Husband's talent or: One of a kind

Ever since I met him, Husband wanted to work with wood. 

Five years ago, give or take, he began to equip his wood shop 

and now he's turning out tables.
Here's the latest one, made for a friend. 

I think it's wonderful that he's finally doing 

what he's wanted to do for all these years.

Since it's work done from his heart, 

the result is beautiful.

When he started, making dovetails was so frustrating. 

Now he's got 'em down pretty well, I'd say.

The pattern in the wood that he used for these drawer fronts 

started out as a mistake.

He didn't know that this pretty grain was 

inside a piece of wood he'd been working with. 

He sawed it in half, et voila! there it was. 

To me, it looks like sand dunes . . . or cloud layers.

Something to catch the eye instead of just a plain drawer front.

If you were here, he'd show you every place where there's a mistake.

I keep telling him not to do that.

But . . . maybe in years to come, the "mistakes" in his work will be 

the hallmarks by which the pieces are identified.

These tables will outlast all of us.

I'm so proud.

Different food

Husband and I have been married for a long time. The only thing we get excited about anymore is food. 

I have my mental Rolodex of dishes, things that require no recipe reading, things that are easy to put together when I get home from work. An additional requirement is that the meal be able to stay Prepared-And-Tasty for a couple of hours because neither of us ever knows when he'll get home after his workday. Husband is tired of all of my old standbys. Additionally, he's tired of food in general because he eats lunch in restaurants every single day. Me, I'm off to the office daily with my Tupperware container of leftovers or my hummus and Triscuits. It's a big day for me when we order pizza delivery for a group lunch.

"Different! I want something different!" he said early last week.
He consulted one of his Jacques Pepin cookbooks and made, two nights in a row because it was so good, Mustard Crusted Chicken. I loved it! It was delicious. I was glad there were only four pieces of chicken so I didn't embarrass myself. The following night he made a different chicken recipe. That one wasn't such a hit with either of us. Yesterday I phoned him and said, "If you aren't already planning it, don't make anything fancy tonight."
"Why not?"
"Oh, I'd just as soon have some Triscuits or a peanut butter-and-jelly sandwich."

Early this morning I woke up and mentally cast about for some kind of different food to prepare for him. The internet offers me recipes for which he has already expressed distaste.

• I'm not really a soup kind of guy.
• I'm not really big on salad.
• I'm not crazy about chili.
• I really don't like Feta cheese.
• I'm not big on wraps. This last one is a big disappointment to me because wraps are like the Indo-European language family with a million offshoots. To my mind, you can put anything in a wrap and it becomes Different and Delicious.

Many of the recipes call for ingredients I've never heard of . . . one-eighth teaspoon of some spice that I'd have to order online or drive three and a half hours to Brooklyn to get. If I make the dish without that particular spice, I fear, all the rest of my efforts will have been in vain. The finished product will be met with a gimlet eye, and a quiet, polite, and cheerful "It isn't my favorite." It's hard to take for a woman who breathes a little faster at the thrill of goulash made with ground beef, or macaroni and cheese. "Fancy" to me is macaroni and cheese made with Swiss cheese in addition to cheddar.

Several weeks ago, Phyllis brought sweet potato lasagna for lunch. It was left over from her family's dinner the night before. This morning I got up early to search for a recipe. I found one. It calls for:

• sweet potato (slice and bake first)
• kale (cut up and blanch first)
• zucchini (slice and bake first)
• two or three kinds of cheese
• red onion (slice and bake first)
• broccoli (cut up and blanch first)
• God knows what-all else.

It also calls for four cups of good marinara sauce. I have a freezer full of tomatoes that I harvested, skinned, and bagged last summer. I can't use jar sauce! So that means making the sauce first...

Suddenly I'm thinking of the relatively exotic meals that I find "in my grocer's freezer case." Sure, they're expensive, but what's the cost of the leftover spice for which I paid $6 and which I'll never use again? I think my shopping list just got a lot shorter.

A Woman's Poem

I've been among the missing for a while, mostly due to a lack of thought worthy of expression.

Fortunately, someone emailed the following to me, and it suits my mood, so I'm sharing it with you.

Husband is not like the "he" in the poem.

Anymore.

Testimony: Exercise Improves Life

I am enjoying a jewel of an October day. 

This morning it was rainy and dreary and cold and I could think of nothing more fun to do than cuddling up with my book and blankets. I drifted off to sleep with the blankets wrapped around my head and only a nose hole for air, pretending to be a squirrel in a hollow tree with my fluffy tail wrapped around me. 

When I woke up, the weather was glorious! Blue sky, warm air! 

Out of bed, into tank top and jeans and onto the porch to help Husband stack firewood. 

It's the annual ritual: last weekend the pretty summer furniture and all the plants came off the porch and this weekend the space transforms to woodshed. Last year Husband did the great majority of wood transfer all by himself and this year I'm getting in on the chore. It goes much faster and, after all, it's exercise. I feel so good, being able to help him without my back seizing up on me! A benefit of moving, walking, breathing hard on a regular basis!


Nice.

PS: The photo is from January 2011, I think. We do not have snow yet.

All right. So . . . what's new, you ask?

I have become lazy with my blog, for which I do apologize, although I feel quite sure that no one is suffering in my absence. 

Perhaps a general update is in order.

Weather: Was rainy day after day after day for a week and a half. When it wasn't raining, it was gray and chilly. March was sweeter than May, and I know I am not the first out which that to point.

Work: Morning Job is answering the phone and little else. Of the little that I do, even less leaves the office sans correction: a fault of my tendency to read the fine print and miss the headlines. I have asked Jane if there is more I can do to help. She smiles, says, "Oh June, don't make me laugh." Damaging to my ego, but from another point of view, I'm being paid to do almost nothing for three hours every weekday. 

Jane and I are getting along famously these days, though. If I had known, two years ago, that she would be so nice to me now, I might have been able to accumulate a great stash of alprazolam.

Pets: Max is still wobbling around in his Huggies Lil Snuggler diapers applied as belly bands. He eats, sleeps, eliminates. Husband says the dog is happy; what do I know? 

Angus and MiMau continue in their happy, selfish, clownlike behaviors, bless their little furry hearts.

Now then, moving on to the cataclysmic: Husband had a heart attack.

He got sudden pain the length of his right arm a week ago last Wednesday, was with a friend whose daughter just graduated from medical school. Called the daughter who said, "If it was my dad, I'd tell him to go to the ER." Husband hung up the phone, said to the friend, "Mike, would you go to the ER?" Mike said, "Hell no! I wouldn't want to go to the hospital."

Husband's arm continued to ache. Just his arm. His right arm, not his left. Not his jaw, not his chest.

Last Sunday he was working with the tractor, brush hogging, felt dizzy and faint, got off the tractor and lay down on the ground for a minute until he felt better. He stopped working, put away the tractor, and rested. (I didn't know about the "feeling faint" part until Monday morning.)

So Monday morning, he got up and immediately took a hot bath because his arm hurt so much. Got out of the bath and headed for bed again. I got out of the shower and said: "This is the plan. I'm going upstairs to get you some clothes and we're going to the ER."

None of the medical personnel seemed too concerned about the pain in his arm until the blood test showed that enzyme that indicated he'd had a "cardiac event," and then everybody shifted into high gear. He went by ambulance from our little regional hospital to the Big Hospital and he had three stents put in: one artery, two veins. He "tolerated the procedure well" and his heart is not severely damaged.

He came home last Wednesday and he is fine. Can't drive for one to two weeks, has new medications to take, but all in all, it was about as not horrible as such an experience could be. He's been advised, until the doctor advises otherwise, not to walk too much, not to do anything too strenuous . . . mostly because of that newly punctured little doorway in his femoral artery.

The irony of the entire situation is that Husband comfortably wears tiny clothing, moves and walks all day long. I, on the other hand, wear large clothing and appear as the Merriam-Webster illustration for "sedentary." 

If he's having myocardial infarctions, perhaps I am in serious danger. Resultingly, I have found a new resolve to move, to walk, to . . . sweat from exertion. I suppose this is good news. Or maybe I'll be breaking loose dangerous substances that might cause me to become the Merriam-Webster illustration for overcooked broccoli. 

Sunday morning: relaxation cds, "Max's issue," and food

Some weeks ago I bought four or five relaxation cds to play next to my head for night-time going to sleep purposes. I don't need things like that in good weather when the windows are open and I can hear the crickets and the katydids and the owls and the wind sighs through the screens and slides its chiffon sleeves across my legs.

~image borrowed/stolen from One Man's Wonder

But now that the windows are closed and the only sounds I can hear are the snores and groans (and mutters and growls) of the poodles I'm finding these cds to be wonderfully soothing. I have quite a variety of sounds . . . windchimes, and one called "Sounds of Nature" that includes a disturbing sound of some insect that sounds like a buzz saw or an old-fashioned hand-cranked airplane propeller: click-click-click-click-wwwhhhhhiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnne, over and over again. My favorite has been the thunderstorm that moves in from the distance; thunderstorms always soothe me straight to sleep. Last night I tried a new one called "Golden Pond." Wonderful. Sounds of oars sloshing in the water, crickets, frogs. It was so comforting that I wanted to stay awake and listen to it, but it put me to sleep anyway. Somewhere I have a hypnosis tape . . . it might have been a stop-smoking hypnosis tape . . . that had new-agey music on it and was very relaxing. 

My hair appointment yesterday was at 10:00am. At 8:30am I left a voicemail for my hairdresser asking her to call and comfirm the time. She called at 9:50am to tell me I was due there in ten minutes, not forty, and could I come at 11:30 instead of coming late for the 10:00? I agreed to that change, and mentally reaadjusted the hair/shopping sequence, muttering to myself about how I could have been there had she called me back earlier. It was my fault, though, for having lost the appointment card. The new one is stuck into my car's dashboard where I will see it every time I check my vehicle's velocity. By the time January 21st comes around the card will have become invisible to me. I need a secretary. Or a parent.

I fear that thes Max Issue is going to become a minefield between Husband and me. He seems to feel that Max's increasing issues are no more objectionable than Angus' cavalier attitude toward similar issues. Max knows what to do and can't do it; Angus knows what to do and chooses not to do it. I know the whole issue is disgusting and in deference to your sensibilities I won't go into more detail. Husband removes himself from the problem, leaves the whole thing to me and then recoils from my scent of parfum d'urine de chien. I have a feeling of No-Can-Win.

The man has his redeeming qualities, however. Last night he prepared a delectable repast of fried shrimp. He made cocktail sauce for his dipping, mine was sour cream and salsa verde. 

To die for.

That's another difference between Husband and me. A small supper at my hands is leftover baked potato sliced and broiled with cheddar cheese on top; his is breaded shrimp. He's far more willing than I to go out and buy the shrimp and get his fingers all gicky with flour and egg and crumbs, and he makes shrimp dishes while I make peasanty potato-and-cheese dishes. It might have something to do with the cleaner-upper duties and the person responsible for same.

Cheerful: An addendum to "August 16, 1980"

Years ago, I saw Beverly Sills interviewed on television. I think the question was, "Are you happy?"
Ms. Sills looked into the interviewer's eyes for several seconds, and answered, "I'm cheerful."
Cheerful is the whistling in the dark equal of happy.
Cheerful is making the best of things, not admitting to wishing you could do some things over, not ever [out loud] feeling sorry for yourself.
Most of the time, out loud, I'm cheerful.
Most of the time I don't give voice to the bleak depths of my horrors and the dreary sludges of my moods.


A friend told me that she wants me to remove "underachiever" from my "About Me."
I have a cousin who chairs a big philanthropic organization, another who weaves baskets of all types. I have a friend who is an architect at her office three days a week and spends the other four days raising her daughter, leading the Girl Scout troop, stenciling her walls, making floor cloths. I work with a woman who walks three miles every morning before work, bakes and needlepoints every evening. 
I wait on the pets and, in between pet tasks, stare around me at the hills and the butterflies, and read and blog.
Thanks be to God, I also have a friend who feels that being and appreciating is enough.


When I reread my anniversary post, I thought, "It sounds as if it's all been uphill!"
It hasn't.
Around our ten-year mark, we found The Land. This land, where I sit now, with the hills and the sunsets, the crickets and katydids, the orioles and deer and fishers and the occasional black bear. Where I found, while the house was being constructed, a Luna Moth on one of the wooden studs of the exterior wall, where I had the thrill of having a grasshopper chew off a few cells of fingertip skin as I held him.
Husband gave me this dream life. He says I did it too, but he's the one who made it possible.
Being married to each other is what made it possible for both of us.
We are each other's cheerleaders. We've been, for each other, the parents that we might have had: we've brought each other up. I taught Husband the pleasure of reading. He taught me to be cheerful. 

August 16, 1980

Thirty-one years ago, I got me a husband.
I paid for the wedding bands because he didn't have any money, although he worked like a dog. 
My mother wore black, my sister wore the dress I had asked her not to wear, the minister had my brother-in-law in his office and his hand out for money almost before we'd finished walking back down the aisle.
A friend of a friend took photographs and most of them were not great.
It took a year before we realized that being married meant something different than we'd thought it had.
It took five years to accept that difference.
After ten years, we had been through some fire together, and had escaped with some scars but no lasting damage.
At twenty-five years, we came to a bridge that appeared to be out. Only one of us could cross the river, it seemed. But we both ended up on the other side. Together.
The thirty-year anniversary was overshadowed by health issues, but we're still here.
Still together.

Old Friends by Roberta Wesley

Together. Still.

And so, another weekend has passed...

"Mostly cloudy" was the forecast for today and into the foreseeable future. Not a single day without some chance of rain. "Mostly cloudy" leaves room for a little sunshine though, and the border of cloudy/sunny can be pretty striking. 

This was Friday evening as the dramatic storm clouds rolled through.

The orioles are doing their best to eat me out of house and home. 

I put eight pounds of oranges out on the trees yesterday morning, keeping a second eight-pound bag in reserve. 

Husband observed, "I see you bought oriole food."

"You can have some too . . . if you want to eat bird food." 

On my last round about the yard tonight, I saw that the birds have worked their way almost down to the rinds. 

Husband is whittling away at the supply. 

Poor orioles. 

Imagine the poor wild birds having to go find their own food...

Olga says she's saving her old sheets to protect the garden. This afternoon I folded up a whole lot of old sheets that have found new lives as dropcloths in Husband's workshop. He was on his way to snooze for a bit, said, "If it starts to rain, tell me. I have to bring in the dropcloths that I put outside."
"What? You want me to wake you up if it starts raining?"
"Yeah."
"Well, why don't I just go bring them in now? I know it's going to rain."
So I did (Good Wife!), and he was a happy man. 
The sun came out again and he never did fall asleep. But the dropcloths are picked up and folded tidily and stacked on top of a saw. 
I think it's a saw: there's a lot of stuff out there that looks to me like Industrial Age sculpture.

A verbal exchange that owes something to "Seinfeld"

Sunday evening. 
Husband downing handfuls of grapes while I watch him, magazine in my hands.
He watches back, chewing.
After a few moments...

June:  You didn't even wash off those grapes, did you?
Husband:  No. We need a little bacteria in our systems to keep us healthy.
June:  It isn't the bacteria that I was thinking of, it's the pesticides.
Husband:  (chew, chew) I don't need any pests. I want to be pest-free. 


I went back to reading.

A few Husband stories

The woodstove has officially been fired up for the season.  With the overnight lows down far enough to kick the furnace into hyperactivity, it is Time. 


Last spring I scooped out most of the ash. I left some in there because I have learned that a little bit of ash helps the fire take hold. I don't know why that's the case, but that's been my experience. 
Husband, by contrast, is anal very conscientious about cleaning things that can't help being dirty; he felt that the firebox needed more preparation for the incoming dusty, bark-falling-off-in-bits-at-the-slightest-touch firewood. He likes to start with a spandy clean firebox.  He cleaned out every last ash; he might have vacuumed and washed it down with soap and water, I'm not sure. It makes him happy. The fire's caught and the house is warm, and I was not present while he did whatever he did, so I'm happy too. 


I slept my usual odd weekend hours last Saturday night, and before I went back to bed at 5:30am I hauled out the industrial size slow cooker and levered in a hunk of beef that had thawed long enough to need cooking soon. When I woke up at 8:30, it smelled to me . . . like Christmas morning . . . with the cozy waft of roasting meat winding tendrils of brown savory goodness up the stairs. Husband had been up for a while, and as I poured my coffee, I asked him, "What did you think when you woke up and smelled beef cooking?" 
I wasn't hoping for extravagant compliments on my housewifely skills, but I expected something along the lines of, perhaps, "It smelled good."
The sensualist to whom I am married thought for a minute, searching his memory for his exact thought upon waking, and answered, "I smell beef cooking."


I am pleased to report that for some time now I have been able to keep control of the laundry. Not even the odd sock has exited the dryer through the invisible portal to the alternate universe where socks go. In the past much larger garments have vanished. For a while every time I did the laundry, another pair of Husband's jeans disappeared.  Less to put away, but puzzling for me to see his stack of jeans dwindling there in the closet. In frustration one day I asked him where his jeans were disappearing to. He paused to consider and murmured, "Let's see . . . what night did I come home without pants on?"


Husband is beginning to remind me of my uncle Red. One morning at breakfast, my aunt offered more coffee, and as she filled his cup, cautioned, "It's the bottom of the pot."  Red tasted, stretched his lips to a flat line and sucked in air at the corners. "Tastes like it," he said.

Life lessons: Marriage and Reality

I've been reading about a poor disappointed unfortunate who's questioning whether or not to remain married or strike out on her own with her three children. Complaints include boredom, money issues, emotional stagnation, ongoing sadness over a failed affair, whatnot.  I see my old self in her, and I've done some thinking over the last few weeks, with the following result.


What in the world do people expect from marriage? How, possibly, could a twenty-year-old marriage be the same as a first-year marriage? Would you want it to be? And, if you chose badly in that young flush of infatuation, why would you upset your whole life based on a new obsession?  I didn't get married until I was twenty-nine. I had lived enough to have begun to learn that romance is not love.  Some years later, we had a little refresher course in that lesson. Nor is lust, although certainly lots of fun, love.  And, I offer that . . . perhaps . . . in the long term, exciting and romantic love is not the most important requirement for a stable, comfortable and happy married life. Possibly I'm more satisfied than some with the stability of a settled married life because by nature I like routine.  I figure if you live with anybody for more three weeks, the thrill of togetherness pales. No longer do you delight, your heart all a-pit-a-pat, your breath short, at the thought of reunion after a hard day at work. A nice sense of anticipation, yes, some days. Other days, maybe lots of days . . . it's on to the Home Chores and a ritual of "How was your day?" "Fine." and after a few hours, off to bed. G'night, kiss, snore.  


Every now and then, you read interviews with old people who've been married for decades and they usually have some pretty practical advice. They hardly ever count gymnastic sex as one of the ultimate requirements, for example.  I like the old marrieds who say laughter is the thing that kept them together.  Laughter means nobody's taking him/herself too awfully seriously. Nothing good lasts forever, but nothing bad does either, if you're willing to laugh at it and let it go. 
I knew an old married couple who enjoyed each other's company tremendously. She was very fat and deaf and he was dapper and witty.  They would tell stories of having lived through the Great Depression, they and their eight children eating pancakes for supper every single night because that's what they could afford. Remembering, he'd say he never wanted to see a pancake again, and the two of them would laugh with, I imagine, satisfaction and relief that they'd kept going on, one foot in front of the other, for a long, long, time, and had made it to the other side.  Laughter isn't simply amusement; it's also mutual congratulation.
I like it when those long-marrieds talk about respect too. Simple courtesy goes a long way. Husband takes the garbage; I thank him. I change the sheets; he thanks me. It's good to let somebody who's supposed to do these things know that the work's appreciated.  


It is my belief that anybody who's been married more than five years has been through some kind of Disillusionment Hell, and I think that rule does not exclude people who lived together prior to marriage. The Prince gets a little rumply, the Princess gains a little weight.  The Prince fails to notice and react with warm sympathy to some welling silent tears of a sad mood. The Princess fails to . . . oh, whatever us Princesses fail to do. 
Oh, boo hoo. 
Nobody stays a Prince or a Princess forever. People are people. Life goes on. If you plan on being married in another year, another five years . . . if you meant any of that stuff you vowed (see definition of "vow") on your wedding day, then grow up, allow your spouse a failing or two, just like you do everybody else you know, and think about something else until that turns into a big fat disappointment and you can go running back to discuss it with the person with whom you swore to spend your life.


Believe me, the grass ain't no greener over there on the other side of that fence. Not once you get a real close look at it. It looks all fluffy and soft and cushiony from here, but you can bet there're sand fleas or nettles in there that, after a while, will be just as bad as what you have in your own yard. 

10,957 days

I read a lot of what some people might consider crap books. I don't look for the latest publication dates, I don't check the NYT [or any other] book reviews. In my forays into the library or the used book store or wherever, I happen across books that grab me by their titles or by the cover designs and fonts, I read the blurb inside the front cover, I check to see if there are lots of quotation marks (lots of conversation) in the text. Narrative only holds me for so long before I drift off into my own thoughts, which defeats my purpose.  People who read nonfiction . . . some of them . . . (coughH*sb*ndcough) . . . seem to feel that fiction is of a lower order, less worthwhile.  I like fiction: it is why I read.  I find a lot of memorable wisdom in fiction.

For example:

"...marriage is like an old tree.  It starts out a sapling . . . no, it starts out an acorn, a passionate little acorn, and slowly, slowly, it grows and sends out its branches and leaves, and every year new buds. All the things you did together, every trial you lived through, they're scored into that old trunk. The tree is the thing, not the acorn or the sapling or even the strong young tree.  After all is said and done, you want the old tree, no matter how misshapen it's gotten from ice storms and lightning strikes or bugs and what have you."  

~mad dash by Patricia Gaffney

Last Monday was our thirtieth wedding anniversary. 

We celebrated by doing the same things we do every day. There was no special fancy dinner, no diamond anniversary ring in a little blue box, no dewy-eyed and passionate expression of tenderness and gratitude, and that was fine with me. It's the day-in/day-out stuff, I think, that makes a marriage. Neither of us had had real good models for good married life; we sort of had to make up our own rules as we went along.  When it comes right down to it maybe everybody does that. 

Early on, we made a pact that we would always kiss hello and goodbye and goodnight. 

I remember that pact with every kiss.

Things I have learned this week

There is no disguising Tramadol's taste in order to get it down Max's gullet. The best method is a spur of the moment sneak attack and a quick shove of an unadorned teensy little quarter tablet down his throat. Done. Over. No spitting foam and softened diguise material, as he violently rejects the whole mess and flings it two feet from himself where the medication is half-dissolved and useless and I have to wipe up the slop and start over, muttering, "I'm so glad I paid actual money for this medication."

There is something called cat flu, and I think that's what MiMau has.  Husband took her to the vet's office last Monday and saw the vet in the practice in whom I have the least confidence. The vet took a blood sample, said it would be back Wednesday or Thursday and would call. We haven't received a call. A call to the clinic resulted in, "Dr. B. is out until Monday and will call you then." In the meantime, MiMau's perking up in tiny increments, and has begun to be interested in food, although only a kibble at a time, carefully mouthed until she finds a spot in her mouth where she feels like chewing it. I currently have some kibble soaking in the drained juice from canned tuna. We'll try that. Her personality is much in evidence now though, unlike last weekend, and she's drinking water, so I think we've turned the corner. Apparently this cat flu is self-limiting, and there's nothing to be done for it anyway, so we just have to ride it out. 

I'm glad I don't have the daughter for whose birth I longed for years.  I probably would have birthed and raised a daughter with a personality like my own.  I'm guessing that she would have had the same introspective, mulling personality, and she would have gotten herself caught in a morass of emotional turbulence of her own making, and none of my hard-won wisdom would have made the slightest bit of difference. I only got smart after I'd been to Hell and back, and some people just have to do it that way. 

The less I worry about stuff, the better it all goes. It was an absolutely stellar week in Jane's office, with nary an error except other people's, which I, feeling magnanimous and heroic, found and fixed.  It started with Payroll Monday when I got to work late after a doctor visit (pre-op physical physician said, "Get that blood pressure down before surgery!" so off to regular doctor for yet another BP reading and prescription). I bustled into work, pulled together the materials I needed and just did payroll. It was flawless. And angst-free. Imagine that.  Whenever I do something without paying too much attention to it (vinaigrette salad dressing comes to mind) it always works out better.

The prospect of my (next Wednesday) transformation into a Uniboob doesn't bother me as much as other people expect it to. I seem to have friends hovering around, waiting for me to turn into a quivering wreck, and I've been waiting to see if I'm in denial and will, in fact, come to a crashing realization of . . . something.  I think I've truly come to terms with it. Overall, since last . . . what, March? . . . I've had maybe a total of seventy-two hours of "Oh my God!" and now I'm looking forward to getting it over with and moving on. The options presented to me were two:

1. Traditional simple (total) mastectomy, or
2. A second lumpectomy followed by five weeks of five days per week radiation treatment.

The third option was, of course, to do nothing and wait to see when (not if) the remaining slightly odd cells would turn invasive. That made both #1 and #2 look quite a bit more attractive.  I chose the first option because I don't feel like making a career out of having breast cancer. It'll be gone, done, over. Much like pilling Max. We'll worry later about whether or not I feel the need for two lumps instead of one.  I'm thinking . . . if, down the road sometime . . . the other one has to go, I'll opt then for two gigantic Dolly Partons. At this stage of my life, the one remaining Natural One on the right and Smooth And Flat on the left will probably appear more similar than one Natural One and one Firm And Perky.  The deciding moment was when the surgeon told me that, even lying down, a new one would be up there, while the other reclined in my armpit. That would be just silly. And exceedingly painful in the achievement. For what?  Or, you know, when I feel the need for more time off from work, I can decide I need reconstruction. I gather recovery from that is far longer than the two weeks I'll need to get over a simple boobectomy (which term, incidentally, Lord Wellbourne tells me he always thought of as a euphemism for divorce). 

I'm so glad I still have the husband I started out with. There have been times when I've wished he were more romantic in the candlelight-and-rose-petals way, and times when I've wished for him to be more this way or that way...  I'm so glad we rode out all that stuff. Now we know each other and while it isn't exciting and heart-fluttering, it's such a comfort to have somebody to see every day who is completely familiar and who says, "You won't be disfigured. You'll have a scar. So what?"  That might be one of those "y'hadda be there" moments, but I was, and it was a pretty significant moment.

Thanks to Hilary for choosing this as one of her Posts of the Week

In my Real Life I am Donna Reed

I was born early in the fifth decade of the last century and for much of my life, I held on to the illusion of life as I had grown up imagining it would be. I would keep house as a career and have afternoon Tupperware and Sarah Coventry parties where I would serve crustless half sandwiches and molded gelatin salads to other housewives.  I would vacuum the house wearing powder and lipstick and shirtwaist dresses. There would be mashed potatoes every evening at six o'clock with a pineapple-baked ham or pot roast.  My short stint in college was wasted on me. Why work for four years toward a teaching degree when I already had my groom lined up?  I did not go enthusiastically into Womens Liberation; it was thrust upon me.  My groom married somebody else, I quit college (I never really wanted to teach anyway) and got a job to tide me over until the life that I was supposed to be living would begin. Sometimes I think I'm still working and waiting for my Real Life to begin.

More than ten years now at my place of employment, the longest I've worked in one place except when I was waitressing.  In the last couple of years I have been the birdie in a political badminton game. The newly-elected administration of Small Pond, far more able than I had expected and feared, seems inclined to make changes that might improve my working life. Afternoon Job has been relocated to a different area of the building, far from my back door field view, but it's a comfortable location. I have the promise of returning to Afternoon Job full time at some future point, leaving Morning Job to some person with excellent eyesight and knowledge of the difference between a credit and a debit. There would be an end to deciphering numerals in tooth-fairy-size print on sheets of paper covered with basmati rice-sized boxes. 

Image source

If I were sure I could trust that Afternoon Job would once again be my Whole Job I would not be considering yet more change, but that possibility is down the road a good bit and subject to the slings and arrows of outrageous egos.  In Small Pond one really can't predict the future. One sweep of a large fish's fin in this eyedropperful of water and the surface tension can break, discharging a miasma of anxiety and bewilderment into the working atmosphere.  And so, last week I polished up my resume and tailored a cover letter for a different employer. 
I sent out the resume last Friday. I had hemmed and hawed and wasn't going to send it and was going to send it.  And finally decided that just sending out a resume doesn't mean I'm bound to go to new employment. The possible outcomes are:  I will receive a job offer for the same or more money and I might use it as leverage to speed up the "back to fulltime Afternoon Job" process (probably wouldn't work . . . they'd let me go);  I will receive a job offer for less money and I'll get happy about where I am (most likely); I will receive no response; if the recipient of my resume calls and I've changed my mind, I can say, "Please disregard." 
I have nothing to lose.

It isn't my Real Life anyway.

Weddings

Brides in 1957 and 1958, it seems, all wore off-the-shoulder gowns, bodices fitted, skirts full. Princesses with Miss America smiles, entering to Wagner, exiting to Mendelssohn, they were photographed posed on the altar, the trains of their gowns fanned in swirling display around their invisible feet, none of their attendants more beautiful than they. Or they were photographed with their proud but decidedly second-fiddle grooms as they prepared to enter the black limousine that would sweep them off to their wedding receptions where strict protocol of the order of dances (first dance, mother/son, father/daughter) and eloquent toasts made a marker of the day.

I did not have that kind of wedding.  We were married in a church and I wore a knee-length cream-colored dress. No Lohengrin, no Mendelssohn, no father's arm guiding me down the aisle. My groom and I spoke traditional Protestant vows and the five of us in attendance dined afterward, but there was very little regal formality about the day. I'm not sure if I felt less married than if I had had the whole dog-and-pony show. I might have. I'll never know.

I recently attended a wedding. The Bridal Chorus began to play and the bride, gowned in voluminous cream satin, began hesitation-stepping across the lawn. As she reached the back row of standing guests, she stopped, closed her eyes, shook her head, sneering in dismissal. The music stopped. A moment passed during which the thought swept over us all that she was about to call off the wedding.

"I'm Too Sexy" began to play, she gave a large nod of smiling satisfaction, and sashayed to the arbor altar.

The cleric was the groom's brother, who'd received his ordination online.

The bride's sentimentally tearful personalized vow closed with, "...and you're the sexiest bitch I've ever known."  Before the groom delivered his vow, he observed, "that dress is gonna look beautiful on the floor."

Some people might have been scandalized; I was bemused.

This latest wedding was about the same number of degrees less formal than mine, as mine was from those fairytale weddings.

Was it more fun?  Is a wedding supposed to be fun?

In the end none of that matters.

The Day does not a marriage make.

Twenty-nine years...!

Today was Husband's and my 29th wedding anniversary. I have now been married as long as I was single.

We have been poor and within one month of foreclosure of our home when it finally sold. We have had money and have spent months at a time in sunny warm spots in the middle of winter. We took care of my mother in her final illness. We've taken care of each other during illness and following injuries and surgeries.

We split up twice. The first time lasted for two weeks during the first year of our marriage, when Husband was working all the hours there were and I felt neglected. The second time, four years ago, lasted for three weeks and got me sober. Both times I thought we were through, done, over, kaput. Both times we were drawn back together by . . . what? What makes people stay married for years and years? Love? Mutual dependence? The comfort of the familiar? We didn't have children, so it wasn't staying together for the sake of the kids.

Today we had lunch at a gorgeous old hotel and came home and napped separately. When I woke up he was on the tractor mowing along the length of the driveway. I took some of his shirts out of the dryer while they were still good and damp so they'd hang smoothly while they dried. We admired the way the fields look now that they've been cut and baled, and the way the freshly-mown lawn blends into the field stubble. We laughed wryly about the Country Poodles out hunting mice who'd expired during the haying. "They're so proud! They're catching dead mice!"

When we were first together we had long conversations about how this thing between us was a separate entity, larger than the sum of the two of us.

I guess it still is. I guess it's a marriage.

...to have and to hold from this day forward, for better or for worse,

for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health,

to love and to cherish;

from this day forward until death do us part.

Ketubah

Weekend Wordsmith's prompt this week is Contract.

Beginnings Ketubah by Artist Howard Fox

Jewish marriages include a Ketubah, a Marriage Contract, the purpose of which is:

To separate the betrothal blessings from the marriage blessings (Sheva Berachot), the "Ketubah" (marriage contract) is read aloud. The "Ketubah" is a binding document of confidence and trust which details the husband's obligations to his wife. Therein, the Chatan (groom) pledges to "work for you, honor, provide for and support you, in accordance with the practices of Jewish husbands who work for their wives' honor, provide and support them in truth."
The signing of the Ketubah shows that the bride and groom do not see marriage as only a physical and emotional union, but also as a legal and moral commitment which delineates the human and financial obligations of the husband to his wife according to Jewish law and customs.
Its basic aim is to strengthen and affirm the wife's dignified status, as well as to confer a number of special privileges on her. The Ketubah also contains stipulations of financial settlement in case of, G-d forbid, divorce. Following the reading of this contract, the Ketubah is handed over to the Kallah (bride). Should this document be lost, the couple may not live together until a new contract is drawn up.

(I doubt that last line is often invoked.)


When my friend Ellen enlightened WASP me about the Ketubah I was, despite my having been a wife for sixteen years, still in my Devoted To My Marriage Above All mindset, and I was dismayed to think that Romantic Love would not be the sole and overriding reason for a wedding, and marriage's continuation. How childlike I was. I think now that it is very wise of Judaism to acknowledge that a marriage is a deal, an agreement of exchange.


When I was in college, posters of The Gestalt Prayer were all over dorm rooms.

(Fritz Perls, 1969)

I guess the last line "If not, it can't be helped" would have ruined the mood, so all the posters omitted it. I believed the "It's beautiful" part and completely overlooked the "I am I and you are you" part. It would have eliminated some turmoil and black spaces in our twenty-nine years together had we known that we had entered into a contract . . . and had I been equipped to be an I before I became part of a we.


It's been a long time since our marriage's sticky new bud of admiring each other's eyebrows. I like my husband. I respect him. I enjoy knowing he is there . . . someplace. On days when I know he'll be away overnight, I look forward to my Alone Time. As the subsequent evening draws out long, I wonder what I was so anticipating; I do the same things in my evenings whether or not he is present.


I sometimes contemplate Life Without Husband. I look at nest-like little houses perfect for single old women; I think about not having to turn sleeves right-side-out before I do laundry. And then I think about: his unrequested delivery of medication when I was sick in bed; his starting my car on cold winter mornings; my setting up the coffeemaker because it makes him happy to simply push a button in the morning; our telling each other our dreams when we wake up in the morning.


I used to think that without Husband I would die.
I know now that I could live without him, and I choose not to.
It makes the whole thing a little more valuable.

But what does it LOOK like?

Longtime relationships have their own shorthand that evokes whole series of memories. Far Side of Fifty's Words We Made Up reminded me of this. Everybody has a similar story, and likely more than one. The story of "Fee" makes Husband and me laugh every time we remember it.


The scene: Quiet evening, livingroom, Husband in his chair, I in mine. He, reading some periodical or other, and I doing the same. Suddenly, he raises his eyes from the page and asks in a curious tone, "Junie, what's this word?" (At the time I was, and still am to a somewhat lesser degree, the Omniscient Word Woman.)


"How do you spell it?" I asked.


He responded, "Fee, arr, ee..."


"Wait. 'Fee'?"



"Yeah." He began again to spell the word. "Fee, arr, ee..."



Perplexed: "'Fee'?"



"Yes! Fee!" He was growing frustrated with my interruption.

And he began once again.

"Fee, arr, ee..."



"Wait a minute. What does it look like?"



"What! What does what look like?"

The tension was building.



"Fee. What does it look like?"



Voice slightly raised: "What do you mean, 'What does it look like?' It's fee!"



"But," I shook my head, genuinely wanting to help but at a complete loss, "What shape is it?"



He looked at the word on the page.
He looked for a long time.



And then began to giggle, and couldn't stop. I began to laugh with him, not quite knowing why...and we spent a few minutes in complete meltdown hysteria.



The word is lost to both of us now, but we remember fee.

It looks like this: F