s diaper if it smells toxic. Ignoring it will NOT make it go away.

5) If you are a kindred spirit of Anne of Green Gables, marry someone down-to-earth and capable, like Gilbert.*

Jane

*There are some benefits of marrying someone equally feather-brained; they are usually good at understanding exactly why it was that you forgot to screw your head on in the morning.

Of course you can’t know.

Dick could turn out to be a mass murderer tomorrow, and I would be the last person to know.

Not really. I keep pretty close tabs on that boy.

As I’ve told my sisters before, I knew that I had to marry Dick. That he was it. When he got cold feet after we’d been engaged for about a month (remember this is also just a month after we met), I felt that my life was over, and not just in a Twilight “I love you even though you’re a vampire and sometimes want to eat me” sort of way.

Basically, I said, Dick is my evidence that there is a God and that He cares about me.

Mary turned to Karen and said, “You’d think she’d treat him better, then.”

What? I treat Dick JUST FINE.

Maybe sometimes I get exasperated by Dick’s always dwelling in the land of never-never. In the kitchen, making mincemeat pie with his dad for Thanksgiving, Dick reminds me of Anne of Green Gables, who is always so busy daydreaming she forgets to add flour.

Sometimes I can’t revel in the nice things Dick does (like taking the kids home for bed while I see a movie with my sisters) because the next morning he brings them back to my parents looking like raggedy orphans.

You know how they say that in order to counteract one criticism you have to give seven compliments? It’s like that. Dick does or says one irritating thing, and suddenly the five or six thoughtful things he did just don’t quite make up for it.

Well, today he did one small thing that I think is the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me.

I called him early to remind him to bring me fresh clothes and my glasses, and he told me how Susan, after snuggling with him in our bed this morning, had a little accident. We are not amused, Susan. You can’t just go an entire year accident-free and then have three accidents in two days, including one in MY BED.

Dick got a bit impatient with the long list of things I needed from the house. And the butter and ice cream and bacon I needed from the store. He may even have snapped when I suggested he get a pen and paper to write this all down. Wasn’t I sympathetic that he had to FIND THE BAKING SODA and THROW THE SHEETS DOWN TO THE LAUNDRY ROOM?

So finally he made it to my parents. He told me where everything on my list was, and then he said, “I brought you a Mountain Dew.”

That he would think of this on his own, and actually remember it and try to shrug it off as “they were just sitting there right by the door to the garage” –

I don’t even know how many irritating things that counteracts, Dick. Maybe a million.

Jane

One day I saw a thread on our listserv from one of the Fellows who’d matriculated into the group a semester before I did. So he was extra cool, being one of the “big” kids. And he was using a Walt Whitman quote as a stirring call to action about how we would help the poor beleaguered masses find their writing voices. I thought he sounded pretty condescending (and was kind of hijacking Whitman), so I responded with “What the hell are you talking about?”

Being the big nerd he was, he didn’t get mad, he was delighted that someone was stirred enough to issue a challenge. And that was when a few of my bad habits began. I started stumbling to the computer first thing in the morning to see if he’d replied to my latest salvo. I snuck into the Writing Fellows office and stole his literary biography, a writing memoir that was the first assignment a new Writing Fellow always completed. It usually turned into a Declaration of Writer-ness. I read his, about coming to school intending to study physics, about spending two years in Venezuela, about realizing that literature and writing were what he really loved.

I went home and told my mom I’d fallen in love, not that his essay was so great. It probably stunk almost as much as mine did, but I was in love with the person who’d produced it. Then I realized that I had no idea what he looked like, and a sudden fear struck me. Fear that he would be that one guy with thick glasses, awful shirts, and a fanny pack. The one who was always taking pictures and had floppy hair, not in a good-floppy sort of way.

Dear Lord, I prayed that night, anyone but him. I LOVE him, but, please, anyone but that guy.

My bad habits continued. I snuck into the Writing Fellows office again and found a picture of my Fellow. He was not the guy with thick glasses, awful shirt, and fanny pack.

There is a God.

He suggested, over email, that we meet, go out, further our acquaintance. I said yes, of course, because I was already in love with him. We joked about carrying roses in books or wearing yellow, but in the end his roommate picked me up on the way back from taking his girlfriend caving.

We were married four months later, and this weekend I realized that one of the things I am most grateful for in my whole entire life is that I fell in love before knowing what he looked like. Before seeing his face and wanting his strong body. Before his pheromones promised mine that there would be babies, sweet, chubby babies in our future.

Because I fell in love with him.

But we needed a break from the emotionally draining business of intense (yet civil) Instant Message fighting discussion.

So what did we do? Took the kids to the dollar theater where we all enjoyed the magnum of giddy nonsense that is . . .

Mamma Mia! (spoiler alert!)

I thought Dick would be mad that I tricked him into taking four females to a musical about . . . hmmm . . . about . . . a wedding, sex with multiple partners, consequences, regrets, boy toys, homosexuality, single parenthood, responsibility, love that survives in the unlikeliest of circumstances, and following one’s dreams.

Maybe it wasn’t such a fluffy movie after all.

Maybe it was . . . hmmm. I’m not really sure whether to be appalled or applauding. It sure was gorgeous — all set in Greece with the white-stuccoed rocks and that blue! sky. Meryl Streep, who I’m realizing is quite amazing.

And it turns out that Dick has quite evolved, affectionate feelings for the music of ABBA, enough so that I’ll be uploading my ABBA Gold CD to our iTunes library tomorrow (if I can find it).

But one thing did bother me:

Why is Sophie (the daughter) choosing between:

1) marriage/settling down/babies

and

2) seeing the world/following her dream/freedom?

when the movie rests on the premise that what Donna (the mother) chose was:

3) seeing the world/following her dream/accidental baby/settling down.

Why is everyone so happy and relieved that Sophie chooses the freedom of travelling the world with a man who remains her boyfriend rather than her husband? Because as long as they’re not married she won’t get pregnant? Do Hollywood types forget how babies are made between the opening scenes and the fadeout? Are Hollywood types really that dumb? (Really?)

And why is marriage the bad guy here?

Marriage doesn’t tie you to a place or a dream or a baby.

Marriage ties you to a person. And if you tie yourself to the right person (even if he is a big fat jerk sometimes), marriage can take you to Japan and Harlem and The Bronx and Iceland and England and Cairo and Florida and Utah.

Marriage ties you to the dreams you build with your favorite person on earth. And even when he is your LEAST FAVORITE person on earth, you remember that the dreams that you have built together are worth working and fighting and sacrificing for.

Marriage can’t even produce a baby (sex does that, my poor, dumb Hollywood types). And it is love that ties you to a baby, whether you’re married or not. And once that baby is here, all the places and dreams and freedoms suddenly seem a little less important.

Until the day that baby starts talking and discovers what a great reaction she can get from saying “I hate you” all day long for seven weeks straight.

Then freedom starts to look more enticing again. And then, hopefully, that person you tied yourself to ten years ago? He offers to watch the kids all weekend so you can get away for a break from your job of 24/7 mothering.

And suddenly you realize that you don’t really want to go anywhere.

You just wanted to know that you could.

Jane

Blogging is the easiest and most easily rewarding way to write that I know of. But it can still be discouraging or upsetting or maddening. In the end, I blog (despite not turning blog-famous) because I have something to say.

And also, apparently, to communicate with my husband. Dick writes at IdRatherBeWriting.com, and today he’s got a post up about how living with a mommy blogger is great training for a corporate blogger. He totally misrepresents me in places, but I’m reminded that I fell in love with his thoughts and writing even before his hot body.

If you started reading Seagull Fountain after reading Dick, I only ask that you keep in mind that, while Dick’s college GPA was .02 higher than mine, I smoked him on the ACT, GRE, and dishwashing championships.

Why do YOU blog? (Or not?)

Jane

Dick: My left wrist feels like someone ran over it with a car, but I have no recollection of any injury to it.

Jane: @Dick Hope it wasn’t all the dishes you did last night. WAIT. You didn’t do any dishes last night (ever). Probably carpal tunnel .

(Sidenote: In going back to get this word-for-word, I noticed the tweet Dick had written two hours before the wrist thing. “Just thinking that my blogging life with Jane is the natural extension of a marriage of two English majors. Love reading her blog everyday.” Boy, I’m starting to look really bad here, huh? In my defense, all I can say is that Dick had played basketball the night before, and that he truly hadn’t washed a single dish since we moved into this house one month ago.)

Now, I recognize the wisdom in the advice given to women that they shouldn’t criticize the way hubs diapers the baby or barbeques the chicken or washes the dishes. I know just enough behavior modification to realize that criticizing the way someone does something they don’t enjoy anyway is not a good way to encourage them to keep doing it.

But. Dick does dishes the wrong way.

He does.

Plus he hasn’t cooked (yet) in this new house, so I was prepared to be exasperated when he started hunting through cupboards looking for the mixing bowl’s home. And I blushed deep red half-way through saying NOT THAT ONE:

Not that beautifully empty, extra-deep cupboard that I . . . completely forgot about when setting up my kitchen four weeks ago.

If I weren’t feeling so sheepish, I’d be overjoyed at the thought of an EMPTY CUPBOARD. That’s like a $20 bill in your coat pocket, waiting for weather cold enough for you to discover it.

What will I put in that cupboard? The possibilities are staggering, and endless. I’ll probably keep it empty as long as I can, opening the door to admire its rich blankness whenever I feel cluttered and overwhelmed. It’ll be my secret place. A reminder that now we have more: more space, more possibility, more home than we need.

Jane

(and thanks for doing the dishes, Dick. You’re the best. (husband and father, not dishwasher).

Sometimes the bloom seems off the rose, the glitter wears thin, and the once-in-a-lifetime is obscured by the everyday.

I usually avoid adultery movies. I’m just not interested in the rationalizations or romanticizations of being unfaithful. I don’t care how tragic or star-crossed or understandable it is that someone would cheat. If it could happen to them, it might happen to me, and I don’t like to think about that.

Then Dick and I moved to Seagull Fountain and entered a technology-drought like it was 1984. No internet, no TV, no internet. So we watched Spanglish, a movie we’d borrowed from my parents a year ago.

Dick loved it. Thought it was the best Adam Sandler movie ever (not a hard thing to be), and I thought it was the saddest movie ever. Until I watched The Bridges of Madison County for the first time, and decided that was the saddest movie ever.

Sad because I totally get why Francesca would cheat. Her husband, the farmer, slams the screen door. Every. Day. He’s silent during dinner. Her kids are normal teenagers (enough said).

That slamming door is so symbolic, I tell Dick. It means the farmer also leaves the lid up, the cap off, the blender out, the foreplay forgotten.

Oh, Francesca! Where do I find an itinerant National Geographic photographer of my own, eager to peel carrots and bring me drinks and ever-so-gently ease the door shut?

That silent screen door is so symbolic, I tell Dick. It means the photographer sees her. He sees her flaws and loves her anyway. He sees her dreams and rejoices in them. HE SEES HER.

At the end of the movie, when Francesca is devastated over the photographer leaving and her staying, the farmer notices that she is undone, and asks what is wrong. More tears. He asks again. She says she just needs a minute.

He reaches over to the radio and — Here it is, I think, here is where he turns the dial to Francesca’s favorite Italian opera music, proving that he, too, SEES her, and it is a SIGN FROM THE HEAVENS ABOVE that she has made the right decision (the staying, not the straying).

But no. He turns it to the Farm Report. Francesca cries. The photographer drives out of Iowa.

And then, as the stupid tears course down my cheeks, I remember a few things:

The farmer falls in love with Francesca in Italy and gives her all he has.

The farmer tells her that he cannot sleep without her beside him.

The farmer TAKES THE KIDS FOR FOUR DAYS so she can have some alone time.

The farmer asks her what’s wrong. Twice.

I don’t know about you, but if my husband takes the kids to the state fair for four days, I’m not thinking of cheating on him, I’m polishing my shrine to his saintly-wonderful self.

And not only does he notice when she’s upset, he asks her what’s wrong. Twice.

The farmer doesn’t see Francesca because she does not show herself to him.

My sister worries that our youngest sister will have a harder time taking the leap of faith into marriage, after seeing what happened to her could-have-been-perfect marriage. I think it is a darn good thing that Dick and I leapt when we were both just babies, too dreamy to guess how many things could go wrong.

After ten years of a marriage that I would like to continue forever, I have a few pieces of advice for both of my sisters and whomever they end up with:

For the men: Don’t slam the screen door.

For the women: Show yourself to your husband. (Every day). (Even when he forgets to ask).

For both: Don’t forget the . . . friendship.

Jane

That’s what works-for us. What works for your marriage? Got any advice for the single or the newly re-single?

That afternoon I picked Dick up from work and drove to the boys’ apartment. I suggested he call to make sure the boys were ready to go, but Dick will sometimes do anything to avoid talking to people on the phone. After we’d waited a few more minutes and I nagged a bit more, he went in search of the boys (because that’s easier than actually making a phone call).

The boys weren’t ready. They weren’t packed, they hadn’t sewn on their patches. And they hadn’t made their tinfoil dinners yet. Dick was pretty ticked. Can you believe those boys hadn’t SEWN ON THEIR PATCHES or MADE THEIR TINFOIL DINNERS? I wondered if their mom was able to help, and Dick said their mom doesn’t know how to sew, and anyway, the boys SHOULD TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR THEMSELVES.

So I reminded Dick that I had:

A) procured his shirt,

B) shopped for and assembled his tinfoil dinner,

C) bought the boys’ shirts and patches that were not sewn,

D) reminded Dick to get his sleeping bag and tent from my parents’ house,

E) reminded the boys the previous day that they should make tinfoil dinners and sewn on patches,

F) picked Dick up from work, and

G) washed and folded his clothes that he wanted to take.

You’re so right, Dick. Boys should learn to do things for themselves.

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Did you wash your hands?

No spitting!

WHY are you taking off your shirt?

Blow. With your nose.

Put your shoes back on!

When’s your father going to be home?

Just eat it!

No!

This is the LAST book!

WHERE did you learn that?

Life ISN’T fair.

I’m sorry you feel that way. I could never never hate you.

Don’t throw that!

Do you WANT to spend all day in time-out?

You can have dessert AFTER you eat your dinner.

Stop!

Quit stabbing your sister with the toothbrush!

Who wants to play Sorry!?

No biting!

I saw that!

Get back in bed. Lay down. Close your eyes.

No more snacks! We’ll eat tons tomorrow.

—

And, when you can’t hear me:

What is WRONG with you? / Where did I go wrong?

It’s lucky you’re adorable and sweet-smelling after a bath. Because. Otherwise?

—

And, when you’re sleeping, and you really can’t hear me:

I could watch you for hours, and not even feel silly for crying about how inconceivably, stupendously, over-every-top-there-ever-was much I love you.

Oh, did I forget to say that when you were awake? Sorry.

I love you!

This weekend’s Things That Must Go features a $50 Giveaway from Hanes! (More Underwear + Socks = Less Frequent Laundry Loads!). Go share your Things That Must Go to enter the contest.

Of course he does this completely wrong, letting Spot play for “five minutes” in the big girls’ room before being banished to her lonely crib, but I accepted that it was a nice gesture.

We celebrated our tenth wedding anniversary and recounted our highlights, which consisted mostly of remembering fights in exotic locales (remember that discussion in Hyde Park when we went to Iceland and England for Spring Break at Columbia? There’s a reason people head SOUTH for Spring Break).

Then this weekend we went to my parents’ to celebrate my sister’s birthday. My dad got a little upset when I volunteered Dick for some outdoor labor, saying I shouldn’t “take advantage of his good nature.” I think my parents have spent the past ten years living in fear that my shrewish nature might finally push Dick over the edge, and I suppose now they’re really worried: What if Dick decides to follow the Prince of Darkness’s example and leave his innocent wife and three kids?

Well, I got news for you. First: I want Dick to know that if he ever left, I wouldn’t fight him for custody of the kids. It’d be a sacrifice, naturally, but he can have them all to himself. And second, I cannot imagine a person more different from my more-selfish-and-self-centered-than-Lindsay-Lohan-and-Bill-Clinton combined PoD brother-in-law than Dick. Whereas the PoD has both a Bentley and a Mercedes, Dick would like to buy a bike. From DI (like Salvation Army). Because riding a bike would be better exercise than the train.

I could go on, (I could mention our connubial life, and how superior Dick is in that area as well, but I wouldn’t want anyone to think that my sister and I compare notes on that sort of thing. But we do, and Dick is. Much.)

Mostly I wouldn’t want anyone to think that I am blind to Dick’s flaws. He does have a few.

Number one being that he is, in all honesty, a dork. I should probably look in the urban dictionary for a term from this decade, but “dork” just fits. Here he is, pretending to drown. How inappropriate.

dick pretends to drown, susan swims the length from jane on Vimeo.

Just ignore those pet names we have for each other.

And here is Sally doing underwater somersaults. I am afraid that I might be a dork, too. At least I didn’t attempt a Michelle Obama-style bump. It’s humiliating enough to have your high-five go unacknowledged.

sally doing flips in the water from jane on Vimeo.a>.

Dick thinks I should get the kids in swim team. I think he should try driving them everywhere before he starts inventing new activities for them to do. I know, Nana and Grampa, Dick was a star in swim team. But, remember how annoying it was driving him to all those practices?

What? You say that sort of hands-on parenting is what produces such wonderful, dorky grown-ups? Argh.

Well, swim lessons start again on Monday, and I’m planning to keep my dorky husband, and that’s what works for me this week!

Things That Must Go and an LLBean Tote Bag giveaway are this weekend!

Then last week he threatened to sue for custody of the kids if she asks for the financial records the judge needs to determine allocation of assets, alimony, child support.

And she realized, after all the things that he has done, What He Is. I think this is common in battered women. They’ll take anything a PoD dishes out, but when he threatens to treat the children as his chattel, they’ll finally, PRAISE EVERYTHING HOLY, see him for What He Is.

My sister started house-hunting, even talked about opening her own checking account. She and I ran a 5K race (her first) on Saturday.

Today I got a voicemail from her asking if I knew anything about a boy I went to school with. He’s a dentist now, divorced or widowed, with three kids. A friend wants to set them up.

I told her last week, when she called, sobbing, overwrought over the PoD’s blackmail, that I promise her: In two years we’re going to sit down, and you’re going to tell me that you are transcendantly, radiantly happy now. Now that you know what marriage is supposed to be like, you’re going to tell me that the only thing bothering you is that you stayed for so long, and would have stayed forever if he’d let you.

Today I listened to her almost-normal voice on the phone, asking about someone new, and all I could think was, If Dick ever left I would be in my cave of devastation for years and not thinking about dating.

Maybe because I would also be mourning his death, as not many would survive what I can do with my Pampered Chef paring knife.

Or maybe because Dick is someone I cannot imagine ever being shallow, selfish, dishonest, narcissistic, or without honor. Or because he keeps his promises.

Or because: I do not know how that feels.

Dick and I took a nap after the wedding brunch. When we were dating and smooching on the couch, careful not to move against each other, I never guessed I’d feel so awkward once those shoes were off. Or that I’d even notice traumatic arterial damage. Dick wasn’t very interested in my gaping wounds. And I soon forgot all about my treacherous shoes. Until the honeymoon was over and and we fought in our tiny student apartment. I read that the Communists in Russia allocated 175-square-feet to each adult; maybe we should have finished school in Moscow.

I returned the wedding shoes. It was an easy return: I still had the receipt, and the bright red stains embarrassed the clerk more than me. Though I really should have been ashamed to return yet another pair of ruined shoes. When you’ve got the easy-bleeder feet, you should learn to be more careful.

My jelly shoes, the shoes I saved for weeks to buy when I was nine-years old, made my feet bleed. Mom said those jelly shoes were a fad, as if that should make them less desirable rather than more, and impractical, and most likely uncomfortable. I knew I would die if I couldn’t have a purple sparkly pair. Mom wouldn’t buy them for me, but she did drive me on my fifteen-mile shoe pilgrimage.

Last week I saw my sister’s husband for the first time since he left her. Only I didn’t really see him; I couldn’t look at his face, or his body. I stared at his shoes. My sister wore a puffy princess dress with tulle and beading for her wedding seven years ago. She was beautiful. Young, feminine, happy, and I know she wore a bra. Probably high heels, though her husband is not much taller than she is. I’ve got three kids; she’s got three kids. We both thought our marriages would last forever.

I want my sister to think of herself, to protect herself, care for herself. I want her to get some Jessica Simpson boots and walk all over that rat-turkey, yellow-belly skunk. I want her to listen to her favorite Cherie Call song and realize she doesn’t want to walk in somebody else’s shoes any longer. But my sister doesn’t have easy-bleeder feet. She has a tender, tough heart and I can’t tell her when it’s time to give up on making something fit. I want to say that if she hasn’t been able to break in her marriage shoes yet, it’s an impossible task, but it’s her life. Her marriage. Her heartbreak.

I am in awe of her patience, much as I’d rather go barefoot.

—-

The shoe inspiration came from Scribbit’s May Write-Away Contest. I’m not really a shoe person (for obvious reasons), so this was quite a challenge for me. Check out Tara’s shoe entry. Now there’s a shoe person.

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Oh, not for me. Dick and I fought like pole cats the first couple months of our marriage, ten years ago. We fought about the usual things: money, sex, how to spend our free time and who should be home cleaning the toilet on a fine Saturday morning. I said the “d” word once and Dick looked at me with hurt eyes; I hadn’t accepted that I could hurt him. But for him divorce was a real thing, because his parents were divorced. For me it meant “I’m really mad at you and right now I think not being married would just be simpler.” Neither of us has said that word, in relation to us, since that day.

But on Sunday, March 16th, 2008 at approximately 9:43 am, I found out that divorce can happen to anyone. It wasn’t me so I wasn’t hurt. It was someone I love, so I was mad. I wanted to pull newly-grown hair and smash Christmas ornaments and throw dinner on the floor.

In college you hear a lot about paradigm shifts. Adolescence could probably be characterized as that stage in a person’s life when (they think) they’re experiencing massive paradigm shifts between each class. My middle-aged humanities professor shocked me by saying that it had been a long time since he’d read a book that actually changed the way he thought about the world, and OH! How I pitied that man.

Threat of divorce has shifted my paradigm. It makes me feel rebellious. No one should have to turn herself into Clean House Barbie to keep her husband happy, or pretend to enjoy Jazz basketball or not to mind when the kids are not fed and in bed on the one night I go to the library after dinner. When I told Dick I felt like never cleaning again, he panicked, made me promise that I was just joking. Then I had surgery and had a medical excuse anyway.

I could probably turn into a model wife, for a week or so, at least. If I did, if I woke up and made lunches and saw him off with a kiss and a stack of French toast, and kept the house clean and kept up with our finances and never used the mean voice and picked up socks without asking, “Did you want these socks washed or were you going to wear them again tomorrow?” And if I made one of his five favorite dishes and had dinner on the already-set table and three happy, clean, and sweet-smelling children lined up to throw themselves at his legs at 5:52 pm. If I didn’t yell at them or let them hear me swear, would he love me more and think that I had lived up to the promise of my 30-pound lighter, not-stretch-marked, adoring, twenty-year-old bride-self?

Love me more: I don’t think so. Think I lived up to the promise better: probably. We did both promise to be our best selves. That’s not true. There was nothing in the actual sealing about setting goals or maintaining our figures or cleaning the toilets before doing fun things together on Saturday morning. Instead, though the LDS ceremony is slightly different, it including something about loving, honoring, cherishing. And while it didn’t say anything about in sickness and in health, for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, it did say forever, eternity. Which pretty much includes all the rest. And you usually think that the hard times would be the sickness and the worse and the poorer. But maybe those are the easy times — the times when you know you couldn’t possibly make it without your spouse at your side.

Without a man who will wipe your armpits with baby wipes when you can’t shower. Or laugh when your milk squirts him during an otherwise romantic, amorous moment. Or not even shout when you kill a laptop with your bare hands.

I didn’t really mean to write about what I don’t do to make my husband happy. And I meant to be humorous and light. Go read Marie’s Making Men Happy for a great, funny list of things men (at least the Ask.com men) want in a woman. And for proof that Google might be getting in touch with it’s feminine, nurturer side.

What I do try to do is: communicate to him that what he thinks and feels and does is important, significant, relevant. Make him know that he is the big tuna in my life, and always will be. That even though I wouldn’t actually rather get sick myself than see him sick, his health and comfort and life and happiness are vital to my own.

I would promise, like Tracy Lord in The Philadelphia Story, to always be yar. But I know I’ll use the mean voice again. I’ll get mad that he is Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout. I’ll wish at least one of us were independently wealthy. I’ll even, heaven forbid, swear in front of the children again. But with my paradigm forever shifted, I’m seeing the sickness and the worse and the poorer as opportunity to thank God for knowing better than I what was good for me.

____

I think this week (month?) has been hard for a lot of people. Hard to smile when terrible things happen. Loraine has a post, Still Trying to Smile After Sunday, that nigh unto broke my heart. I usually feel pretty darn callous. What do I care about someone I don’t know? But determination to find something, anything to smile about is irresistible. My favorite line? “Likewise, Mekare finally cleaned off the coffee table- wait, one of the kids already threw her hoodie on it.” That’s my life, in a nutshell.

____

To participate in the brave new world of the Makes-Me-Smile Monday carnival, write on today’s topic “How to keep your husband (or other loved one) happy” and then follow these guidelines.

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Before you object, let me say that I believe that if anyone is in a relationship with an addict or abuser or adulterer or abandoner who is not 100% committed to changing and to the relationship, they should get out. Even (especially?) if you have kids and even if the abuse or abandonment is emotional rather than physical. Staying in a bad relationship on the strength of what once was is too Rose for Emily-ish. Get out.