12.22.15 Til the floor shook and the walls might have swayed

     In my study, in the winter, there are other beings that congregate, living happily with my collection of spiders; the plant population still supporting their ways. A few days ago, my husband was looking out the window of his study, while we sat in early morning pjs and talked, him pausing in his work emails, as the pup clambered over the futon and licked and laughed and played. Suddenly, he looked out his window, and asked if that was a Squash bug there. I had seen it the day before, and thought it dead and gone. But, as he knew I would, I went right over and opened the window, and between screen and storm, there was a newly hatched innocent. I invited them to climb up onto my finger, which they did, and then brought them in and placed them in the Ficus, a tall tree with a broad pot full of all kinds of wonderful things, from being outside all summer.

      He laughed, at how predictable I am. At how we companionably navigate. Between being air and water, or water and oil or fire and water, or some crap like that.

      And yet, we have this irrefutable the madness of the connection. Of the politics. Of the life and children and all.

       In fact, if the shit hits the fan particularly intensely some days, we spat and feel grief like humans do, and spit and are taken aback, and still, in the middle of the Unusual Event, we will begin laughing. Because somehow, in the midst of even the most imagined heartbreak or disappointment or hardest scariest day or toughest piss off contest, still there is that dazzling spark that blazes right through, no matter what.

         So many times I could have played the fool, really. Because when you grow up with miserable at-each-other's-throats-constantly parents, the chance of you taking a chance on staying together is really next to nil.

         Years ago, every friend of mine who had a partner broke up. Seriously. Kind of one a year, like the duck shooting game at the fair. Bing bing bing. And a lot of them were happier after, I think. Even though the kids always went completely nuts. So that when I was really pissed off at my beloved, these friends would invariably say "Oh, well, I guess that's it. You want to go out and find someone new?" And i would reel with amazement. We all had little kids. I mean, really. The regular crap of life visits everyone every single day. When you're stuck up against someone, anyone, with bills and dirty oatmeal pots and crabby kids and sore knees, it's a hell of a thing to try to pull off. Which makes it all the more important to understand the situation.       

         And not indulge yourself, with the fast track give-up.

         Which is why I'm often glad we simply, with our idealistic-driven lifestyle, couldn't afford to break up. Plus whenever I really had it with him, apples and oranges, potato or po-ta-to, I'd read up on what it does to kids of those particular ages, and feel faint with foreboding. Realizing that the path would have been far harder that way, than to persist and make the effort and stretch toward each other, re-weaving the love and delight and madness once again. Course, he never did approach anything that would have been an absolute deal breaker.

         So yeah, he was born devoted. Me, I was ready to commit myself after we'd been together for 20 years. True. I mean, we had a wedding that started out as a celebration of us together, when our oldest was four I think. And slowly turned into sending away in the mail for friends to become ministers of that odd church and marry us. Took me 9 months to go and submit the paperwork, til he told me I could do it or not, he didn't care, at which point I went ahead.

         But after 20 years and three kids, I said to him one day, "Wow. I think I'm ready to commit myself to you." Which made no difference to him, of course, because he is a pickle and I'm a geranium and he doesn’t really go for words much, unless they're very complex lefty stuff or economics or accompanied by econometrics, which is a really weird complicated math too thick to shake a stick at.       

         But he'd already caught on, of course, and said nothing, naturally, but if I wanted to talk talk about it and find it all so meaningful, well then, fine with him.

         So we had a huge party in our tiny 55th rental at the time, our kids18, 9 and 8, and we had a huge gooey buttery cake,  and I gave a big speech about how hard it is to be in relationship and stay in relationship and humans are so shortsighted and reactive and when we manage to stay friends or lovers or anything else for that matter, why we really all should go ahead and have a nice raucous celebration.

        And then made all the kids go home and all the protesting parents with kids, who I'd warned, go home and then ours left on their overnights.

     While we hung out with friends and turned down the lights and cranked The Clash and Prince and Bob Marley and Joan Armatrading and The Sex Pistols til the floors shook and the walls might have swayed, and then we held each other hard close, smiling, kissing,  a peach and a pear, dancing the night away.