by Hope Tarr
The next morning after breakfast, we gave our well-rehearsed excuses and stole away. And the remainder of the weekend found us beautifully communicating at a nearby resort and spa.
The point of all this is that we had already learned, early on, how to pry open the other to allow our needs and desires to flow out. If anything, the retreat simply solidified this fact. Many years later, we still get a chuckle when thinking about that illuminating weekend adventure.
That brings me to number four on our countdown list of how we make things work. Mutual interests. Obviously, the love of history is one of them. Since we met on a mock battlefield, Civil War reenacting dominated our early years. As time went on, however, we moved away from dressing up and living the history into a more relaxed routine that didn’t involve wearing corsets or marching in the blazing sun.
As a couple, we were evolving. Our interests had room to expand. Wow. This was going to be fun! We found time to visit museums and other cultural sites together. When the kids went to bed, we shared reading and research ideas over glasses of wine. Tom’s interest in all things militaria advanced. He became an avid collector of artifacts. I bought him a metal detector. Off he went, digging up Civil War belt buckles and cannonballs, ancient coins and other buried treasures. His amazing collection grew.
During this time, my interest in Victorian fashions and the role of women in society deepened. I became a lecturer, sharing my knowledge of the things I learned along the way. Tom supported me wholeheartedly in my endeavor. Our analogous passions once again fused us as our appreciation of those bygone eras played an important role in our future. To this day, we still can’t pass a historical marker without stopping to peek into the past.
And then there are our traveling adventures. Ah yes…another wonderful interest that blossomed for us over the years. We took the kids to amusement parks, enjoyed romantic Caribbean cruises, and even roamed across America in a recreational vehicle we fondly call Bodie. These, along with a love of nature and gardening, have helped to strengthen our bond even more.
And now I’ve reached number five: keeping active. Indeed, another key in our relationship arsenal. From walking with our Shelties, to picking out smoothie recipes including vegetables Tom had rarely heard of before (kale, anyone?), to researching a nutraceutical supplementation program that seems to ward off colds and other diseases, I’ve enjoyed coming up with ideas and activities to keep us healthy. Over the years, our varied adventures have kept us vibrant. We’ve enjoyed bicycling, scuba diving, canoeing, hiking, and zip-lining through the treetops at warp speed. We’ve documented these pastimes with enough photos to fill the Grand Canyon. We even tried white-water rafting. Once. Although Tom thoroughly enjoyed his invigorating journey down the rapids in the eight-man inflatable raft, the trip video we purchased at the gift shop following our escapade clearly revealed a different reaction from me. I was the only passenger in obvious, abject terror, clutching the side of the yellow raft as I screamed my way down the churning length of the Gauley River. Needless to say, white-water rafting is no longer on the list of things Tom and I will be enjoying together anytime soon. In this case, individuality inside a relationship is also a very good thing.
Now, remember that Civil War novel I mentioned I was writing at the beginning of this article? Well, I finished it, then promptly put it in a box and shoved it under my bed, where it remained for several years. Until one evening, at the encouragement of my husband, I reached under the mattress, pulled the manuscript out and blew off the dust. No Greater Glory. I’d always liked the title; it seemed a true reflection of my life with Tom. After a little touching up, and with a kiss and a prayer, I mailed the complete story to the Romance Writers of America’s national Golden Heart contest. Six months later, I received a call telling me my love story was one of nine historical finalists. Oh my gosh…somebody better pinch me.
Another chapter in our lives was about to be written.
From this contest I secured a New York agent, who quickly sold my manuscript to a publishing house. Now, I was a bona fide author.
Book signings, social media and personal appearances soon followed.
Since my first novel is a Civil War romance, some of the invitations came from museums, antebellum homes, and universities. Because of his expertise in that time period, I asked Tom to come along with me. He agreed. Together, we planned out an intriguing way for him to participate.
He opened the program with a show-and-tell of the muskets, swords, cannonballs, and other artifacts he’d brought with him from his extensive collection. After his demonstration, I finished up by discussing Victorian fashions and gave a reading from my book. Both entertaining and educational, the tie-in worked perfectly.
Our little “dog and pony” show was born.
Since then, we’ve become a seasoned presentation team, bringing greater depth to my book-reading and signing events. Our program even has expanded from the local level to national venues.
It seems I’ve come full circle: from having a dream about writing the perfect hero to actually sharing my everyday life with one. Together, Tom and I are making this marriage work. He supports me in all my writing endeavors, and I am blessed to have his incredible strength and love.
No one’s marriage is perfect. Ours certainly isn’t. We both have our faults, but learning how to overlook some and having the willingness to change others is extremely important.
Our connection is an ongoing work in progress. Just like writing a book. Possessing a caring and open heart is what Tom and I have found helps to keep our relationship humming along.
We try to do the best we can.
In the end, that’s all anyone can do.
Cindy Nord’s bestselling debut novel, No Greater Glory, was featured on USA Today’s Happily Ever After romance fiction blog and for nearly a year was the #1 Civil War Romance at Amazon. A luscious blend of history and romance, her stories meld both genres around fast-paced action and emotionally driven characters. Yes, true love awaits you in the writings of Cindy Nord. Visit Cindy online at www.cindynord.com.
Resting Easy
By K.M. Jackson
Coming to bed at the end of the day after a long hot soak to wash the fatigue off and ease aged joints, I step into the bedroom, wondering out loud to my husband, “Where did the past week go? How did it get by us so fast?” I don’t get a reply. I glance at my husband as he lies in our bed. His lashes fan out, resting on smooth cheeks. His lips are relaxed in contentment, and I glance down to see his chest rising and falling in an easy, rhythmic motion. Despite a small twinge of annoyance over the fact that he didn’t wait up for me, I can’t help but smile to myself. Here, now, relaxed and quiet as he is, he looks soothed and at peace and every bit the young man I met over twenty years ago. No trace of the stressed-out man who was sifting through the bills an hour before. Looking at him now, my heart takes on a soothing sway.
Then my eyes shift as I look down at his hand clutched tightly around the television remote, and a frown twists at the corner of my lips. Glancing up at the TV, I see he’s once again fallen asleep midturn, and the TV is paused on a station where neither of us understands the language. I shake my head. It’s so him. He goes and goes all day until he can’t take one more step, only to fall dead asleep, wake up and do it all over again the next day. I wonder how long he can run himself ragged.
Carefully, I get into bed and try to ease the remote from his hand, only to have his eyes pop open, latching on to mine as his grip tightens possessively. “I was watching that.”
I shake my head. “No, it was watching you. Care to give me a recap to prove it?”
He groans as his eyes soften, and he loosens his grip, knowing I’ve won this one. “No, sorry, it’s just I’m so tired, and I have to get up and do it again tomorrow.”
I lean over and kiss him gently as I ease away the remote. “I know, and for this I’m grateful.”
“Yeah, me, too.”
The TV is turned off, and as one
we turn together. One spooned in the other’s embrace. Knowing within a few hours the spoon will be flipped, and it will be other way around. He spoons me, I spoon him. It’s a dance we do in our sleep to let each other know the other is still there. That it doesn’t matter who’s behind or who is in front. All that matters is that one is there for the other. With love, support and protection while we are at our most vulnerable, in sleep.
Statistics tell us nowadays that people are marrying less, later and divorcing more. These days the idea of marriage feels at times temporary, just a thing for the season and then on to the next when that trend wears out. Now of course I know people go into marriage with plans of forever, but in the back of their minds and in the minds of others, there is always a contingency plan, and please don’t get this jaded romantic wrong, having a plan B is fantastic and we often need a plan C and D. But how often do we hear, “Is this the first, second or third marriage?” for John or Jane as they head down the aisle, eyes brimming with hope again?
So with short-term marriages being more the norm, my husband and I going on to the twenty-fifth-year mark (ack, a quarter of a century) have turned into quite the oddity, a fun couple to have at dinner gathering to stare at and ask questions of as if we are relics unearthed from days gone by. As if we’re some sort of fifties flashback one should sit at the knee of and marvel over and hang on their every word as we dole out the magic formula to racking up the years. (Trust me, there are times when we marvel ourselves.)
The main question we get is: How have we made it last for as long as we have, getting over the honeymoon stage and the seven-year itch and the eleven-year boredom stretch that usually take down even the most golden of marriages? Often, I joke and laugh this question off. Saying cutesy little things like, “Oh, he’s just an old habit by now” or “I always told him if we divorce, he gets the kids.” Lines that make people chuckle and move on. But, really, there are no quick quips to sum up how you go from year one to year twenty-five. It’s just life and life done diligently. Like a habit, or like our nightly remote-control tug-of-war, being in any long-term relationship takes humor, patience, understanding, some serious work and even more serious play.
When I met my husband, I was young and not-so-bright-eyed, and I will admit to not being the marriage-age statistic of twenty-seven that is out today. Slightly less jaded than I am now but still with plenty of sass, I was pushed out into the job market, ironically, by my favorite high school literature teacher, the late Frank McCourt. One day he caught me sulking in the hall and asked what was wrong. When I went on about my lack of funds and general malaise about life, he directed me to the school job board and pointed out a part-time law firm accounting job that he assured me I was smart enough to handle. With his advice to buck up, I was sent on my way Uptown to Park Avenue and my future in the guise of a charming, shy, Southern IT manager.
At the firm I stuck out like a sore thumb with my dyed, spiky hair, homage-to-Prince blouses, and tight, ripped jeans. But still, there in that unlikely place, I met someone (my future husband) who would turn out to be both my polar opposite, in his pinpoint button-downs and pleated khakis, and my mirror image. It is said in Corinthians 13 that love is patient and kind, that it always protects, trusts, hopes and perseveres. This has truly been a way, both consciously and unconsciously, my husband and I have approached our relationship and our marriage.
You start out as friends, bright and sunny and both loving the same movies or putting on a good face to pretend to love the same movies. But what happens when the bright and sunny starts to fade into the everyday routine cycle of work, eat, sleep? This is when things get tricky and the mind gets antsy. You look around and wonder, where did my friend go? That is when I believe the patience and the kindness come into play, and you have to let the annoyance go and look at life through the eyes of your partner. You see where the other could be overworked and, instead of chiding, you slip that remote away and spoon your love with kindness and understanding.
Now what about when life brings you unexpected surprises as it did for us twenty years ago, when pregnant and having my first sonogram, I was asked by my technician, “How many children do you want to have?” Now there’s an odd one to get while you’re nervous and cold with a belly covered in jelly. My answer was, “One, of course,” but who knew that it was Baby BOGO Day, and the hubs and I were indeed pregnant with twins? This was a moment when it was time to fall on trust. Trust in each other and in what the Universe had in store for our rapidly growing family. It was hold-on-tight time and don’t let go.
It was just days after bringing our twins home and the hubbub had died down and we were now left alone, and I’ll admit a little nervous, with our two beautiful babies. We had set up two wicker bassinets in our bedroom to make it easier to get the babies when feeding time came, and believe me, with twins, it was always feeding time. After yet another round with my son, it was the middle of the night and I was practically passed out, dead asleep.
But I awoke to the sound of my daughter crying, her wailing permeating my subconscious. Groggy, I was about to get up from the bed to go and get her when I blinked and noticed that my husband was already there. He was down on his knees on the floor, gently rocking her bassinette back and forth as he pleaded with her to please go back to sleep. I could hear the desperation and the exhaustion in his voice, and it made me humble to see this big, proud man on his knees in a position of surrender to this tiny human. Inwardly, I laughed at the odd sight before me, though at the same time, my heart opened up just a little wider knowing how much of himself he would sacrifice for us. I then asked if he needed me to get up and help, but he softly said no, that he knew I was tired and needed rest and he would care for us. I nodded and went back to sleep. I don’t know when my daughter stopped crying, but that night I slept like a baby, trusting that he had us. That he was there watching over us and could be for years to come. No matter what.
Then you have the times when life throws you other curves, such as financial hardships or the tragedy of a loved one being ill. Here is a time when protection and hope have to take action. Hope that, with each other, hard work and holding on tight, you will make it to another day and a brighter one. And you both will, but it takes perseverance. You see, I was only half-joking when I said we were an old habit, or if we were to get divorced he’d get the kids. Now, he knows I’d never give up my children, but this was my way of reminding him and the world that parenting is a team effort, just like our marriage is, and we are in it together. Many of my most vivid memories with my husband come from moments over the years when I have been either mentally or emotionally exhausted, and he’s been there to give me the oxygen that I needed. Always my knight in shining and, at times, tarnished armor, but still my knight. That beacon in the darkness and the hand I have to hold. My teammate and my helpmate. The one who let me rest those years ago when I so desperately needed it, and the one I pry the remote from now.
And here we are once again, another late night. Back in the bedroom, there are no more bassinettes, no more wailing babies, just a blaring television, an exhausted man and a patient wife telling him to turn over.
Go back to sleep. I’ll take care of you tonight.
A native New Yorker, K.M. spent her formative years on the A train going from her home in Washington Heights to The Village where she attended Stuyvesant High School. On that long ride to study math and science, K.M. had two dreams: to be a fashion designer and to be a writer. K.M. went on to study fashion design at FIT and spent ten years designing for various fashion houses. After having twins, K.M. took the leap of faith and decided to pursue her other dream of being a writer. She currently lives in a suburb of New York with her husband, twins, and a precocious terrier named Jack that keeps her on her toes. When not writing, she can be found on Twitter @kwanawrites and on her website at www.kwana.com.
For Better or For Worse
By Heather McCollum
We met in college after I’d experienced way too much h
eartache as a teen drawn to all the bad boys. Braden is one of the good guys, so it took a year of his friendship before I woke up and saw the sexy hero walking next to me across the quad. But I finally did, and we kissed, and four years later I walked in white brocade down a candlelit aisle toward him. Our families stood on their respective sides. Only his mother was absent, for she’d died of breast cancer when he was nine years old.
When I was asked, “For better or for worse,” and I answered with a heartfelt, “I do,” I smiled at my squeaky-new husband, feeling fluttery and thrilled to be starting an adventure with my official partner in life. I was definitely living in the “better” season as I stared happily into my real Highland hero’s chocolate-brown eyes.
Fast-forwarding through infertility, difficult pregnancies, and three babies later, we had built a solid life together. Work stress, squabbles about dishes and dirty underwear left on the floor kept the relationship real but still good. I released my first two romance novels and, despite turning forty, felt strong, sexy and confident. As a ridiculously busy couple, it was difficult to connect, so we joined an adult soccer team together. It was fun, time spent with my guy and five hundred and fifty calories burned at each game and practice. I loved it.
I exercised every day and finally slimmed down to the lowest jean size I’d ever fit in. I knew that on certain, non-bloated times of the month, I could tug on those skinny jeans with relative ease. So when that time came, and I had to suck in to close the button, I pouted and swore to add sit-ups to my routine. Turning forty did not mean I had to gain forty.