The Here Year

Maybe it’s apropos that I’m a little, um, late, posting about the topic that Aidan has chosen for September’s Here Year explorations.

Time.

Time is a subject that fascinates me.  You could argue that time’s inexorable, sometimes-brutally-swift passages is the black hole around which all of my writing swirls.

I have a lot to say about time.

I believe that time is our only zero-sum resource, and that one of the most important decisions of all that we make is how to spend the hours we have.

I believe that time, and attention, are the surest way to show love.

I believe that no matter how frantically I grasp and regardless of how present I am, of how fiercely I focus on being here now, time flies by me.  The truth is, it is going faster and faster.  I’m sorry to say that this is a deeply sad reality in my life.  I wish it wasn’t so.  It feels appropriate to repost this piece from June 2013, in which I wrote about this very thing.

I can close my eyes and be back in this afternoon, exactly 7 years ago, June 2005, with baby Whit, 2 year old Grace, and my grandfather, who is no longer with us. 

It’s not a secret that I struggled with my entry into motherhood.  Grace’s infancy was not my finest hour.  I remember large swaths of time as only a blur of tears and a wailing baby that occurred in a permanent twilight that wasn’t day and wasn’t night.  But, somehow, I remember with crystalline clarity one comment that I received over and over again from kindly, well-intentioned people, friends and strangers alike:

“Make sure to enjoy this moment.  It goes so fast!”

Just like everybody else I know, I heard this more times than I can possibly count.  And every single time, through the haze of my exhaustion and despair, I recognized a kernel of truth.  This sentence pierced my gloom over and over again.  But the truth is it made me want to scream; this is probably because the sentiment cut close to the bone.  As with all statements that are uncomfortably true, I did not like hearing it.  And I swore to myself I would never tell a mother with a newborn to enjoy this time.

And yet I have.  More than once, I’ve looked at a mother with a tiny baby, or a mother with a baby in a Bjorn and a two year old by the hand, dark valleys under her eyes and a slightly wild, exasperated expression, and longed to be back there.  The way I express this longing is to say: “Oh, those were the days.  They go fast. Enjoy them.”

Every time I kick myself: Ugh, Lindsey, you swore you’d never say that.  I can remember vividly my own negative reaction to those comments.  But I realize now that the people who said that were just sharing their own nostalgia the only way they knew how.

Even now, aware as I am of not wanting to squander these moments with my children at home, I find myself – daily! – wishing time away.  I am sore from the cold bleachers under my legs at soccer try-outs, I am listening to a detailed story about a 2nd grade bus ride that is being told in real time, I am tired myself, just want to get into bed with my own book, and this third glass of water is going to put me over the edge.  I have realized this is simply the nature of parenting; the adage that the days are long but the years are short is so powerful precisely because it is true.

I am much better at appreciating my experience than I used to be.  There’s no question about that.  But even when I really AM there, even when I’m fully open and appreciating all the sights, sounds, smells, and emotions of my particular life with my particular children at this particular moment, it still goes by too fast.  And this is the bitter part of my life’s bittersweet core: nothing I do, no paying attention and being here now can slow the drumbeat march of time.  No matter how present I am I cannot alter the hasty onrush of this life.

Sometimes that truth feels unbearably bitter.  Of course, yes, I do know that it’s bitter in direct proportion to the sweetness.  The presence I have worked hard to cultivate over many years has left me with very rich memories of this season of my life.  I’m grateful beyond expression for the way this blog has chronicled much of my life with my children.  I have thousands of photographs and dozens of letters.  But nothing I can do, neither white-knuckled hanging on nor meditative letting go, will make these days and years last longer.  I guess when I say the thing I swore I’d never say to new mothers, I’m trying to communicate that.  But I should stop, because I know it doesn’t help.

I’m pretty sure that my grandfather, in the photograph above, told me with a sigh that these days would go fast.  I know he handed me some notes that my grandmother had written about observing the development of boys (she should know: she had four).  But I also know that I probably shook my head, worrying about getting Whit down for a nap and making pasta for Grace, grimaced at the ugly plastic toys in my kitchen, and told him in a way that was both heartfelt and dismissive: I know, I know.

I thought I knew what he meant.  But I didn’t.  I do now.

When Aidan announced that June’s Here Year theme was marriage, my immediate thought was of Amanda Magee.  Amanda is one of my absolute favorite writers, and lately she and her husband Sean have written some beautiful, provocative, frank pieces about marriage.  I asked her if she’d write something for us and I’m delighted that she did.  There are so many posts of Amanda’s that have stuck with me, and it’s not an exaggeration to say that her words run through my mind on a regular basis.  One of the first posts I remember vividly is a letter she wrote to Sean on Father’s Day that acknowledges the importance of “keeping what started it all alive.”  As an aside, I’m honored that Amanda’s essay on the age of eight appears alongside my words about ten in This is Childhood, Brain Child magazine’s first book (you can buy a copy here!).

What Amanda wrote for us made me cry.  Hard. Her words are both poetic and fiercely honest.  She admits to having not worked hard enough at her marriage.  I know this feeling intimately.  And while I go back and forth on the perennial, emotional debate of whether children or marriage should come first, I think ultimately I conclude that keeping us – the private geography and subterranean world of a marriage – sacred needs to be our utmost priority.

Thank you, Amanda, for your thoughtful reflections, for your tough and strong challenge to be more here in my marriage.  You’re right.

That’s All

Our anniversary is this Saturday; it will be eleven years that we have been the Magees. It will be fifteen years since I told Sean that I wasn’t looking to make new friends and he told me that he wasn’t asking me to marry him.

Here we are—married, partners in a business, parents of 3 daughters, and as vibrantly stubborn and idealistic as we were when we first met. I think to outsiders we may at times seem like we have it all together.

“How on earth do you guys work together?”

“I couldn’t be around my husband that often?”

“Don’t you want to hang out with the guys?”

Since that first summer at Williamstown we have had a charge that is all or nothing, passion and drive cleaving us apart as often as they cement us together. We have been called insatiable and exhausting, as we doggedly pursue the next thing, be it a kitchen renovation or a new business. It hurts because it’s true. The very force that keeps us striving toward each goal hand-in-hand is the thing that makes us expect a level of marital devotion and attention that is difficult to sustain.

When I consider it in terms of the here year that Aidan and Lindsey have created, I realize that marriage is its own animal. It isn’t like child rearing, which comes with milestones and change—nursing, diapers, and baby gates give way to pre-school, and sleeping through the night, which give way to elementary school and delicious conversations. Marriage keeps going, and sure, there are those who acknowledge that passion isn’t sustainable, that marriage softens, like the edges of glass battered between surf and sand, to a mellow state. How do you know though? How do you know if it’s settling into a relaxed place of years being together or if it’s just settling?

Two weeks ago I had this post written, not this post, actually it was another post. I shared it with my husband and he disagreed. He talked about feeling neglected. I was shattered,because the thing about marriage is that you don’t know the truth of here unless you ask. It may very well be that one person is operating under a system that gauges happiness by x, but the other is using a y tool.

The things that are still true from my first post:

These past eleven years I’ve judged myself as a woman, as a professional, and as a mother. I have never critiqued myself as a partner. That day in June was, in some ways, more finish line than starting gate.

I’m guilty of neglecting my marriage.

I don’t insist on staying late to work at it.

I don’t go out of my way to make sure that Sean and I get equal time.

I don’t imagine what I could do to make Sean feel that he is a priority for me.

I don’t fret about how we’ll look back on these years as husband and wife.

I do this for our daughters, I do it for friends, and I even do it with respect to things in our house. I read articles about being present, practicing hands-free parenting, but the headlines are ominously absent of techniques on having a happy marriage.

What I’ve learned as I have tried to be more aware of his here is this, we both measure our happiness in our marriage through attention. I desire to be recognized as a good mom and as beautiful. I want him to still have his breath taken away and to be in love with me. He wants to be seen as a good husband and to be recognized as attractive, both being demonstrated through intimacy. Sex.

I’m not sure why a good wife doesn’t come before good mom, maybe it’s that three daughters edge out one husband. My focus on our marriage has simply not been as around the clock as my mothering. I want to change that.

I want to commit to our here, to our this moment.

The song that Sean selected and secretly requested my grandfather to play at our wedding is a gentle reminder of the simple principle to keeping us sacred.

If you’re wondering what I’m asking in return, dear,

You’ll be glad to know that my demands are small.

Say it’s me that you’ll adore,

For now and evermore

That’s all,

That’s all.

I have had marriage on my mind lately.  My friend Aidan has generously invited me to join her Here Year, and this month’s theme is marriage.  I’ve been thinking about what I can do to be more here in my marriage, and well as considering what impact presence has on both my relationship with my husband and my family.

Marriage, and mine in particular, is a topic I don’t often broach here.  I read somewhere (and I wish I could remember where, so as to attribute it) that a marriage is “the most private of geographies” and I agree entirely with that.  There is so, so much about the marriages of others that we don’t see, an entire subterranean world, and I have learned not to make assumptions from the small part of the landscape that I can see above the surface.

Matt and I will celebrate our fourteenth anniversary in September.  Since we met, in January 1998, we have shared a broad swath of life, between the two of us and our immediate family: two graduate degrees, one house purchase, two pregnancies, two labors and deliveries, one heart transplant, one stem cell transplant, one kidney transplant, five jobs, two international trips with our children, and more tears, laughter, and mundane days than I can possibly remember or count.  It’s that small stuff, the “grout between the tiles of life’s big experiences,” that makes a marriage.  It’s that stuff that makes a life.

While I don’t think we can ever understand the marriages of others, I do think there are certain observable behaviors, habits, and tendencies that people who seem (again: seem – but that’s all I have to go on!) to be happily married demonstrate.  Some of these Matt and I have and do, others we could improve on.  So, here are my thoughts on the habits of the happily married:

Laughter – This is the biggest one by a mile as far as I can tell.  I love being around couples who make each other laugh and who can guffaw at things big and small.  This is correlated with an ability to keep life’s inevitable bumps in perspective, though that deserves its own post.  I think it’s as simple as everyday life is more fun when you can laugh, and people who share that have a very solid bond.  Matt and I can work on this one.

Perspective – If there’s one thing I know at almost-forty it is that life is full of regrets and compromises.  Even those whose lives look exactly like they planned them find them to feel nothing like we expected.  Guaranteed.  Couples who can help each other remember this are doing something right and important.  I think Matt and I are doing okay on this one.

Affection – Without exception, as far as I can see, people who touch each other like each other.  These tiny moments – hugs hello and goodbye, pats on the back when walking by a chair, kisses at bedtime, a foot rub while watching a baseball game – add up to a stronger bond.  Period.  I’ve written at length about my own aversion to general smell/noise/touch/taste/sight stimulation, and Matt would like to have his feet rubbed 24/7, so we have a ways to go on this one.

Individuality – I guess there’s a reason Khalil Gibran is so beloved.  That whole spaces in your togetherness thing is, as far as I’m concerned, absolutely apt.  The couples I admire most are the ones who are two individuals who are choosing, over and over again, to be together.  This requires that each person have something – or multiple things – that they love in the world, outside of themselves, each other, and their children.  The night before our wedding, I told Matt and I felt as though we were two people choosing to walk next to each other as long as our paths converged.  I’m still choosing that.  To me, that’s romance.

I know these observations are general, and the real task is translating them into day to day choices, minute by minute actions, that add up to a strong and healthy marriage.  But maybe identifying the macro themes is useful too.  At least I hope it is.

What habits do you observe among those whose marriages you respect and esteem?  If you’re married, do you recognize those same behaviors in your own marriage?

I am thrilled to have joined my dear friend Aidan in her year-long exploration of presence.  We are pursuing our Here Year side by side, with lots of conversations both macro and micro happening and hopefully another Twitter chat soon.  Each month has a specific focus.  April was home, and May was parenthood.  June, I’m happy to announce, we will train our lenses particularly on marriage.

Marriage.

If you read this blog you know this is a topic I don’t address very often.  I am very comfortable being vulnerable about many things and sharing a lot of my personal experience.  I have, however, drawn boundaries around certain areas of my life that I won’t discuss.  One of those is my marriage.  I talk about Matt twice a year, on his birthday and on our anniversary.  Other than that, I don’t talk much about him or our relationship.

Well, for this month, for today, that changes.  We were married almost 14 years ago, on a day that held full sunshine, startling blue sky, torrential rain, and thunder so loud we had to pause in our vows.  In short, September 9 2000 was a preview of what lay ahead.  Our life together since that day when we stood surrounded by those we love most, blue hydrangeas and yellow roses, and words from Cavafy and The Book of Qualities has contained plenty of sunshine as well as rain.

During our engagement, I admit I was mystified by the incredible focus on The Wedding.  I was far more interested in The Marriage.  And I still am.  I almost didn’t put the picture from our wedding on this post, actually, for that reason.  Weddings have very little to do with Marriages, after all.  Though I’ve noted before that certain things that marked that day – the weather, for one, as well as the songs we danced to and our readings – seem to have been almost eerie harbingers of what was to come.

But that’s not my focus today, nor this month, nor really ever.  When it comes to marriage, at almost 14 years in, what strikes me the most is how it’s both exactly what I expected and not at all what I imagined.  Last year, I wrote this, and several people told me I wasn’t romantic.

Thirty eight is thirteen years of marriage.  It is knowing all the ways that marriage is both less and more than I thought it was, when I walked into a church wearing white and hearing thunder.  Less score-keeping, less candlelight, less drama.  More small acts of kindness, more forgiveness, more abiding.  Fewer flowers, but more cups of coffee made exactly how I like them, without being asked, brought to me in bed in the morning.

The thing is, I feel like what I described is enormously romantic.  I think marriage is about abiding.  It is about remaining near.  It is about listening and paying attention and biting my tongue when I need to (not easy for me) and celebrating achievements big and small.  It is about focusing outside of myself, and recognizing the richness that surrounds me every day.

All of these things are improved for me when I am here.  How can I be more here, in my marriage in particular?

I can be guilty of not particularly wanting to listen, at the end of a long day, when I’m spent from work and the children, and I know that’s something specific I have to work on.  I’m ambivalent about the whole “date night” concept and frankly dislike that term, but I do know that engaging in adult conversation and being together in a non-passive way is important for a marriage.  I can work on not providing “feedback” when it is not productive.  These are just a few of the many things I need to do more of.

So, here we go … I will be experimenting with these specifics and with others throughout this month.

What are your thoughts on marriage, presence, and how they interact?  Are there things you know you need to do better?