A Cup of Comfort for Couples

by Colleen Sell

  He also had no way of knowing that when I feel the first slap of crisp air in the fall, I look forward to watching him watch football. He couldn’t know that the mere sound of distant rumblings of a thunderstorm make me wish he was near so we could enjoy whatever comes, together. He didn’t know that when I fold his faded yellow, paperthin, Batman T-shirt, a grin comes over my face simply because I know how much he loves wearing that thing. He never caught me looking out the window while he cuts the grass or read my mind thinking how handsome he still is.

  That day, I was flooded with images I simply could not bear — the images of a divorced mother. I tried to imagine unpacking the boxes of Christmas decorations without him. Suddenly, the warm, family ritual seemed like a mere chore to me. I tried to think about coloring Easter eggs without his yearly tradition of pouring all the colors together at the end and brewing up a black one. Still harder to imagine was the early morning ritual of hiding the eggs in the grass, soggy slippers and all, without him by my side. I imagined that the heartache would continue throughout the year. How could packing up the van and eating junk food at the drive-in on the hottest night of the summer be any fun without him to find the perfect parking spot? His passion for Halloween and all things scary made me want to cry at the thought of an October without him.

  I tortured myself further and looked around the house at our treasures. Who would take what? We’ve been married long enough that nearly everything my eyes fell upon didn’t say “David” or “Julie,” but rather “us.” The wedding china with the journal that I use to record every special family meal. The picture of our beloved, late Dalmatian and the matching snow dog that David built next to him in front of our first home together. The house we have now is nice enough, but we’ve yet to take a drive where we don’t pick out a favorite and refer to it as our dream house. It was something I always just assumed we’d end up in.

  David travels a lot on business, and I don’t think I’ve ever told him that when he’s gone, I don’t feel like we’re much of a family. We’re two kids, a puppy, and a crazed mom who play, eat, take baths, and go to bed. When he’s home, we play, eat, take baths, and go to bed, but it’s somehow more meaningful when we’re doing it all together.

  In the flurry of doctors’ appointments, vet appointments, swim lessons, tennis lessons, ballet lessons, I’d failed to notice something. In my insistence that we visit amusement parks, take extended family vacations, line up sitters for parties with our friends, and host an array of dinners, I failed to notice something. Picking up his dry cleaning and making sure we always have stadium mustard and Entenmann’s raspberry crumb cake is not enough. Loving David’s devilish grin on my daughter’s face and unending curiosity in my son are not enough. I need to love David with the same amount of enthusiasm that I do everything else.

  I’m not ignorant. I catch Oprah on occasion and read articles in women’s magazines. I’m aware that marriages often fall apart under the guise of family life. I’ve read how taking care of yourself is the best thing you can do for your family. In fact, last year for my birthday, we all laughed as I declared it “The Year of Julie.” After five years of either being pregnant or nursing, I shed my motherhood hormones and tried to find a glimmer of my old self under the antibacterial haze. I gouged out time for walking again. I stacked books about anything but mothering high on my bedside table. I attacked my writing with energy I didn’t even know I still had. Only now do I see that, along the way, I’d expected my marriage to survive on fumes.

  The phrase “reconnecting with your partner” is everywhere, and suddenly I know what it means.

  I dug out my favorite old picture of David and me when we first started dating and put it in a new frame on our dresser. I remember so clearly the day it was taken. I knew that he was the perfect mate for me; it’s written all over my wrinkle-free face. How could I have let that awareness become so hidden over the years? I’m wearing his shirts around the house again as a Lagerfeld-scented reminder to myself that my man — not my kids’ daddy — sleeps next to me at night. We traded vehicles this past weekend because mine gave him more room for the guys’ annual camping trip. Just driving his SUV even made me feel closer to him. And I’m just getting started.

  Although I’d have appreciated a little warning along the way, I know that David handled his frustration the best way he could. He silently, then not so silently, brooded about his lack of presence in my life until he couldn’t take it. He simply couldn’t feel like the last thing on my To Do list any longer. It was shocking to me because in my mind, he never was at the bottom. He’s always right up there at the top. Sadly, though, I’m not sure I realized that until I was forced to look at it. When I did, I was happy to discover that every daydream I have involves David and me, in some far-away land, exploring together. My dream companion wasn’t necessarily my friends or my family, the people with whom I share my daily thoughts, nor even my kids, who get every ounce of my love day in and day out; it was my husband, David.

  I heard somewhere that the best thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother. The TV must’ve been on at the time, and I probably said, “Aw, that’s nice,” and kept on with my list-making. After my wake-up call and resulting mental inventory, though, I now realize that not only is loving David the best thing I can do for my children, it’s also the best thing I can do for myself. And even if his name is not always scribbled on that piece of paper I carry around with me, he’s always at the top of my list.

  — Julie Clark Robinson

  Lime Green and Not Deep

  I dated Jim for six months. The relationship was comfortable, probably because deep down I knew it wasn’t going anywhere. There was no chemistry and, therefore, no risk. When we finally slept together, it was exactly as expected — nice, pleasant, fine. That is, until two weeks later when he trotted out the video. Okay — I admit to being just a tad stupid. I mean, I knew he was a private investigator and I saw the camera pointed at the bed. It simply never occurred to me that it was on.

  So once the video was safely overwritten by Peggy Sue Got Married, it was back to the drawing board — going to singles parties and experimenting with personal ads. It wasn’t long before I met another guy named, you guessed it, Jim. He told me he had never, ever had a second date. Without going into great detail, let’s just say that I discovered, firsthand on our first date, myriad reasons why this may, in fact, have been true. I suspect he eventually purchased a Russian bride, who no doubt dumped him as soon as her papers were in order. And he undoubtedly had it coming.

  I finally surrendered to destiny and gave the dating thing a much-needed rest.

  I joined an upscale health club with my friend Donna and settled into my new role as a old-spinster-in-the-making. Donna started casually dating a guy she’d met at the club, and after a while I began to secretly hope lightning might strike for me and I’d meet someone extraordinary. But one thing was certain: I would never date another Jim.

  So there we were at the club on St. Patrick’s Day, 1988. We worked out hard, showered, and headed for the hot tub — I half blind without my glasses and Donna acting as my seeing-eye friend. I remember the water was hot, hot enough to be unpleasant. The place smelled of sweat and chlorine, and it made me vaguely nauseated. Someone slid into the seat across from us — to me, nothing more than a blur. But Donna said, “Hey. I know you. You’re . . .”

  At this point she cast me a quick sideways glance, then directed her attention back to the guy easing into the hot tub. “You’re Gary’s roommate.”

  Gary was the fellow she was dating. Donna had an extensive list of qualifications in future husband material, and Gary met many of her requirements. He had graduated from an Ivy League school, which was high on her list. He also had thick hair. Thick hair was important to Donna because hers was fine and soft, and she figured if she married someone with similar hair, her children would be bald. Because she was short and un-athletic, she wanted to meet someone tall and lanky, with runn
er’s or gymnast’s muscles or even football-player muscles. Gary had none of these. He had Pillsbury Doughboy muscles, and this would not do. Hence, the casual relationship.

  I was not nearly as picky. I wanted someone who had a job; I didn’t care what kind of job. My parents had given significant amounts of cash to both my ex-husband and my subsequent live-in boyfriend, and to my mom’s immense relief, I was finally done with rescue missions. Aside from some form of gainful employment, I wanted someone who understood my jokes — someone with a ready smile and a quick wit. And I wanted someone who did not hit, because I had been hit enough.

  Gary’s roommate looked sweet . . . well, in as much as I could make out his face.

  I leaned across the bubbling water, smiled, and offered my hand. “Hi, I’m Nancy.”

  “Nice to meet you. I’m Jim.”

  I scurried back to my side of the hot tub. No bleeping way. Uh-uh. Stay the bleep over there, Jim. At least, that’s what every fiber of my being screamed. Aloud I said, “Pleased to meet you,” or something equally polite and noncommittal.

  Jim, also without his glasses, squinted nearsightedly at me through the steam, and I think he may have smiled.

  My memory of the rest of the evening is vague. Mostly, I remember laughing. Jim was hands-down the funniest guy I had ever met. I was choking with mirth, holding my sides, nearly passing out and drowning in that hot tub. And still the jokes kept coming. Donna was Irish, and it was, as I mentioned, St. Patrick’s Day, so we all went to the Ninety Nine restaurant. I laughed so much my stomach was sore for a week. It was as if I’d done a thousand stomach crunches without taking a break. It dawned on me that if I dated Jim I could have magnificent abs while saving a bundle on gym memberships. I gave him my phone number.

  And so it began. Every Friday we went to Cambridge to see a comedy show at Catch a Rising Star. Every Tuesday we had dinner with a group of Jim’s friends. We watched stupid B movies, and I fell asleep with my head on his shoulder while the silver screen ingénues in Barbarella or The Perils of Gwendolyn in the Land of the Yik Yak jiggled their way across the screen.

  He invited me to his house, where Gary slept in a king-sized bed in the master bedroom and Jim slept on a twin mattress on the floor of a tiny room resembling a closet with windows. Upstairs were two additional bedrooms, both stuffed with Jim’s possessions. One was filled with rows and rows of black plastic shelving units from Home Depot, each covered in matching boxes from the post office, neatly stacked and meticulously labeled. The other room had built-in shelves nestled within its walls, and sitting neatly upon each shelf was a stack of folded pants. Every pair of slacks, jeans, and trousers was perfect — each pair crisply ironed and accurately folded to exactly the same length, each stack precisely the same height as the one next to it. And each pants tower was labeled with an identical yellow Post-it, with neatly printed letters that said, “Slightly Tight,” “Very Tight,” “Very Loose,” “Slightly Loose,” or “Just Right.”

  But the pants towers paled next to his yogurt cup collection. These he had amassed for years, and they held a place of honor on a shelf built just for them, immediately adjacent to his plastic bag collection. It was obvious that Jim never parted with anything that might possibly, someday be useful. I suspected this might bode well for a future relationship, as I, too, was useful.

  After two failed relationships, I had baggage. I had trust issues. I had been knocked around quite a bit and made to feel even smaller than my five-foot frame might suggest. I trusted no one. I fully expected the relationship to fail, and I figured I would be the one to cause its inevitable demise. It was only a matter of time.

  But somehow Jim got past all of that. His first kiss was brushed gently upon my forehead, and I confess that I melted inside. When he invited me to stay over, it was just that — staying over. There was no sex, just cuddling, and I had never felt so completely safe and cherished. When we finally made love, it was the most profound and intensely passionate experience of my life. I know it sounds cliché, but I think maybe we both cried just a little.

  Introducing Jim to my family was, well, different. My folks were cleaning out my grandparents’ house in Ogunquit, and Jim volunteered to help. He arrived, not dressed to impress his possible future in-laws. No, he wore lime green sweat pants that were undoubtedly taken from the slightly tight pants tower, with a matching lime green sweatshirt that had also seen slimmer days. He had no vanity, no need to impress. He was eternally unguarded, completely open and honest, unapologetically saying, “This is me. This is who I am.”

  My dad didn’t seem to notice Jim’s lack of fashion sense. He was too busy checking out the brand new Honda Prelude SI. Out loud, he said, “That’s a nice car.” But what he meant was, “Thank goodness I don’t have to loan him money.”

  When I met Jim’s mom, she turned to him and said, in Italian, “She’s no thirty-six, twenty-four, thirty-six, but she has a nice smile.”

  Jim translated, “She loves your smile.” He didn’t know I understood Italian.

  I remember the question Gary asked when I had been dating Jim for about a week. He looked at me with a completely serious expression and said, “So are you going to marry him?”

  A bit taken aback, I replied, “Well, don’t you think I should get to know him first?”

  Gary laughed dismissively, saying, “What’s to know? He isn’t very deep.”

  At the time, his comment seemed insulting. But as the weeks turned into months, I realized Gary was right. Everything I needed to know about Jim was right there on the surface. There was no dark ambush lurking beneath the sweet, geeky faÇade. He really did wear his heart on his sleeve. And today, after more than two decades of marriage, he is still the very same Jim I met in the hot tub. He still makes me laugh until my stomach hurts, and although the limegreen outfit is (thankfully) long gone, his love for me is so deep it can still make me cry a little.

  — Nancy DeMarco

  Loving Done Right

  I’m back in the city teaching this year, so I get Raisin again. I’m so excited.

  Just in case that made no sense whatsoever (and unless you’re a middle school English teacher, it probably won’t), let me clarify: I’m talking about teaching eighth-grade students the play Raisin in the Sun, by Lorraine Hansberry. It’s a great work of literature, full of wisdom and truth, and I’m hereby ordering everyone who hasn’t read it to get a copy now. After reading the play and completing the quizzes and final test, you are allowed to rent the Sidney Poitier movie of the same title. What a treat.

  Raisin is a play about racial equality, about lost dreams and hopes that have died, but mostly about love. Not the romantic, falling in and out kind, but the love that lasts — the love that weathers the storms of the years and still survives.

  One of the great monologues in the play is given by Mama, Lena Younger. When the family is at its lowest, when her son, Walter Lee, has lost all the money that held the keys to their family’s dreams and hopes, his sister, Beneatha, lashes out, calling him a “toothless rat . . . less than a man.”

  Mama turns to her daughter and says:

  “. . . Child, when do you think is the time to love somebody the most? When they done good? When they gone and made things easy for everybody? Well, that ain’t the time. It’s when he’s at his lowest, when life done beat him down. When he’s at his lowest and can’t believe in himself. It’s when the world done whipped him.”

  I remember that speech and how it played a part in the lives of my parents.

  To the casual observer, my dad got the lion’s share in the marriage stakes, and that’s a fact. I’ve said it before: in Miss Ida, my dad hit a jackpot that would break every casino in Vegas.

  He never diapered an infant, nor dressed one, nor picked up after one. He never cleaned a thing in the house. He never cooked a meal. He never washed a load of laundry. When he arose in the morning, a fresh shirt, underwear, overalls (or suit, on Sunday), and socks were laid on the bed waiting. He live
d with a wife who never complained, nagged, or bossed. She managed his finances, raised his children, cleaned his house, and cared for his mother and sister, all with a loving nature and kindness that few can match.

  She, however, felt she had hit the matrimonial sweepstakes, too. Having one dear sister married to a raging alcoholic with a taste for violence and another married to a man fifty years her senior and browbeaten almost to the breaking point by his domineering family, Ida felt like a princess. Her youngest sister, Celia, married very well: a man of both good character and great intelligence, but “Lord, he carried Celie away from home! All the way to West Virginia, then clear to Omaha, Nebraska.” Being more than ten miles from her “good mumma” was a fate Miss Ida couldn’t begin to fathom.

  So she considered herself dead lucky. Always did. Archie Clements worked hard, was a good father, a good role model, got himself up for church on Sunday, never drank. He was a responsible man, a civic leader, a man of respect in the community. And he paid attention to her. When it came to making a business deal, A.B. had the good sense to listen to his wife. She was his partner and equal when it came to finance. (She was actually his superior, but let’s give Dad his due, shall we?) Together, they achieved the two great dreams of her life: a nice brick home and a college education for their two children. And in his own way, Dad let her know she was valued, loved, and appreciated. It wasn’t with candy, flowers, and diamonds, but those things weren’t what Miss Ida was all about.

  In both of their minds, Dad did his part. He worked like a dog. Miss Ida was eleven years his junior; she’d outlive him by twenty years, at least. He worked every day, mindful that she’d need enough to get by when he was gone. The men of my father’s generation “dropped like flies,” as he put it, of heart attacks and cancer. He buried his friends and acquaintances — and kept working, knowing he’d never outlive Miss Ida.