Second date 1, Arrival

What a day.

Aristotle says somewhere that a play should observe certain "unities"; among these is "unity of action," which means that a murder mystery or spy drama shouldn't also be a romantic comedy. Let me say here and now that there is no way any thorough account of today could observe unity of action. In one way or another, the last 18 hours have touched on most of the themes of this blog.

Let me try to tackle this chronologically. If the story is incoherent, tell me so in the comments and I can try to clear it up. [Note added as I finish this post, six days later: There is no way I can fit the whole first day into one post. I'll do well to bring the story up through breakfast on the first day. The rest will have to go into subsequent posts.]

First, I have to remind you of the background. D made an arrangement with Wife that she would come visit us for a few days between Christmas and New Year's, to help Wife clean the house. This sounds absurd until you consider a couple of things. Foremost is that Wife gets depressed by the clutter and filth in the house -- it makes her feel completely helpless -- and yet she does nothing about it. There are probably lots of reasons for this: among them that she feels like she should be above housework, and that the powerlessness sparked by the clutter and filth makes her unable to face tackling it. Second, D is a remarkable cleaner. She is fast, thorough, industrious, efficient, and organized -- and while she doesn't make a big deal about cleaning (she would rather discuss theology or art or her work or even perfume), nonetheless you can eat off her floors. I still think that there is something mildly insane about a professional woman crossing several time zones on her own money to clean somebody else's house -- and I have said so several times (to disguise D's hidden motive in coming to see us, not to mention my own eagerness to see her) -- but the fact remains that Wife doesn't see it as insane and she welcomes the help. What is more, D is genuinely concerned about Wife's psychological state, so it is slightly less crazy for her to make this trip in this case, than it would be for anybody else in any other case. (D's "hidden motive," of course, is to see me. There may be some people who are built for a celibate life, but D is not one of them.)

So that was the concept. And the plan was that D would arrive early yesterday morning (Sunday, December 28). But no such luck. Her flight -- the first of three that she had to take to get here -- was cancelled because of weather. So she tried rapidly to rebook, or to fly standby. I should point out that this says something about D right away: many people would have decided to give up at this point. True, the tickets were non-refundable. But non-refundable tickets can nonetheless be rescheduled for any time in the next year. So when D called with the news about her flight, I expected her to say that she was going to reschedule for another time. When she explained what her new plans were -- to fly standby to a major city a good six hours from here, and then to rent a car and drive -- I was a little astonished. But I asked her to call my cell phone when she got in to the airport, and again when she got into town.

[Six days have elapsed since I wrote the previous five paragraphs -- six very full, very intense days. I am picking up the story again, but may have to stretch my memory a bit to catch it all. Please bear with me.]

I was expecting her to call about midnight, but she called some forty minutes earlier than that. She had arrived at the big city safe and sound, and was now in a rented car on her way in our direction. Apparently her trip had been harrowing: at one point every possible flight that could have taken her this way had been cancelled or was full, and she was left standing in the middle of the airport with nowhere to go. D does not really believe in special providence, and she takes a dim view of praying to make things go your way; but she said she was left with nothing else besides prayer, so that's what she found herself doing. And sooner or later, she did indeed get a flight -- earlier than the one she had expected -- and so now she was securely ahead of schedule. She figured she'd get to her motel in about five hours and would call again then ... maybe I could drive over at that time and bring her some breakfast.

So I went to sleep ... lightly and fitfully ... for about four hours, no more than that. Got up, got myself some coffee, pulled some food together, and waited. As I was puttering in the kitchen, Wife came out for a drink of water. There was nothing exactly wrong with D asking me to bring her some food, so I explained it as innocuously as possible what I was doing, and that I was waiting for D to call. If Wife had been more awake, she would naturally have wondered why D didn't drive through a McDonald's or something, but as it was she just mumbled and went back to bed.

Finally I broke down and called her -- because I wondered if I had time to catch another 40 winks. No, she was about half an hour out -- she had, in fact, driven through a McDonalds -- and would let me know when she arrived. Only half an hour, I asked? That sounded like she was making awfully good time. Admittedly it was the middle of the night, but whenever I have made that trip it has been more like six hours anyway, not the five she had been planning on. Where exactly was she right now?

This was apparently the wrong thing to ask. In the first place, she didn't quite know; but in the second place, she had been marking her time by watching the mileage posts by the side of the freeway, so she was quite sure of her projection and felt rather patronized that I was trying to second-guess her arrival rather than trusting her ability to figure it out on her own like a grown-up. It didn't help that the cell phone reception kept cutting in and out, and at one point I could have sworn she hung up on me.

Twenty minutes later -- she was making good time! -- she called from the motel. I couldn't make out what she was saying very clearly, but she still seemed to be out of sorts. I picked up the food and drove over there. And honestly, all the while I was wondering how I had gotten myself into this situation. I already had enough troubles with one touchy, over-sensitive woman in my life -- why on earth would I ever willingly have two? What next, what next, what next ...?

I found her standing in the parking lot, waiting for me and looking at me strangely. Apparently there was something wrong at the motel desk, so she couldn't check in yet; this meant she got to stand out in the cold waiting, instead. But the curious look was because she wondered what was going on with me. (Funny, I had the same question about her.) Why would I assume she was incompetent to find her way here, when she has travelled all across the globe? Why was I angry with her? Why did I hang up on her?

The last question was easy: I didn't. Must have been the lousy cell phone reception. As for angry ... hell, I don't know. Maybe because I was tired? Or because I was frustrated that when I tried to express care and concern, it got slapped away as mere patronizing and allegation of incompetence? Why did she have to be so damned sensitive on this point that she couldn't accept care and concern at face value?

We talked for a few minutes, out there in the cold. Did I still want to see her there? Yes, of course. Was she sorry she came? (This had been a big fear of mine all along, and it wasn't really dispelled until her last day here.) No, no, of course she was going to stick to her promise. Could we be OK, and not start off the visit hurt at each other? Sure, fine. We kissed lightly and she went back to the motel office.

Finally they let her check in. She spent a long time signing forms and fussing with papers, before she got her key. Once she had the key, we walked to her door and went in. The door clicked behind us, she set down her bags, and we kissed again.

And then suddenly the kiss was all there was. Somehow our clothes slipped off and tossed themselves pell-mell across the room. Somehow we fell onto the bed, still kissing, gasping, holding each other desperately, frantically. Oh my God, Hosea, I've needed you so badly; D, my sweetheart, you're beautiful and I love you. I lost all sense of time. The rest of the world might as well have disappeared. There was nothing else in the Universe but the bed and us. Welcome.

After a while the fever cooled, and we could think clearly again. We tried to wash off the more obvious smells (though I didn't want to look like I had taken a shower over at her place!). We found our clothes and pulled them on. We looked at the clock -- it had been somewhere between an hour and two, and the sun was up. Since D still had to return her rental car, we drove over to the agency so she could do just that. Then, grinning and happy and chatting, we drove to our house. The boys were awake, Wife was just getting up, and it was time to begin the project.

The story of this week will be continued in several future posts. The housecleaning project was in many ways truly the Project From Hell. And on a personal level ... well, the week was pretty eventful that way too.

Christmas Eve

It's an hour till midnight. The last present is wrapped, the stockings are full, and the house is quiet. "The children are nestled all snug in their beds," and Wife is sound asleep as well in ours. On the other computer, the screen is showing a real-time-updated screen entitled "NORAD Tracks Santa": the conceit is that NORAD uses their sophisticated tracking equipment once a year to follow Santa Claus in his trek around the world -- starting in Siberia or the South Pacific (on the International Date Line) and heading ever west with the advancing midnight. It's really cute.

The quiet is nice. And all in all, this season hasn't been as crazy as many. For years I have had a very difficult relationship with Christmas. I love the music and the cooking. I enjoy seeing people that I don't often see the rest of the year -- frequently my aunt and uncle, plus whichever of my cousins is in town at the time. And I can get embarrassingly sentimental over the stories, whether Dickens' "Christmas Carol" or Cule's "Man at the Gate of the World" or ... well, you get the idea. But I have always hated the frenzy. And I noticed even as a kid -- when by rights I should still have been in my greedy "gimme" stage -- that the presents I got for Christmas were often not things I really wanted or would really enjoy, but seemed to have been picked up on the fly by someone filling out a checklist who thought, "Hosea likes books, so I'll get him a book. About something. I suppose it doesn't much matter what. Or maybe I'll get him another sweater -- Hosea always looks good in sweaters and you can never have too many." Over time I accumulated a large personal library (for a kid) and a lot of sweaters.

And so, over time and at all too young an age, I got thoroughly sick of the whole gift-giving potlatch. As I looked around me, it seemed like most of the members of my family were in the same boat I was in: they kept giving each other (and therefore receiving) gifts that nobody truly wanted and nobody could truly use; and all the while, even as they oohed and aahed and grinned and thanked each other, they were also drowning under clutter and mathom. And everybody spent handsomely for the privilege.

For years I told myself that when I finally moved out of the house, I was going to be done with it all. It didn't quite work out that way, because when I finally moved out it was because I had married Wife. And Wife's feelings about Christmas were very different. Maybe it was because she grew up poor, I don't know. Or maybe there was some other reason. But Wife really believed that the only decent way to celebrate Christmas was to go all out on presents. I tried to explain why this approach had come to nauseate me, and she told me I was a Scrooge and a curmudgeon. I tried to tell her that measuring how much you love a person by how much money you spend on him or her at Christmas is childish; but then our fourth or fifth Christmas together I bought her little things while she bought be something very expensive (a sweater, in fact!!) ... and I almost thought she was going to divorce me on the spot. So much wailing, so many tears ... and over what? Over Christmas presents? Over something that I had told her over and over could never engage my affections? I checked out. I never wore the sweater -- not once -- because the memory of what receiving it had cost me was too painful. And I stopped expressing opinions over Christmas. I let Wife run our Christmases any way she wanted. I went along for the ride like a bump on a log, got her very predictable (boring) gifts over and over, and cringed inside when I gathered up all the bills in January.

And then this year I had an opportunity to try for something better. For one reason and another, we have had some very high bills this year. Don't feel sorry for us -- they were all for things we chose deliberately, with our eyes open, knowing they would be expensive. But figuring out how to pay for them took a little juggling. And after playing with the numbers a bit (this was last spring), I told Wife that we could make big strides towards closing the gap if we eliminated the spending from the previous year in two categories: Vacation and Christmas. And Wife agreed that this trade-off was the right one to make, so we did it.

Now, I had meant my remarks as an arithmetical exercise: if you add up this column of numbers and subtract those ones over there, you get the following answer. And maybe there are lots of other ways to get the same answer. So I had never contemplated that we would spend literally nothing on Christmas this year. But Wife (as you may have noticed before now) has something of an all-or-nothing mentality; so she fixed it in her head that, We aren't having Christmas this year because Hosea says we can't afford it. I hate to think how many of her friends she told that we were teetering on the brink of dire poverty, or whatever. I do know that at one point D e-mailed me after one of her phone calls with Wife, saying that it would be awfully dreary having absolutely no presents on Christmas Day, and would I mind if she helped out? I reassured her that the story she had heard was a bit exaggerated ....

But I have to admit I did not go to strenuous efforts to correct Wife's misapprehensions, because I figured that these very misapprehensions were likely to prevent her from going shopping. And for the most part they did. I did, however, work to advertise this change as a positive step, not an austerity measure. By great good luck, D forwarded me a link to this article here; I printed it and brought it home for everyone, adding in the process "This is exactly what I have been trying to say about Christmas for thirty years!" (I explained only that "someone" had e-mailed me the link; D has encouraged me to mention as little communication between us as humanly possible.)

The change in focus wasn't an instant sale, but it went over fairly easily all things considered. The boys understood it and reacted pretty adaptably. Wife was the biggest hold-out, although she phrased all her objections in terms of the boys. (Ironically, her very resistance may have made them climb aboard the bandwagon faster, because they are at an age where they can hardly resist any chance to tweak Mommy.) When we talked privately, Wife reminded me of one Christmas a few years back when Son 2 looked at the merely medium-sized stack under the tree and said "I guess we weren't very good last year." I replied that Son 2 was older now, and if he hadn't grown up past that stage yet then it was high time. She also fretted -- you're sitting down now, right? -- that if we explained the financial reasons why we chose to cut back, then Son 2 would still expect to see presents under the tree brought by Santa Claus and we couldn't disappoint him for fear of damaging his belief in the jolly old elf. Excuse me, ... Santa Claus?? Son 2 is 10 years old by now. Did she really think he still believed in a literal Santa Claus? Well yes, apparently that worried her. (I didn't get a chance to discuss this with Son 2 until this evening, when I finally mentioned casually that Wife had been concerned. Son 2 brushed it away: he said some years ago he had woken up in the night and peered out of his bedroom to see us wrapping the presents that were allegedly from Santa Claus, so he had known better ever since then. I haven't had a chance to explain this to Wife yet.)

In the end, I think she bought a couple of knick-knacks for the boys, and my parents have bought some more. I bought a very few things for everybody, although I kept it a surprise for tomorrow morning. And I went out earlier this afternoon to get candy and little stuff for the stockings. Meanwhile, Wife has been saying all year that she wants to spend this Christmas at our house (rather than driving to see my parents) cooking the foods that were always traditional when she was a girl, and I have encouraged her therefore to spend the last few days baking cookies with the boys, making fudge with the boys, ... doing things instead of buying things. It meets our practical needs, and it is simply more fun. After the last week, it is hard for me to understand why anybody would want to celebrate the other way.

Before dinner tonight, the boys spent a lot of time hovering over the NORAD Santa Watch, laughing at the "Santa-cam videos" showing him flying over the Great Wall of China or the Eiffel Tower, Rudolph's nose blinking bright red in the front of the team. After dinner I pried them off the computer and chased them into the living room, so we could sit around the tree while I read Dickens to them aloud, choking up in all the predictable spots. Then everyone toddled off to bed, I tied up the last few loose ends that were waiting until they all fell asleep, and here we are.

Normally by this time in the holiday season, I am bitter, grouchy, depressed, and exhausted. Tonight I'm not. I hope the others feel this way, and I hope we can do this again next year.

I have no idea how my friends in the blogosphere celebrate the winter holidays -- or even which ones they celebrate, there being several to choose from. But I hope you have a wonderful time ... that you face the holidays refreshed and joyful, not anxious and stressed. Let this year's holidays be a time for all of us that it is worth getting sentimental over.

Or, as I was reading to the boys earlier this evening, ... "God bless us, every one."

Stupid question I should know better than to ask

I know that I shouldn't have to ask this question. I'm sure that if somebody else asked it, I'd have the answer right away. But since it is me and not somebody else, my vision is no longer 20/20 ... and I can't be quite sure what I am seeing through the blur. Besides, after enough eggnog I no longer care how dumb the question sounds.

Finally -- after holding out for a couple of months -- D has asked to read my blog. She was very oblique in the way she phrased the request, but it was nonetheless clear: "I know that I am hesitant to violate anyone's privacy, and I probably am over-sensitive to those concerns, but that doesn't mean that I would not like to know you as well as possible, which means that I would like to read your blog. That said, if you never feel comfortable allowing me to do so, I will accept that too, and understand and support your decision."

So do I give her the URL?

Reasons against:
- Everyone knows you never mix your on-line life with your real life.
- Some day we may not be in the same romantic mist as today, and it might not be good for her to read what I write then.
- Truthfully, even now I have had periods of doubt about this affair; and if I weren't quite so pressed for time lately, I would have written about them by now. My goal is to tell the truth here, whatever else. Do I want her to read about that, if and when I get around to writing it?

Reasons for:
- She did ask awfully sweetly.
- For the moment I am in a mode of telling her anything she asks.
- It would save me a lot of time if I could write to her and you at the same time ... if (for example) I could answer her questions by posting to you. It would also mean my volume of posting would climb back up again, from the valley into which it has tumbled.

If I look at the whole question soberly (damn that eggnog!) I realize that the Reasons Against are way stronger than the Reasons For, at least in the abstract. But I'll ask anyway. Does anybody have anything more detailed to tell me, by way of advice here? Has anybody done exactly this? And if so, how did it turn out?

Is the question really as stupid as I think it is?

Inquiring minds want to know ....
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"Disjointed and fragmentary musings ..."

I mentioned a couple of posts ago that I had tried to ask D why she asked her husband for a divorce ... and that the conversation had proven a profoundly unsatisfying failure for both of us. The truth is that it was a complete catastrophe. I have outlined my first couple of attempts in this post here.

So I let the topic sit for a while. Then finally, earlier this week, with infinite pains, I sculpted an e-mail trying to re-open the question without inviting fire and brimstone down on my head. I threw away most of my smaller, subsidiary questions, and stuck with just two. Although I worded them a little more gingerly, they amounted to the following:

1. What do you actually hope to gain from divorcing your husband that you can't already get without divorcing him?
2. You have said that your asking your husband for a divorce was not about me ... or at least, that it was not because you wanted to marry me. OK, then why now? Besides your affair with me ... what else has changed in your life that makes you take this move now when you never took it before?

What I got back was an answer -- at any rate, in a manner of speaking. But it was nowhere near as concrete as the questions I had asked. It also confirmed my private suspicions that (1) she had no concrete benefit in mind when she asked for a divorce; and (2) it really did have a lot to do with me after all. Here is the core of what she wrote:

I cannot help but think that your ... question is really more than just about my possible divorce. It is also about you, and about us. In short, why after twenty-five years of faithfulness to Wife, have you chosen to have an affair with me? What has changed for you? To paraphase you, how, in heavens name, did we get here? I find myself asking the same questions, of course, because my relationship with you cannot help but impact my marriage. I'm not sure how to analyze this for myself, and I don't claim that any of the following is more than my disjointed and fragmentary musings. Begin with certain characteristics. Honesty. You had that, and a certain steadfast courage in dealing with the various aspects of your personal and professional life. And intelligence. The mind that comprehended and discussed all the intricacies of Greek philosophy was not, could not, simply be that of a student. The loving spirit which could care for Wife, seeing clearly all her weakness, had nothing immature about it, or the wit that drew his children to him in love and admiration. And, to quote Cavafy..." I have gazed so much on beauty/that my eyes overflow with it/ The body's curves...". Somehow, deep within, my heart paused, everything seemed changed. As I wrote in October, I felt that my nerves were exposed, leaving me over-sensitized and defenseless. The inadequacies of my marriage, indeed, so much of my life, were evident. You certainly are not responsible for my decision to ask my husband for a divorce, and it is not a new thought. But have I stood in a different place recently, sometimes watching, sometimes unthinking?...yes. Do I hear music differently? Yes. Too late, too late. Things are different now....

As I once remarked, somewhat desperately, we shall manage very well as long as we are sensible. With time and distance between us, I may choose to live with my husband and have a life as good as most people could wish for. Leaving alone whether that decision is fair to him, or has anything to do with marriage as it is meant to be understood and lived, are questions better left for another day. I have already said too much.

Wow.

My thoroughly mundane reply was that I realized I still had to think through and write my own account of what has changed for me ... and so maybe what she is saying is that her answer will be contained in a conversation and not a monologue. Meanwhile ... she stands watching and unthinking? She hears music differently? I think this is not just your garden-variety affair for her ....

Wow.

Grumpy and out of sorts

I have been grumpy to everybody lately, which means it is just as well I haven't felt the slightest motivation to keep up with blogging or I'd inflict it on the rest of you, too. And that would hardly be fair. But I have been totally out of touch with the blogosphere since my last post over a week ago: not posting, of course, but not even reading either. Just grumpy.

What's been going on? Oh, let's see ....

• Wife and I had another session with Counselor last week. We seemed to spend the whole hour fighting about buying a new computer. (I know, I know ... we find the damndest things to fight about when we are in Counselor's office.)


• Over the weekend, we went out and bought a new computer.


• My company is looking seriously at layoffs, just in time for Christmas. Gotta love the timing. (No, I don't think I am on the list. I could joke that nobody else wants my job, but when the rest of the post is this grumpy it would sound like I was whining, not just poking fun at myself.)


• I have a co-worker who was just diagnosed with a carcinoma and consequent reduced liver function. Merry Christmas.


• D has asked me to send her the phone numbers of cheap motels in our area. This whole plan for her to visit still seems surreal to me ... I have trouble imagining that it will really happen.


• Wife wants Boyfriend 5 to teleport her to the Old Country so she can deliver Christmas presents to the extended family. Did I just say something struck me as surreal?

Anyway, a minute ago I was saying something about being grumpy and out of sorts. I forget what, exactly ....

Like a lump of clay

I've been carrying on a number of different conversational threads with D, lately.

One has been about her asking her husband for a divorce; this thread has mostly been an unsatisfying failure for both of us, and I won't try to post about it until I can see it in some kind of clarity.

A second has been about when we can see each other again. Now it just so happens that a couple days ago I was asked when I would be available for a business trip abroad next spring; and the week which would be most convenient for Wife turns out to be the only time that D can get away from work for an entire week without being conspicuous. There are a lot of other people's schedules to coordinate as well, so nothing is certain ... but it was a pleasant coincidence.

That's not till spring, however -- months away. So apparently, while D was on the phone with Wife today, she suggested -- with a breathtaking audacity that I cannot help but admire -- that she fly out to visit us some time between Christmas and New Year's, in order to help Wife with all of the household projects that hang around unfinished and make Wife feel so powerless all the time. Wife told her, "Oh, Hosea would never put up with that. He's so controlling that he'd insist on micromanaging every little thing you did. Besides, he hates having anybody stay over at our house." D tells me it's a good thing Wife couldn't see her face. But she replied, "Well surely if I'm helping clean the house, Hosea couldn't mind too much. And as for staying over, I'll have to stay at a motel anyway, because ... well, because I'm allergic to your cats. I can be there for a few hours at a time, but you know I could never sleep there."

Now all I have to do is to be so irrationally controlling that I won't let her borrow our car for the week -- and D tells me if I ever saw her drive, I might say that anyway -- because then I would simply have to drive her back to her motel in the evening, once the day's work is done, Wife has fallen asleep, and the boys are on their ways to bed.

Unbelievable.

But in and around these more mundane topics, D has been trying to explore Wife's odd passivity, her unwillingness to take responsibility for changing the things in her surroundings that she doesn't like. And in an e-mail today she captured it remarkably well:

"I want Wife to feel less helpless and make you less wrong about these projects. There's a certain passivity that she seems to revel in; she's honest about wanting to be the submissive with Boyfriend 5, and it clearly goes beyond sexual submissiveness. I'm a bit puzzled because you have so admired her strength, but sometimes I think that true strong willed people can put the past in perspective and work hard at forgiveness. Still hurt and angry at her father for not taking her to Disneyland when she was nine? There's a deep sadness that story evokes in me that goes far beyond his action and my compassion goes to the young girl, now middle aged woman who feels that the fantasy of a "magic kingdom" was forever denied her. Shadows...of a world, far away, always green, where idealism and family devotion fight injustice."

In response, I wrote:

"I am intrigued by what you say about Wife's passivity. Of course you are right, just as you are right that it is linked somehow to her inability to give up the past. In this respect, it is as if she sits like a lump of clay, and whatever hits the clay leaves a mark on it. But think about it -- once a rock has made a deep mark in a lump of clay, you can never get it out again ... not without reshaping the whole ball of clay. That's one thing that I have always found deeply frustrating ... that when I do something inadvertently to hurt Wife, there is absolutely no way to undo it. Five years later, in the midst of a fight about something else, I will be reminded of the time when .... And I know this the second after I've done whatever thoughtless deed it was and seen the hurt register on her face. It's terrible -- it makes me feel helpless and trapped, like a character in some Greek tragedy who has just set in motion (by chance) the blind fate that will now unwind relentlessly until it undoes him. In past years, this accounted for a lot of my shouting ... because it was the cry of a trapped animal who just now realizes he is trapped. (Then of course Wife would follow up the original hurt with, "Besides, you're always shouting at me." Sigh.)

"Wow. Where did that come from? Sorry, I was trying to go down a different path. What I think is so interesting is that I have known this all along, ... and yet if you had asked me to describe Wife in words, I would never have included "passivity" as part of the picture. And I wonder why not? Because I didn't want it to be true? Because I had persuaded myself that it wasn't part of the "real Wife"? I think it must be something like that, because I am pretty sure that I have felt for years, somewhere under the surface, "Can you stop playing this passivity game and get back to being YOU? Get back to being the woman I married?" And yet, I think now that if I were to ponder long enough I would be able to find the same passivity even back then in the woman I married."

Is there ever a point where we stop learning new things about the people who have been central to our lives for over half our lives? And how is it possible that I always knew something like this and yet never knew that I knew it? There is something very mysterious about knowing other people ....

Or maybe it's just me. Or her. I bet not, though.
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