Breathe
Last Saturday Lincoln and I went out! We had a small dinner at a nice local restaurant and then we went to see Sideways in the theater! The exclamation can't do justice the excitement I felt. Mostly because we have finally become those boring married people with kids, who now call "dates" what exciting married people call "spending time together". Basically we have to call it a special name because it is just such a special occasion. So anyway, I was excited and almost nervous. There is a certain pressure to have a really good time and be really aware of it, because you don't know when will be the next time you can do this again, even though your daughter is old enough and you can get a sitter to sit on the couch while she is asleep. It just seemed too good to be true.
To continue this stereotype laden post, I have to say it took me a while to relax. The "date" went very well, we talked and we had some good food and we enjoyed the movie, but see, I have a tendency to not let myself be too happy. It's similar to when you work out and you do your sets of exercises and you don't want to take too long of a break inbetween because you might enjoy the non-contracting of the muscles too much so that you start wondering why you were contracting them in the first place and then going back to the exercise just seems too unappealing and hard and you don't want to do it and now you have to deal not only with the agony of the workout itself, you have the agony of thinking about the whys and the hows of it too. So I have this mechanism in me that tells me I need to keep running at all times. I can't really stop and fully relax because I know I need to go back to work eventually, so better not get too happy. The next step then is to constantly long for some rest and turn slightly bitter and always look at the worse side of things and find some weird sort of validation in the fact that things are hard for me. I have a good guess why I am this way and I also have a good guess how not to do it, but you know, it's one of those things that get a hold of you and all of a sudden you turn into this trapped little rabbit staring at the snake (metaphor curtesy of my former translation professor at the University of Vienna)... I always thought how all you need to do is DO something and while that is true, you need some sort of first stepping stone for this. You need something or someone to snap you out of it or just a few minutes to... stop and catch your breath.
Lincoln has always been very good at this for me. And as much as I sometimes feel embarrassed that I need him to do it and embarrassed that he knows I need him to do it, I am pretty grateful and relieved he does it. I don't know what it is... probably part of that whole "he gets me"-thing. And so while we were sitting in the theater, something clicked and I could finally really relax without dreading the workload of the next day.
I have realized again, partially through being reminded by this weekend, how important taking time is, and not just half an hour here and there. You can't schedule a conversation and you can't plan closeness. We might just have to get that sitter a little more often than once a year.
Oh, and while I'm on the topic of "getting me", Lincoln will occasionally have some serious lapses in judgement, for example when he suggests things like: "Wow, they are looking for volunteers for the Bethel Film Festival. You should totally do it, that would be fun, huh?" Now, all my appreciation aside, why would he suggest ADDITIONAL work for me? Unpaid on top of it. Is it not enough I have an unpaid (in dollars) fulltime job and a paid part-time job, now I need to help some other people, for free, so they can have some fun at the movies?! And Lincoln can't understand my outrage. Why is that such a weird suggestion, he wants to know. Don't gang up on him, he meant well. He did. It's just that that's something HE wants to do. He loves me... just like himself! :)
Posted at 12:52 PM on March 15, 2005