My Wife Said You May Want to Marry Me

by Jason B. Rosenthal

  When it was time to revisit the travel part of Never stop learning!, there were two categories: family travel and separately, just the two of us.

  Every summer Amy and I would set aside a month (I was self-employed, with a supertough boss, but stressful as it was to take the time off, it was also a no-brainer for me to join in for two of those weeks), and off the five of us would go, to destinations all over the world. One of the many stunning qualities about Amy that I have never encountered in any other person in my life was her commitment to follow through on issues big and small. So many of us have dreams about the way our lives should be lived. We talk about doing this and that “when we have time,” or “when work slows down,” or “when we have the finances in order.” With Amy, if she set a goal to do something—professionally or personally—she made sure to follow through. I have encountered so many people who have regaled me with stories about working with Amy. She never hesitated to make her opinions known, and she knew just what she wanted. While this sometimes came across as intense, each and every story ended with Amy making the person better, and the experience they shared was priceless.

  In our relationship, Amy also pushed me to follow through. For example, the mere thought of taking a month, a month, out of our lives to travel with our children took some serious getting used to for me. Don’t get me wrong, it was something we talked about often, but putting it into practice was another thing altogether. Amy made it happen. Of course, once we made it to our destination of choice, the reasons for the trip, and its value to our family, became so clear—the exposure to different cultures, the chance to slow down, and most important, the time to be just us Rosies.

  And whatever the destination, we Rosies weren’t there to sightsee. We were there, wherever “there” happened to be, to soak up the culture of whatever location we chose to visit. Often this meant renting a place and living, truly engaging, with a specific community. We’d walk to local markets to shop, meet our “neighbors,” and prepare our own meals. We’d spend time in the most populated parks or beaches and support the local vendors. If we were in Europe, we’d eat dinner at 9:00 p.m. like the locals. In Wyoming, we made peach cobbler over an open fire. In Italy, we picked the endemic rosemary, and our family friend there would help us use it to cook feasts. Justin made friends with an octogenarian neighbor at our place in Italy. He was enamored with her dog, but the two of them hit it off as well. He remained pen pals with that woman when we returned home.

  Travel provided a great opportunity to teach our kids the value of making a difference through social service. We frequently found social service activities when we traveled the world. On occasion, we went to a specific destination purposefully to volunteer at a local organization. Amy and the kids traveled to Brazil to work in an orphanage and a preschool. We all went to Guatemala to build stoves out of brick and mortar for families who were so impoverished that they were literally cooking over open flames in their small shacks, routinely filling their living spaces with carcinogenic smoke.

  We also went out of our way to create moments of boredom—healthy moments of doing nothing, just interacting with one another in ways that the pace of everyday life back home didn’t allow. We colored. We played hide-and-seek. We played Uno, gin rummy, Scrabble, backgammon, and Mastermind. We specialized in family-made obstacle courses. And we kept growing closer and closer.

  If you’ve never shared gratifying experiences like these with your children, I can’t recommend it strongly enough. They bring out the best in all of you; they give you memories and a sense of giving back that will last a lifetime; they expose your children to other cultures and people whose lives they’ll change with simple acts of kindness; and your family, like ours, will find yourselves even closer than you ever dreamed possible.

  I know I’ve made this marriage and this family sound like a fantasy. Well, guess what—they pretty much were. There were certainly moments when our marriage was strained, but honestly, not too many.

  There was a stretch of time when we had two kids in diapers for six years straight, and sleep deprivation didn’t exactly bring out the best in either of us. We wrestled with whether to retrieve a crying child at bedtime or let them cry themselves to sleep and the pragmatic issues of three kids on three different schedules, none of which were always compatible with our own schedules. And then there was the inevitable debate that starts with “Your turn to put the kids down,” followed by an incredulous “Wait, I put them down last time! I’m sure it’s your turn.”

  There were also issues about time in general. Amy couldn’t tolerate my being home even slightly later than I said I’d be. And I couldn’t tolerate a habit of hers when we went to family gatherings, which usually went something like this:

  Drive forty-five minutes to her parents’ house. Spend the entire day with them, her siblings, and a flock of cousins, which invariably bled over into dinner. Start the forty-five-minute drive back to Chicago much later than planned, while the kids fall asleep in the minivan.

  I was done, and then some, by the time we left. On more than one occasion, Amy wasn’t—she’d suddenly get the bright idea that we should stop to visit a friend on the way home, wanting as usual to pack in as much fun as possible in a day, a week, a year, a life.

  My invariable response: No. Just no. The end. Amy would understand and be okay with it. This was part of her wanting “more,” her first word. Her dad often told this story, and it became part of the Krouse family lore.

  Those fairly standard-issue difficulties, believe it or not, were pretty much the worst of the “problems” in our marriage, and we never let them escalate. We’d worked side by side in third-world countries, after all; we had a fairly healthy handle on where our problems ranked on a scale of one to destitute. But even more than that, we shared such an incredible alignment on the big issues that the small, inconsequential ones were all we had left to make noise about.

  And then of course there were the worries I carried around. They were the kinds of concerns that most people have, but unfortunately their ubiquity doesn’t make them any less potent, especially at two in the morning.

  I’ve never been an especially good sleeper. What did I think about in the middle of the night, when my body was still and my mind was racing? I wish I could say I was thinking about how the man-made climate crisis would impact my children and grandchildren. Maybe I would be a better person if my thoughts had shifted to how to solve the gun crisis in Chicago and around the nation. But in reality, they often focused on whether a check would come in that month from my law practice. My chosen field, personal injury litigation, is a contingency-fee arrangement between lawyer and client. Of course, this means that the only way you get paid is if you settle or win the cases. This translates to a feast-or-famine lifestyle; some cases took years to resolve, others not so long.

  Oh, and did I mention that I made a huge work transition when I had two kids in diapers and a mortgage? Yep. Amy was working for a large advertising firm and had health benefits, so I jumped on the opportunity to open my own firm. I know, great timing. But if I was going to do this, now was the time. Or is there ever a good time? So I took the leap. Surely the stress of this transition came into play as my sleep issues continued to intensify. In the morning those demons would disappear and I would put my head down and go to the office to do something about it, but that rationality does not surface when extreme fatigue is kicking in during the wee hours of the still night.

  There were personal issues as well. Were my kids okay? There were some behavioral shifts. Was all of this normal? Additionally, there were the existential issues I was thinking about as I began to get older. What was I doing every day to make this world a better place? Was I doing enough social service work? Certainly I could spend more of my time volunteering right here in my own city. In my limited time on this planet, was I making a difference? Any impact at all?

  Lying right next to me each night was Amy, sleeping soundly, averaging a solid eight hours withou
t a peep. Not only that, but she got up in the morning, placed her tiny feet on the ground, and set off on her day. She had things to do. Ideas to put on paper or on film. Notes to write on her hand. Lists to make. Kids to embrace. Clearly, the energy she used every minute of every day made her hit the pillow hard at night—the only time her mind was not racing, in contrast to my own.

  Amy never did cease to amaze me. By the time we had our third child, the sweet angel Paris, and Amy was on maternity leave from her advertising job, a profound feeling of motherhood swept over her, and we talked about her becoming a full-time writer. Without missing a beat at her full-time, well-paid advertising gig, she’d managed to write and publish two adult books in the category of nonfiction humor or observations about life from the unique AKR perspective. This was not an easy process. Amy herself displayed with pride her many, many rejection letters.

  But her talent as a writer was undeniable, and as she mulled over trying her hand at it full-time, we both knew that, like my transition, there was no “good” time to do this. Our relationship was so solid, though, that we really supported each other in every way. I knew the change would not be easy financially, but we were okay. If this is what Amy wanted to do, I was behind her 100 percent. While her first books were not flying off the shelf, Amy had a huge idea for a memoir-style book, and she was jazzed about it. So she quit her advertising career and became an author.

  It was not until we were navigating our second pairing of two kids in diapers that Amy had an epiphany: she would write a children’s book. Paris was two years old. She was so verbal already, it was crazy. This was a popular question in our household at night: “Mommy, will you read me a story?” From this innocent, sweet question, Little Pea was “sprouted,” as Amy told it. She was putting Paris to bed, closing her eyes as she usually had to do for inspiration when she told the kids a story. The bedtime tale came flowing out that would ultimately be published as Little Pea, the tale of a pea who couldn’t stomach the thought of eating candy, but couldn’t wait for his favorite food—spinach.

  Now, this is not the first time that Amy got the response, “Mom, that is the best story ever!” She described our kids as the best, most forgiving audience. But this was special, so she wrote it down the next day. It was six years door-to-door for Mr. Pea, but he was published with stunning illustrations in 2005.

  Original sketch of Little Pea.

  When Amy made the total transformation to full-time author, I was elated. She would go on to write, and have published, about thirty-five children’s books in fourteen years, including her posthumous publications—an amazing clip.

  While I certainly had my own demons about my work life, I could not have been happier for Amy. I never once made a comparison. Sure, I thought “How can someone be so happy and fulfilled every day of her work life?” I just did not think a lawyer could get to that place. Nor did I think any other people I’d known in my life had ever reached that pinnacle either. I think one of the main reasons our marriage worked so well was that we genuinely wanted each other to be happy, to succeed, to make an impact, and to find inspiration. We were there for one another always. Amy was quirky, some say nontraditional, but she was Amy, and I would never have wanted to change one single thing about her, despite her desire to be taller and have thicker hair.

  Seeing Amy go through this transition in her professional life made it hard for me, though, as I struggled with ambivalence about my own vocation. For years I’d been struggling to find meaning in my law career. Sure, I had many moments of stimulation, some appreciative clients, and financial success. But much of my daily work was mired in the painfully slow judicial system, the impersonal shortsightedness of insurance companies, and some very unappreciative clients.

  Hoping to revitalize my attitude toward my professional life, I took on real estate investing as a simultaneous second career; and I have to say it was actually exciting and fulfilling in a lot of ways that being a lawyer wasn’t. I invested in value-added properties and some new construction, and I owned a bunch of residential buildings on the south and west sides of Chicago. I started to feel some glimmers of stimulation again, and I certainly met a lot of fascinating people and families I would never have met otherwise. One particular tenant I recall fondly used to set aside a plate just for me whenever she was making her specialties—chicken, collard greens, corn bread, and sweet potato pie. She was warm, lovely, and grateful. So were most of my tenants.

  “Make the most of your time here” was one of Amy’s mottos. She reminded anyone who would listen of that motto often, including me. If I was mired down in the minutiae of my law practice, she would suggest I go into my studio and paint. When I expressed enthusiasm for dabbling in the real estate game, and she saw my passion for it, she strongly encouraged me to give it a shot. If one of my favorite bands was in town, and it was a dude show she would not be interested in, she would encourage me to go with friends. I never played golf when the kids were young, knowing how much time it would take away from our family life. However, when her dad and her brother talked up how much fun it was, she fully endorsed my foray into the sport. In everyday life she did the same, whether it was complimenting me on an outfit—“Oh, you look so cute,” admiring a toast I had given at one of our dinner parties, or, after reading one of my many cards to her, saying that I was the writer in the family, “really.” She made me a better person, through her actions and her words. And as I look back, I am pretty sure I did the same for her.

  4

  On Our Own

  I wanted to know each part

  Want to know each part of you

  —Andy Hull, Manchester Orchestra

  And then one day in 2015, after twenty-four years of barreling forward hand in hand through three kids, diapers, good teachers, laughing through family dinners, scraped knees, soccer practices, report cards, school pictures, bad teachers, college essays, date-night martinis, and all the rest, impossibly, we started making plans for the fact that we were about to become empty-nesters.

  Justin was living in Texas, starting his adult work life while continuing to pursue his degree.

  Miles was in college in Atlanta.

  Paris had been in Canada for the summer, preparing for her upcoming soccer season, before starting her freshman year in college in September.

  For so many years that reality had seemed like a lifetime away. When it actually arrived, when our daughter, our youngest child, was about to leave for college, it felt as if it had happened in the blink of an eye.

  I know that for a lot of people, the prospect of being empty-nesters is sad, maybe even a little scary. But Amy and I were incredibly excited about it. We loved our children intensely and wanted them near us always. There wasn’t a shred of doubt about that, and they knew it. At the same time, we’d always reminded them that we came first. In today’s society, it seems that the boomerang effect of adult children returning home is more common than not. While Amy and I welcomed that possibility, we were elated at the opportunity to return to where it all started, just the two of us, navigating this whole new chapter of life. Unapologetically, and with our kids cheering us on every step of the way, we started making plans for that chapter.

  Given how we’d lived our married life for more than twenty years, perhaps it’s not surprising that, as we started to plan for being on our own again, Amy and I were like a couple of kids whose parents had left them alone in the house for the weekend. We had the whole place to ourselves. We had the whole world to ourselves.

  We’d gotten a small taste of this back in April 2012 when we went to Thailand together, without the kids. Because of her success as an author, Amy was in demand for book tours throughout the country and the world. The majority of her trips took her away from home for only a couple of days. Others were longer and more exotic, and gave me a chance to reap the benefits of being married to a creative force who was in demand in many different settings.

  Such was the case when we got to take that trip to Thaila
nd on our own. Between her commitments, we spent a few days off the mainland on the magical island of Koh Kood, celebrating our twenty-first wedding anniversary. Koh Kood is as romantic as it gets. Crystal-clear water. Fresh, delicious food. No kids, no emails, no cars, nothing but time, time to be together, to marvel at where we were as well as who and what we’d become individually and as a couple since that blind date on July 2, 1989. If this is possible for two people who were already in love, Amy and I fell in love all over again on the island of Koh Kood.

  From there it was back to the mainland, where Amy was enveloped with love and admiration by the International School Bangkok while I roamed the urban streets with my camera. I was feeling lucky, grateful, and excited about the future.

  Needless to say, as the time approached for Paris to head off to college, we were getting increasingly excited about being able to focus just on us for the first time in years. To the surprise of, oh, no one, we created an Amy-initiated list of empty-nest plans that we were constantly adding to. In no particular order . . .

  Travel with Ann and Paul (Amy’s parents) on a trip to South Africa.

  Live in a foreign city.

  Go to Burning Man.

  Apply for the Harvard Loeb Fellowship (Amy).

  Tour Asia with Mother (Amy).

  Go to Marfa in Texas to see the “Marfa Lights.”

  Do writers’ residencies in foreign schools (Amy).

  Spend more time in New York.

  Do more painting (Jason).

  Do more social service.

  We had a lot to do, and we couldn’t wait to get started.

  But first, Amy had committed to a trip to Washington, DC, for the National Book Festival at the Library of Congress. I was too slammed with work commitments to go with her to Washington, but she’d been allocated two tickets. So Amy did what Amy did; she reached out to her online community and initiated a contest, the winner of which would be her date to the event.