I am from Austria Posted at 08:55 AM on November 15, 2006 | Comments (1)
The Seven Year Itch
This has nothing to do with a ditzy blonde upstairs, who looks suspiciously like Marilyn Monroe, but here we are in the middle of the seventh year and things are not glamorous so I might as well imply some Hollywood sparkle. The expression I believe is supposed to indicate a certain unrest in the marriage, probably born out of boredom of a very settled routine. You know, the honeymoon is long gone, even the reminiscing about the honeymoon is old news, it's all bills and dishes from now on. I don't think seven years is a particularly long time to be married, but some people do and they are the ones who tell you about all the gloom to come when you are first married, freshfaced and hopeful, they tell you about the lack of excitement, the disappointment... "just you wait until you've been married for a while". I don't know, I'm still waiting. Obviously it's not how it was in the beginning, but I'm not feeling the rut, the boredom, it's more like all the togetherness is still there, only I can't go there most of the time, because here I am giving the kid a bath and there he is cleaning up the kitchen, and here we are saying goodbye in the morning inbetween the tying of the shoes and the wiping of the nose and there we are falling asleep exhausted...
While things may not be slow and boring I realize there is a danger in letting yourself be buried in the worries and the logistics and the separation of tasks and responsibilities. The latter being probably the worst enemy. We each do our own thing all day and then we try to catch up at night, when at that time we're almost ready to give up, because who has the energy? Because the problem is not what we do. We picked what we do and we don't regret it, even when it feels like we regret it. The problem is just that we don't get to do it together most of the time. There was one day, on a weekend obviously, where it was bedtime for the kids, or some other organizational maneuver and Lincoln and I both happened to take off our sweaters at the same time before we dove into the mess that two kids will make out of normal daily procedures. And we laughed, because it was so telling, so literally our life. We do that all day but we don't really get to see each other doing it and it would be nice if we could more often.
I miss spending time together and we sort of have to fight for it, because it is the first thing to go when life is busy (which is always), but I also can't deny that there are other things that come to the surface at the same time, and I'm really glad they do. Really, who wants to live a honeymoon for 50 years? Don't get me wrong, it sounds good just about right now, but who would we be, two ancient twenty-somethings, clueless, boring and one-dimensional from never being challenged to grow...
Life changes and so do we.-hopefully. I like how our identity has shifted since we got married. The lines are blurry where I end and he begins and vice versa. Years of looking ahead as two and not as one leave a reflection on the present and we understand each other better, we even become more alike. Starting from the way we think down to how we eat our breakfast. No matter how sloppy we get in our attempts to reconnect, we still are living the life we picked for ourselves and for each other and I mean "living", not just enduring random consequences. I guess this is what I'm trying to say, I know he will be there and he knows I will be there and showing that requires less these days than big romantic gestures in the past (not that I am diminishing their value in the least). I love that. At the end of the day, of all things, that's what I'd pick again. This kind of friendship, that holds you up and keeps you warm when the last thing on your mind is a romantic walk in the park. I love, how because of the lack of time, you learn to pay attention to little things, how communication is less about words and explaining but more some kind of coordination of glances, body language and I don't know... visible thoughts?
There are days when I wonder where things are going, how will we survive, who will we be, but I don't really worry. I learned that marriage is a process, not a state and I like that even though that means that nothing can be said for sure about the future. I like it because we signed up for this transformation of ourselves and to sound even more cliche, I can't think of anything more exciting or meaningful than that. Plus, I like waking up and falling asleep grateful that there will always be just this one person beside me. If that's the kind of rut I'm supposed to expect, bring it on.
Posted at 08:10 PM on November 07, 2006 | Comments (3)You've Got Mail Trip
Despite our despair over the complete loss of fun time, Lincoln and I managed to get ourselves and the kids out of the house quite a lot this summer and fall. I am only slowly catching up with the photos and here are a few of one of my favorite trips. We spent a Saturday in August walking around Upper West Side in NYC, stopping at a few locations, where the movie "You've got mail" was filmed. I know it's very corny, but the movie has some sentimental value for us for obvious reasons and also because we got to watch it during the first week we spent together ever (in Vienna in 1999). When I think about that and the fact that 7 years later I am taking a stroll in New York City not just with Lincoln but two kids, I get so overwhelmed and confused with the incredible-ness of it all, that I can only do it a few seconds at a time, because, really, how crazy is that? There we are, four of us (!) basically because of a random online conversation.
Anyway, the movie is a lot of fun, and if you've seen it (especially multiple times like me) the photos will immediately remind you of some very romantic scenes.
Posted at 09:55 AM on November 01, 2006 | Comments (8)