The day after Wife fell asleep so abruptly, we had another session with Counselor. Wife arrived late, so I spent a few minutes briefing Counselor on the previous week. I did mention D’s thoughts about narcissistic personality disorder, but I think I didn't have the right examples to make it clear what led her to that conclusion ... his response was "Well it sounds more like 'hoarding' than narcissism, from what you said."
When Wife arrived, Counselor started over as if we had discussed nothing, and asked how we are doing. (That's always his opening question.) Wife explained for the umpteenth time what happened last week, and how she felt violated and disrespected and infantilized and ignored. The antique fountain pen made it into the story, as did the bobbins and sewing machine feet. Same basic story as always.
What struck me was listening to the terms in which Wife -- and Counselor -- discussed D and me. Wife rang several changes on the theme, "Hosea never backed me up, but he took D's side and D took his side." Interesting ... first, that it was a conflict with sides; and second, that she and I were obviously on the same side. I made a very careful point, whenever I spoke about my motivations, to say "Now I can't speak for D, and I have no idea what her motivations were; but my motivation in this case was ...." Of course I did know exactly what her motivations were, because she and I had discussed it so much. But I thought it prudent to insert verbal space between us whenever I could.
Counselor did a lot of rephrasing back to Wife what she said to him, and at one point he formulated it in a way that really threw me. Inside my head, I did a double-take; but I am reasonably sure I did no such thing visibly. Wife was talking on and on about how "sterile" she finds D’s house because "everything is new" which makes it "just like a Best Western"! (Since when did Best Western start hanging Kandinskys??) And Counselor said, "What I think I'm hearing you say is that it is as if Hosea were saying, 'Out with the old and in with the new; out with your values and in with her values; out with Wife and in with D ...." ulp? Did he just say that?
So I started thinking that Counselor is a pretty sharp and perceptive guy, and I wonder how much he had already read in just half an hour. How many levels did he mean that on? Or was it a trial balloon, to test and see how either of us would react? I would swear that my mention of D was as dispassionate as I could make it, and I tried to disguise any enthusiasm my segueing immediately into a discussion of how great it is that the house is so clean now. But still I wonder how much he meant ....?
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Overcome by sleep
One afternoon (January 7, in case you care) I spoke with Wife on the phone. There had been some discussion this morning whether she would pick up Son 1 from school, for a variety of reasons. And I called to ask if she felt up to it or not.
In the course of her answer, she mentioned that she had been late getting Son 2 because she had fallen asleep during the afternoon and didn't wake up in time. That sounds unexceptionable as a story, ... except that 15 minutes before he was due to be picked up she was IM-ing me. And at that moment she signed off saying "I have to go get Son 2 now." So how was it POSSIBLE that she could have slept through his pickup?
Her answer was that after she signed off of IM with me, she went into the bedroom to get dressed (because apparently she hadn't gotten dressed yet). Once there, she took off her robe (or whatever) and lay down on the bed ... AT WHICH POINT she fell asleep for an hour.
So should I have been frustrated, irritated, ... or alarmed? I formulated questions in my mind like "Why would you lie down when you know you have to leave right away?" "Why weren't you dressed yet at 2:30 in the afternoon?" "Were you really overcome by sleep THAT FAST or did you somehow forget in the space of 90 seconds that you had to go pick up Son 2?" (either option looks bad) And so on. But of course I didn't ask any of them. I just told her, "Don't go get Son 1. Stay home and rest."
In the course of her answer, she mentioned that she had been late getting Son 2 because she had fallen asleep during the afternoon and didn't wake up in time. That sounds unexceptionable as a story, ... except that 15 minutes before he was due to be picked up she was IM-ing me. And at that moment she signed off saying "I have to go get Son 2 now." So how was it POSSIBLE that she could have slept through his pickup?
Her answer was that after she signed off of IM with me, she went into the bedroom to get dressed (because apparently she hadn't gotten dressed yet). Once there, she took off her robe (or whatever) and lay down on the bed ... AT WHICH POINT she fell asleep for an hour.
So should I have been frustrated, irritated, ... or alarmed? I formulated questions in my mind like "Why would you lie down when you know you have to leave right away?" "Why weren't you dressed yet at 2:30 in the afternoon?" "Were you really overcome by sleep THAT FAST or did you somehow forget in the space of 90 seconds that you had to go pick up Son 2?" (either option looks bad) And so on. But of course I didn't ask any of them. I just told her, "Don't go get Son 1. Stay home and rest."
Am I an umbrella?
In the previous post, I sketched out how our conversations – mine with D, D’s with Wife, and Wife’s with Friend – began the process of unravelling the week of D’s visit. One thread may be worth a little more comment.
In her mail that I quoted in the earlier post, D wrote in part:
I also know Wife won't break the friendship with me, particularly if she thinks we are involved. How could she possibly keep her eye on our relationship if she refuses to talk to me? It won't happen. And believe me, she hasn't begun to emotionally process the idea that you might be attractive to someone who is smart, physically well, and financially self-sufficient. For years, Wife figured you were incapable of love; you were "mechanical, all nuts and bolts," she used to tell me. Now she thinks that you are "more in touch with your feelings," but only because you hate Boyfriend 5 so much. The idea that you could actually love someone-and more importantly, be loved in return is a very new idea for her. It will change her view of you, and yes, cause her to feel betrayed by both of us. That's our responsibility to bear as well, and far more important than whether I threw away her father's pen.
My answer to her was a little puzzled:
I know that Wife has talked for years and years about my being "incapable of love" but I have never understood what she meant by it. How did she picture to herself our first year together, before we were married -- did that not look like love? How did she understand my decision to leave graduate school for her -- as duty? or cowardice? or what? Most importantly, how has she understood my relation to the boys? Is it not obvious that I love them and they me? In the last decade, I have often given Wife a pass on many of her other vices or character defects, even as they have grown ever more prominent, because I have given her credit for loving the boys and being loved by them ... and I have figured that counts for a lot. Has she truly never seen the same thing on my side?
More importantly, though, I am trying to understand how or why she will feel betrayed by our loving each other. I have written an essay on the subject of love and betrayal -- specifically, on the question "Why should I feel betrayed if my spouse has sex with somebody else? i.e., what sense does that make?" -- but the provisional conclusions that I came to don't seem to fit this case. If my love were a roof or an umbrella under which she felt she could take shelter from the storms of the World, then I could understand it: when you run to the one safe place that is yours alone and you find somebody else already there, you are going to feel pretty upset. But that can't be what is going on with Wife, can it? Surely I am a PART of the World, FROM WHOM she wants to seek shelter! Not so? In which case, why should it make the slightest difference who loves me, or whom I love in turn? If she feels about me as she does, why should she care? She might possibly feel betrayed by you, since you would be a friend who has made league with the enemy ... but no more betrayed than she feel now, over fountain pens! :-)
Am I misunderstanding something important here?
And the answer appears to be yes, I was missing something. D’s elucidation came only an hour later:
Hosea, if you are loved for any reason outside of history shared, you are loved for the security you provide. You know this; you simply don't mention it here, for reasons unknown. Wife loves you because you stay with her when she is ill and weak, holding her hand, talking to the medical personnel, reassuring her that everything will work out. You are the umbrella in her life; you are the one person who has never left her or torn her down in front of others or insisted that she is worthless and mistaken to dream of a better life. I have not read your essay, so I don't know what you said, but I know she would feel completely abandoned if she really thought that you no longer loved her exclusively. Story... I remember when Son 1 was born and how intensely she loved him; he was the center of her world. I also remember how betrayed she felt when he transferred his affection to you. She will never forgive him, because Wife has never felt that anyone, outside yourself, has really loved her. Of course, she also scorns that love, and has gone out of her way to deny and betray that love because she does not feel as though she is a person worthy of love. Therefore, you are a fool...or geek...or incapable of love...or hopelessly incompetent in some way if you do love her. Do you not realize that one of the greatest gifts we *must* give our children is the sense that they are loveable? That not only are they loved, but that they can leave us, love another, and be deeply loved in return? Surely you know that. It's knowledge that Wife does not have, which is why she both rejects you-and can't imagine leaving. It's not about the children, my dearest darling. It's about you. For all the wrong reasons and a love that is stillborn on her part by definition. Sigh* There is no happiness to be had here...there is only wilderness.
This mail also included an account of D’s most recent telephone conversation with Wife, one part of which made me sit back in amazement:
Finally, we talked a long time about the fundamental difference between you and her involving material possessions. She raised the topic, and I let her talk. She realizes that you don't care about material goods and she married you for them, at least in part. (Your academic success v. her more limited options also play into her understanding of why she married you. It's weird, because as a single man, you could have gone anywhere. Yet you married and went to the graduate school you actually chose because she could also attend. It's ironic, therefore, that she blames your academic skills and options for her marriage) Wife is clearly searching for an identity she has never found, and yet believes might be found though objects. I'm guessing that your intense desire for home and hearth was understood by Wife to mean you wanted a place, an elegant, well furnished home, to call your castle. Quietly, I think she is wrong. You do want family, and the insider/outsider division may indeed be important, but it's not dependent on property or a lavish home. It's relational; it's good books, long talks, games, jokes, activities with the children. It's not dependent on material possessions. Twenty-five years later, she realizes that all the material things she has collected mean almost nothing to you. And they are all she has to prove that she is a cultured person who has risen above her ignoble, if not illegitimate birth. Powerful material, Hosea. She feels illegitimate, the base born child of fourth rate heritage. No wonder she wants to grab both of us, spin us around and unlease her fury and despair.
Wow. Powerful stuff indeed, and I had never put it together that way.
I ought to have some idea of where this is going from here, but I frankly confess to none. All I can do is describe the scenery as I travel.
In her mail that I quoted in the earlier post, D wrote in part:
I also know Wife won't break the friendship with me, particularly if she thinks we are involved. How could she possibly keep her eye on our relationship if she refuses to talk to me? It won't happen. And believe me, she hasn't begun to emotionally process the idea that you might be attractive to someone who is smart, physically well, and financially self-sufficient. For years, Wife figured you were incapable of love; you were "mechanical, all nuts and bolts," she used to tell me. Now she thinks that you are "more in touch with your feelings," but only because you hate Boyfriend 5 so much. The idea that you could actually love someone-and more importantly, be loved in return is a very new idea for her. It will change her view of you, and yes, cause her to feel betrayed by both of us. That's our responsibility to bear as well, and far more important than whether I threw away her father's pen.
My answer to her was a little puzzled:
I know that Wife has talked for years and years about my being "incapable of love" but I have never understood what she meant by it. How did she picture to herself our first year together, before we were married -- did that not look like love? How did she understand my decision to leave graduate school for her -- as duty? or cowardice? or what? Most importantly, how has she understood my relation to the boys? Is it not obvious that I love them and they me? In the last decade, I have often given Wife a pass on many of her other vices or character defects, even as they have grown ever more prominent, because I have given her credit for loving the boys and being loved by them ... and I have figured that counts for a lot. Has she truly never seen the same thing on my side?
More importantly, though, I am trying to understand how or why she will feel betrayed by our loving each other. I have written an essay on the subject of love and betrayal -- specifically, on the question "Why should I feel betrayed if my spouse has sex with somebody else? i.e., what sense does that make?" -- but the provisional conclusions that I came to don't seem to fit this case. If my love were a roof or an umbrella under which she felt she could take shelter from the storms of the World, then I could understand it: when you run to the one safe place that is yours alone and you find somebody else already there, you are going to feel pretty upset. But that can't be what is going on with Wife, can it? Surely I am a PART of the World, FROM WHOM she wants to seek shelter! Not so? In which case, why should it make the slightest difference who loves me, or whom I love in turn? If she feels about me as she does, why should she care? She might possibly feel betrayed by you, since you would be a friend who has made league with the enemy ... but no more betrayed than she feel now, over fountain pens! :-)
Am I misunderstanding something important here?
And the answer appears to be yes, I was missing something. D’s elucidation came only an hour later:
Hosea, if you are loved for any reason outside of history shared, you are loved for the security you provide. You know this; you simply don't mention it here, for reasons unknown. Wife loves you because you stay with her when she is ill and weak, holding her hand, talking to the medical personnel, reassuring her that everything will work out. You are the umbrella in her life; you are the one person who has never left her or torn her down in front of others or insisted that she is worthless and mistaken to dream of a better life. I have not read your essay, so I don't know what you said, but I know she would feel completely abandoned if she really thought that you no longer loved her exclusively. Story... I remember when Son 1 was born and how intensely she loved him; he was the center of her world. I also remember how betrayed she felt when he transferred his affection to you. She will never forgive him, because Wife has never felt that anyone, outside yourself, has really loved her. Of course, she also scorns that love, and has gone out of her way to deny and betray that love because she does not feel as though she is a person worthy of love. Therefore, you are a fool...or geek...or incapable of love...or hopelessly incompetent in some way if you do love her. Do you not realize that one of the greatest gifts we *must* give our children is the sense that they are loveable? That not only are they loved, but that they can leave us, love another, and be deeply loved in return? Surely you know that. It's knowledge that Wife does not have, which is why she both rejects you-and can't imagine leaving. It's not about the children, my dearest darling. It's about you. For all the wrong reasons and a love that is stillborn on her part by definition. Sigh* There is no happiness to be had here...there is only wilderness.
This mail also included an account of D’s most recent telephone conversation with Wife, one part of which made me sit back in amazement:
Finally, we talked a long time about the fundamental difference between you and her involving material possessions. She raised the topic, and I let her talk. She realizes that you don't care about material goods and she married you for them, at least in part. (Your academic success v. her more limited options also play into her understanding of why she married you. It's weird, because as a single man, you could have gone anywhere. Yet you married and went to the graduate school you actually chose because she could also attend. It's ironic, therefore, that she blames your academic skills and options for her marriage) Wife is clearly searching for an identity she has never found, and yet believes might be found though objects. I'm guessing that your intense desire for home and hearth was understood by Wife to mean you wanted a place, an elegant, well furnished home, to call your castle. Quietly, I think she is wrong. You do want family, and the insider/outsider division may indeed be important, but it's not dependent on property or a lavish home. It's relational; it's good books, long talks, games, jokes, activities with the children. It's not dependent on material possessions. Twenty-five years later, she realizes that all the material things she has collected mean almost nothing to you. And they are all she has to prove that she is a cultured person who has risen above her ignoble, if not illegitimate birth. Powerful material, Hosea. She feels illegitimate, the base born child of fourth rate heritage. No wonder she wants to grab both of us, spin us around and unlease her fury and despair.
Wow. Powerful stuff indeed, and I had never put it together that way.
I ought to have some idea of where this is going from here, but I frankly confess to none. All I can do is describe the scenery as I travel.
Trying to understand the week
After the week-long Cleaning Project From Hell was finally over (see all the posts titled “Second date” for a detailed account), we all had a lot to think about. D and I tried to understand what had gone on by discussing it over e-mail. Wife did her processing partly through IM’s with one of Boyfriend 5’s friends (identified here as Friend), and partly through daily phone calls with D (described by D in e-mails to me). D and I also talked a lot at night (as I describe here), but obviously I don’t have transcripts for any of those conversations.
The discussion started simply. A day after she got back home, D wrote me an e-mail which said, in part:
Sigh* All I really want to do is write you, or better, hear your voice and plan to see you again. I have yet to really analyze what I experienced and learned while I was cleaning your home beyond what I have discussed with you. It's interesting; I find myself more grateful to have learned about how *you* react than how Wife reacts to various stresses in her life. My compassion is with her, but my intense curiosity and subsequent modification of my behavior-the creative endeavor that challenges me to examine myself and change-is all your doing. Guess that makes sense...it's not always easy to modify my approach or reaction, but it seems worthwhile and meaningful. Let's hope I become more sensitive to your needs and less misunderstanding and hurt occurs.
My reply was pretty pedestrian, but I was able to append part of a discussion between Wife and Friend, which I thought D might find interesting:
Friend: Did you have that serious talk with your friend yet. Or, if that were me, ex-friend? That would have really pissed me off. I mean for me, that's a deal breaker, right there.
Wife: I told her "thanks for coming out, and for all the hard work cleaning, but the next time we take on any kind of joint project I think we have to have expectations and boundaries clearly demarcated in advance, because I realize that Hosea is ecstatic with the results, but I feel disrespected and violated.
Friend: What did she say?
Wife: You know, she threw away my father's 1930's Parker fountain pen on the grounds that "it didn't look like I used it much"? It was dusty because I needed to buy a new bladder for it! She said that when she talked to me on the phone she had no idea of the scope of the project and once she saw it, she just realized it was going to have to be done faster (and with less regard for peoples' personal stuff, I suppose).
Friend: So she didn't apologise. That doesn't make sense. I'm sorry. It's not like she hasn't been to your house recently. She was there not that long ago as I recall. So she can't say that and be convincing.... I wouldn't do anymore joint projects unless I get a super, real, genuine apology. And do you think she and Hosea are involved? You'll know...Watch for sudden business trips. Not that that matters...much.
Wife: We won't be doing any more projects. I may continue to copy edit what she writes for her: thats it. Hosea...I don't know. Again last night he was gone in the middle of the night. He does this after I'm asleep -- just leaves for an hour or two on foot. They could be,. Their dynamic sure changed and I know she's unhappy in HER marriage just as he is unhappy with me. Sudden business trips actually happen for Hosea: but not in [the state where D lives] -- so watch for flights into [one big city near D] or [another big city near D]. Doesn't matter except that I know he's looking to frame me so as to better a divorce settlement.
Friend: Right. I'm sorry, but I think the friendship with Ms. D should end, but that's just me. She clearly didn't give a damn about your personal space, and as a friend for so many years, she could have at least said, "Where do you want X?" "What can I toss?" And what matters is that if they're having an affair, let them. Let them fuck like rabbits if they want, as long as you know about it.
Wife: No, she didnt apologise. She thought she did he right thing. For her, it's "out wit the old, in with the new". To me, her house is sterile; I could go to Ikea and replace it. To me, living among all the old stuff that has been passed on to me is what makes this "home" not just "house".
Friend: Especially since she didn't even have the good grace to say, "I'm sorry you felt violated. I never intended to make you feel that way." I would tell her you're not speaking/emailing/conversion with her till you get an apology, and a good one.
Wife: I feel violated and that both D and Hosea showed me a lack of respect. Hosea just says I set my boundaries in an insane place; .... [he also] invited me to take all my stuff with me to the Old Country. I pointed out that shipping was expensive and he said "Oh, well".
Friend: When did he say that? In other words, he wants you to leave. I'd take your stuff and move it back. Little by little so as not to be noticed.
Wife: Some of it I can, but much of it was THROWN IN THE TRASH CAN. I can't move it back in. The shelves that held my sewing stuff now hold the boys's trophies and Hosea's piles of papers. It was neatly organized, but the space to bring it back to is gone.
Friend: .... Well, still, I think you should tell her what I said. And I don't think you should be writing anything for her.
Wife: I will. And I'm still going to tell her that I feel very betrayed by having her go through my things and throw things away when she didn't even know what they were.
Friend: You should. And you should also tell her that you expect an apology or the friendship is over. Ok, I know I can't tell you what to do...I'm just saying.
Wife: I told her several times when she was here that she was crossing my boundaries and she kept doing so; therefore I dO deserve an apology. If only Hosea had backed me up....
To this, D responded (in part) as follows: ...
Dearest and beloved Hosea,I found your unabridged record of Friend/Wife's conversation fascinating. I don't suppose either of us is particularly surprised that she might have noticed that we seem to care for one another. It is interesting that she knew you were outside for hours; that's true, and given the circumstances, suspicious. The idea that you are waiting to frame her in some divorce settlement is pretty wild, but she never has had much sense of what the court really looks for when settling a high conflict divorce.
I'm humored by the idea that she edits my work extensively when she has edited exactly the same two pieces of work you commented on and edited. I appreciate her effort, and I've benefited, but it's not exactly like she's doing my job for me. How odd.
I know that she feels violated by my effort to bring some order into her life. I don't want to remind her that her constant complaining about you caused me to want to change the circumstances that prompted all the unhappiness. I also don't mind apologizing for causing her to feel violated and disrespected. Hosea, I did *not* respect much of what she said or wanted to do because it struck me as unproductive and incredibly self-centered. That does not mean that I won't take responsibility for what I did-I certainly threw a lot of her stuff away. Contra Friend, it is true to say that I had no idea the project would be so complex or difficult because I really couldn't know until I started working and began to understand why everything had fallen into such a state. Her need to be surrounded by things...incredible number of things that are useless and redundant says a great deal about her psychological state and helps explain why she could never leave you, even if she has fantasies about starting over.
I also know Wife won't break the friendship with me, particularly if she thinks we are involved. How could she possibly keep her eye on our relationship if she refuses to talk to me? It won't happen. And believe me, she hasn't begun to emotionally process the idea that you might be attractive to someone who is smart, physically well, and financially self-sufficient. For years, Wife figured you were incapable of love; you were "mechanical, all nuts and bolts," she used to tell me. Now she thinks that you are "more in touch with your feelings," but only because you hate Boyfriend 5 so much. The idea that you could actually love someone-and more importantly, be loved in return is a very new idea for her. It will change her view of you, and yes, cause her to feel betrayed by both of us. That's our responsibility to bear as well, and far more important than whether I threw away her father's pen.
Wife's fragile mental health concerns me. By definition, as a narcissist, Wife considers herself the center of your world, and to be fair, you have allowed her to do so for years. Wife has considered you unattractive, a nerd, only interested in ideas, and not capable of having friendships, let alone a romantic relationship that might be deeply satisfying to both partners. Yes, she has encouraged you to have an affair, but only a desperate mating without any genuine emotional content, certainly not a relationship of equals or a love relationship with a woman who is not a 'loser'. She has hoped you would move out and leave her everything...but I don't think she ever imagined you might stay for her sake, for the children, and yet find love somewhere else. She will feel victimized and she will feel confused. The confusion worries me because if Boyfriend 5 is not the person she hopes and believes him to be, she will demand your devotion and support. I also worry about her bringing the children into this situation, especially Son 2, and I worry about her telling [my husband]. I'll cross that Rubicon when I come there, but I don't look forward to that day. More relevant to your situation will be her resentment/insecurity, which is likely to make her even more difficult to live with than she is now. I am fully aware that you will never leave her, but that doesn't mean that your life will get any easier. I'm not sure how to react or quite what to do. Right now, I'm only deeply concerned.....
Sigh* It would be nice if Friend's rather rude comment about our sex life was true, but unfortunately, reality is considerably more difficult. Right now, only Friend seems capable of discussing our relationship; Wife is more concerned about the loss of her things, always more important than the persons in her life-you and the children are simply other things to be owned and bring her respect and admiration. When she begins to grapple with a very different reality and one that challenges her goals and assumptions...right now, I'm very concerned and sobered. I have to realize that none of this looks very promising for us. I remember at one point telling you that I left your presence to spare you the net of becoming involved with me. Now I find myself in a net of my own making, at least in part, and my courage quails. What you must be thinking...the distance I fear you will want to put into place between us if she truly insists upon your loyalty to her...and she will, if I am right ( for example, I imagine the celebration of your twenty-fifth year anniversary will be lavish and lovingly detailed to me. Sigh*). D, you signed up for this, knowing...but not knowing how much I would truly love you. That's the catch. When did the flame that has caught me become -- instead of the echo of lust -- the fire of love which expelled it forever?
When indeed? There’s no way I can answer D’s last question for her, but I do know we discussed it and nonetheless walked into it with our eyes open.
There is not time or bandwidth enough for me to post all the discussions that have ensued, but this sets up the themes that we have been talking about for the last month or so.
The discussion started simply. A day after she got back home, D wrote me an e-mail which said, in part:
Sigh* All I really want to do is write you, or better, hear your voice and plan to see you again. I have yet to really analyze what I experienced and learned while I was cleaning your home beyond what I have discussed with you. It's interesting; I find myself more grateful to have learned about how *you* react than how Wife reacts to various stresses in her life. My compassion is with her, but my intense curiosity and subsequent modification of my behavior-the creative endeavor that challenges me to examine myself and change-is all your doing. Guess that makes sense...it's not always easy to modify my approach or reaction, but it seems worthwhile and meaningful. Let's hope I become more sensitive to your needs and less misunderstanding and hurt occurs.
My reply was pretty pedestrian, but I was able to append part of a discussion between Wife and Friend, which I thought D might find interesting:
Friend: Did you have that serious talk with your friend yet. Or, if that were me, ex-friend? That would have really pissed me off. I mean for me, that's a deal breaker, right there.
Wife: I told her "thanks for coming out, and for all the hard work cleaning, but the next time we take on any kind of joint project I think we have to have expectations and boundaries clearly demarcated in advance, because I realize that Hosea is ecstatic with the results, but I feel disrespected and violated.
Friend: What did she say?
Wife: You know, she threw away my father's 1930's Parker fountain pen on the grounds that "it didn't look like I used it much"? It was dusty because I needed to buy a new bladder for it! She said that when she talked to me on the phone she had no idea of the scope of the project and once she saw it, she just realized it was going to have to be done faster (and with less regard for peoples' personal stuff, I suppose).
Friend: So she didn't apologise. That doesn't make sense. I'm sorry. It's not like she hasn't been to your house recently. She was there not that long ago as I recall. So she can't say that and be convincing.... I wouldn't do anymore joint projects unless I get a super, real, genuine apology. And do you think she and Hosea are involved? You'll know...Watch for sudden business trips. Not that that matters...much.
Wife: We won't be doing any more projects. I may continue to copy edit what she writes for her: thats it. Hosea...I don't know. Again last night he was gone in the middle of the night. He does this after I'm asleep -- just leaves for an hour or two on foot. They could be,. Their dynamic sure changed and I know she's unhappy in HER marriage just as he is unhappy with me. Sudden business trips actually happen for Hosea: but not in [the state where D lives] -- so watch for flights into [one big city near D] or [another big city near D]. Doesn't matter except that I know he's looking to frame me so as to better a divorce settlement.
Friend: Right. I'm sorry, but I think the friendship with Ms. D should end, but that's just me. She clearly didn't give a damn about your personal space, and as a friend for so many years, she could have at least said, "Where do you want X?" "What can I toss?" And what matters is that if they're having an affair, let them. Let them fuck like rabbits if they want, as long as you know about it.
Wife: No, she didnt apologise. She thought she did he right thing. For her, it's "out wit the old, in with the new". To me, her house is sterile; I could go to Ikea and replace it. To me, living among all the old stuff that has been passed on to me is what makes this "home" not just "house".
Friend: Especially since she didn't even have the good grace to say, "I'm sorry you felt violated. I never intended to make you feel that way." I would tell her you're not speaking/emailing/conversion with her till you get an apology, and a good one.
Wife: I feel violated and that both D and Hosea showed me a lack of respect. Hosea just says I set my boundaries in an insane place; .... [he also] invited me to take all my stuff with me to the Old Country. I pointed out that shipping was expensive and he said "Oh, well".
Friend: When did he say that? In other words, he wants you to leave. I'd take your stuff and move it back. Little by little so as not to be noticed.
Wife: Some of it I can, but much of it was THROWN IN THE TRASH CAN. I can't move it back in. The shelves that held my sewing stuff now hold the boys's trophies and Hosea's piles of papers. It was neatly organized, but the space to bring it back to is gone.
Friend: .... Well, still, I think you should tell her what I said. And I don't think you should be writing anything for her.
Wife: I will. And I'm still going to tell her that I feel very betrayed by having her go through my things and throw things away when she didn't even know what they were.
Friend: You should. And you should also tell her that you expect an apology or the friendship is over. Ok, I know I can't tell you what to do...I'm just saying.
Wife: I told her several times when she was here that she was crossing my boundaries and she kept doing so; therefore I dO deserve an apology. If only Hosea had backed me up....
To this, D responded (in part) as follows: ...
Dearest and beloved Hosea,I found your unabridged record of Friend/Wife's conversation fascinating. I don't suppose either of us is particularly surprised that she might have noticed that we seem to care for one another. It is interesting that she knew you were outside for hours; that's true, and given the circumstances, suspicious. The idea that you are waiting to frame her in some divorce settlement is pretty wild, but she never has had much sense of what the court really looks for when settling a high conflict divorce.
I'm humored by the idea that she edits my work extensively when she has edited exactly the same two pieces of work you commented on and edited. I appreciate her effort, and I've benefited, but it's not exactly like she's doing my job for me. How odd.
I know that she feels violated by my effort to bring some order into her life. I don't want to remind her that her constant complaining about you caused me to want to change the circumstances that prompted all the unhappiness. I also don't mind apologizing for causing her to feel violated and disrespected. Hosea, I did *not* respect much of what she said or wanted to do because it struck me as unproductive and incredibly self-centered. That does not mean that I won't take responsibility for what I did-I certainly threw a lot of her stuff away. Contra Friend, it is true to say that I had no idea the project would be so complex or difficult because I really couldn't know until I started working and began to understand why everything had fallen into such a state. Her need to be surrounded by things...incredible number of things that are useless and redundant says a great deal about her psychological state and helps explain why she could never leave you, even if she has fantasies about starting over.
I also know Wife won't break the friendship with me, particularly if she thinks we are involved. How could she possibly keep her eye on our relationship if she refuses to talk to me? It won't happen. And believe me, she hasn't begun to emotionally process the idea that you might be attractive to someone who is smart, physically well, and financially self-sufficient. For years, Wife figured you were incapable of love; you were "mechanical, all nuts and bolts," she used to tell me. Now she thinks that you are "more in touch with your feelings," but only because you hate Boyfriend 5 so much. The idea that you could actually love someone-and more importantly, be loved in return is a very new idea for her. It will change her view of you, and yes, cause her to feel betrayed by both of us. That's our responsibility to bear as well, and far more important than whether I threw away her father's pen.
Wife's fragile mental health concerns me. By definition, as a narcissist, Wife considers herself the center of your world, and to be fair, you have allowed her to do so for years. Wife has considered you unattractive, a nerd, only interested in ideas, and not capable of having friendships, let alone a romantic relationship that might be deeply satisfying to both partners. Yes, she has encouraged you to have an affair, but only a desperate mating without any genuine emotional content, certainly not a relationship of equals or a love relationship with a woman who is not a 'loser'. She has hoped you would move out and leave her everything...but I don't think she ever imagined you might stay for her sake, for the children, and yet find love somewhere else. She will feel victimized and she will feel confused. The confusion worries me because if Boyfriend 5 is not the person she hopes and believes him to be, she will demand your devotion and support. I also worry about her bringing the children into this situation, especially Son 2, and I worry about her telling [my husband]. I'll cross that Rubicon when I come there, but I don't look forward to that day. More relevant to your situation will be her resentment/insecurity, which is likely to make her even more difficult to live with than she is now. I am fully aware that you will never leave her, but that doesn't mean that your life will get any easier. I'm not sure how to react or quite what to do. Right now, I'm only deeply concerned.....
Sigh* It would be nice if Friend's rather rude comment about our sex life was true, but unfortunately, reality is considerably more difficult. Right now, only Friend seems capable of discussing our relationship; Wife is more concerned about the loss of her things, always more important than the persons in her life-you and the children are simply other things to be owned and bring her respect and admiration. When she begins to grapple with a very different reality and one that challenges her goals and assumptions...right now, I'm very concerned and sobered. I have to realize that none of this looks very promising for us. I remember at one point telling you that I left your presence to spare you the net of becoming involved with me. Now I find myself in a net of my own making, at least in part, and my courage quails. What you must be thinking...the distance I fear you will want to put into place between us if she truly insists upon your loyalty to her...and she will, if I am right ( for example, I imagine the celebration of your twenty-fifth year anniversary will be lavish and lovingly detailed to me. Sigh*). D, you signed up for this, knowing...but not knowing how much I would truly love you. That's the catch. When did the flame that has caught me become -- instead of the echo of lust -- the fire of love which expelled it forever?
When indeed? There’s no way I can answer D’s last question for her, but I do know we discussed it and nonetheless walked into it with our eyes open.
There is not time or bandwidth enough for me to post all the discussions that have ensued, but this sets up the themes that we have been talking about for the last month or so.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Second date 7, "I'm glad you came"
Saturday dawned. The job -- as it had been scoped -- was done. There was some talk of doing more, maybe taking down the Christmas tree or vacuuming the dining room or something. But I insisted that we were through. We had cleaned the kitchen, the study, both bathrooms, ... and the boys' bedroom in the bargain. That was enough and it was time to rest.
So we spent Saturday morning just visiting, as if we were friends getting together over the Christmas holidays and nothing more. D and Wife spent some time together talking, D and I spent some time walking around the block talking, we went out for lunch before D had to go to the airport ... and it was all in all a pleasant and relaxing day, after a week like no other. It was tempting to hope that all the animosities and hurt feelings had vanished, but of course it never works like that. But for that day, we were all just too tired to sustain them.
As D and Wife were talking, Wife said, "I'm glad you came, because it gave Hosea somebody to talk to. You know, he always wants to talk about things like politics and philosophy and stuff like that, and it just bores me to tears. But you think about those things too, or at least you were willing to humor him. So it gave him somebody to talk to, and I'm glad." D smiled to herself and said merely, "Oh I could sit and listen to Hosea talk for hours."
A little later, D and I were walking around the block talking, and I expressed the fear which had been nagging at the back of my head all week -- namely, that this was a hell of a way for her to spend her Christmas vacation, and I was worried that she would regret it. Oh no, she told me, she wouldn't have traded this for the world. She learned so much about us by staying with us for a week -- far more than she had learned in 19 years of being Wife's friend -- that she found it absolutely invaluable. So that was another fear quieted.
And then it was lunchtime. D had been promising to take the boys out for dessert ever since Monday, as a reward for all their hard work, but it had never worked out. So she asked them where they wanted to go for lunch. They picked a spaghetti restaurant nearby, so that's where we went. Then after lunch, we walked down the street a few doors to an ice cream parlor, and D bought us all whatever decadent ice cream dessert our hearts desired. Wife and I each stuck to something simple (as did D herself), but the boys went all out -- and in fairness, they had been waiting almost a whole week for this treat, and they had worked hard to earn it. I no longer remember all the extras they ordered; all I remember is that Son 2's looked truly weird. But he enjoyed every bite.
Then to the airport. D checked in for her flight, we all hugged, and she went off to the gate. And we went home. There was still a day and a half left in the weekend, but we were all exhausted The week was over.
.
So we spent Saturday morning just visiting, as if we were friends getting together over the Christmas holidays and nothing more. D and Wife spent some time together talking, D and I spent some time walking around the block talking, we went out for lunch before D had to go to the airport ... and it was all in all a pleasant and relaxing day, after a week like no other. It was tempting to hope that all the animosities and hurt feelings had vanished, but of course it never works like that. But for that day, we were all just too tired to sustain them.
As D and Wife were talking, Wife said, "I'm glad you came, because it gave Hosea somebody to talk to. You know, he always wants to talk about things like politics and philosophy and stuff like that, and it just bores me to tears. But you think about those things too, or at least you were willing to humor him. So it gave him somebody to talk to, and I'm glad." D smiled to herself and said merely, "Oh I could sit and listen to Hosea talk for hours."
A little later, D and I were walking around the block talking, and I expressed the fear which had been nagging at the back of my head all week -- namely, that this was a hell of a way for her to spend her Christmas vacation, and I was worried that she would regret it. Oh no, she told me, she wouldn't have traded this for the world. She learned so much about us by staying with us for a week -- far more than she had learned in 19 years of being Wife's friend -- that she found it absolutely invaluable. So that was another fear quieted.
And then it was lunchtime. D had been promising to take the boys out for dessert ever since Monday, as a reward for all their hard work, but it had never worked out. So she asked them where they wanted to go for lunch. They picked a spaghetti restaurant nearby, so that's where we went. Then after lunch, we walked down the street a few doors to an ice cream parlor, and D bought us all whatever decadent ice cream dessert our hearts desired. Wife and I each stuck to something simple (as did D herself), but the boys went all out -- and in fairness, they had been waiting almost a whole week for this treat, and they had worked hard to earn it. I no longer remember all the extras they ordered; all I remember is that Son 2's looked truly weird. But he enjoyed every bite.
Then to the airport. D checked in for her flight, we all hugged, and she went off to the gate. And we went home. There was still a day and a half left in the weekend, but we were all exhausted The week was over.
.
Monday, January 26, 2009
News links from D ....
OK, these links have nothing to do with any of the story lines in this blog, but the first one is funny and the other is fascinating ... and they were both sent to me by D.
A little background: last week I was chatting with a couple of women from our Human Resources department. As an aside, one of them mentioned a luncheon they had both gone to, where some specialist gave a speech full of gloomy economic prognostications. And the other added that she had heard that Larry Flynt has made a public statement to the effect that the porn industry needs a bailout -- or at any rate, he has said that if all these other industries are getting free money, he wants some too. So she started riffing on how absurd this was: after all, she speculated, surely if any industry were recession-proof it would be the porn industry. In tough times, when people are feeling depressed and in need of a quick pick-me-up, she went on, surely porn would be flourishing. In the middle of this, the first one suddenly pointed at me to say, "Look how red his face is getting!" And I excused myself to go back to my desk and get some work done.
Or at any rate to write my girlfriend all about it .... So I sent my story to D and she replied back with a link to an article about this very issue. You can find it here.
Then this morning, she sent me a link to an entirely different article -- an extended review of the current sexological research into the question "What Do Women Want?" Her accompanying e-mail was a bit more cautious this time:
Beloved Hosea,...I send you this article with some trepidation, but it's so interesting, and, with some embarrassment, but recognition, I acknowledge much of what the researchers discuss...see what you think. I love you, so much, in every way.
Here's the link.
I am, of course, powerfully curious which findings she recognizes so well, but I may have to wait for a more auspicious time to ask her -- for example, in person and not over e-mail. Maybe a good motive for me to find an occasion to get away, as if I needed another motive ...?
.
A little background: last week I was chatting with a couple of women from our Human Resources department. As an aside, one of them mentioned a luncheon they had both gone to, where some specialist gave a speech full of gloomy economic prognostications. And the other added that she had heard that Larry Flynt has made a public statement to the effect that the porn industry needs a bailout -- or at any rate, he has said that if all these other industries are getting free money, he wants some too. So she started riffing on how absurd this was: after all, she speculated, surely if any industry were recession-proof it would be the porn industry. In tough times, when people are feeling depressed and in need of a quick pick-me-up, she went on, surely porn would be flourishing. In the middle of this, the first one suddenly pointed at me to say, "Look how red his face is getting!" And I excused myself to go back to my desk and get some work done.
Or at any rate to write my girlfriend all about it .... So I sent my story to D and she replied back with a link to an article about this very issue. You can find it here.
Then this morning, she sent me a link to an entirely different article -- an extended review of the current sexological research into the question "What Do Women Want?" Her accompanying e-mail was a bit more cautious this time:
Beloved Hosea,...I send you this article with some trepidation, but it's so interesting, and, with some embarrassment, but recognition, I acknowledge much of what the researchers discuss...see what you think. I love you, so much, in every way.
Here's the link.
I am, of course, powerfully curious which findings she recognizes so well, but I may have to wait for a more auspicious time to ask her -- for example, in person and not over e-mail. Maybe a good motive for me to find an occasion to get away, as if I needed another motive ...?
.
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Second date 6, The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come
Friday morning, D was scrubbing the bathrooms while I sorted papers in the (now usable) study. At one point she came into the study for a moment and said, "This should really be the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come for you." I looked up quizzically but she had gone back to work.
A little later, I stuck my head in while she was working and asked "The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come"? She agreed without breaking her concentration for a moment, "Yes, exactly."
I had no idea what she was talking about, but I didn't think it was a good time to ask her to explain.
It might have been a long time before I had a chance to ask her what she meant, were it not -- oddly enough -- for Boyfriend 5. Now, I haven't written a lot about Boyfriend 5 for a long time, and indeed he hadn't been in evidence this whole week. Honestly I had given no attention to his disappearance, because there was so much else going on that I hadn't noticed one way or the other. But Wife had been doing a lot less of the work during this week -- and had spent a lot more of her time lying in bed with a headache -- so she was painfully aware that it had been days since she had heard anything from Boyfriend 5, since before Christmas in fact. Where was he? Why hadn't he been in touch with her? Why was there no word from him at all?
I had no idea that Wife was going through these agonies; but when D took a break between bathrooms, Wife poured out her heart to her. She was desperately worried, she was lonely, she was afraid something had happened, she didn't know what to think -- but where was he? Why hadn't he contacted her in all this time? What was she going to do?
Wife was crying by this time. D asked her, Have you tried to IM him?
Yes, and I've heard nothing.
Have you tried to call him?
I don't have his phone number, and anyway he is in the Old Country so the call would be way too expensive.
Do you know anybody else you could call?
Oh sure, I have the phone number of a close friend of his in the States ... but I haven't called him either.
What? If you are this upset, why haven't you called Friend?
Hosea would never allow it. I've told you how controlling he is, and he has such an irrational hatred of these people that he would forbid me to make the call.
He'd forbid it? How could he do that?
Oh, D, you don't have any idea how awful Hosea can be.
D smiled to herself, and then asked, How about if I get him out of the house for an hour? Could you call Friend then?
Yes, oh please, I would love to. But Hosea is so awful and so controlling -- do you think you could possibly pull him away from this clean-up task?
Let me try.
Oh thank you D, you're a true friend!
D walked into the study where I was still sorting papers, oblivious to the drama that was playing out in the next room. She said peremptorily, "Hosea, come with me. Walk and talk." I had no idea what was going on, but of course I was glad to take a break and spend a little time with D ... so I dropped what I was doing and we went out to walk around the block.
Of course my first question was, To what do I owe the break? D filled me in briefly on the situation with Boyfriend 5, and how Wife wanted to call Friend. This told me we had at least an hour to walk around ... not enough time to go back to D's motel, but plenty of time to talk.
So my second question was, What did you mean by your remark about the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come?
D said, Oh that. All I meant was that having someone else scrubbing your bathrooms for you should be like the Ghost appearing to talk to you. Sorry, I thought that was clear.
I'm still mystified.
Let me try to spell it out. Do you remember Dickens's story A Christmas Carol? The three Ghosts appear to Scrooge, and they show him Christmases Past, Present, and Future. But there is more to it than just showing him these scenes. The message that they keep repeating is "You have to change the life you have been leading. If you don't amend your life -- your whole life -- then this is how it is going to be from here on out." And Hosea, that's how it is for you. You have been living a certain way, and I have seen more of your life in this week than I ever saw before in nineteen years. And you can't keep living like this! Or you can, ... but if you do then this is the way your life is going to look, on into the future forever. Hosea, life can be glorious and golden and rich and joyful -- and you are missing all of that. And the state of your house just shows this so plainly. You can't keep waiting. You can't keep waiting for Wife to change, for her to be more responsible around the house, for her to feel more joy in her own life or to communicate any more joy to the people around her. If you keep waiting, nothing is going to happen. If you keep waiting for her to take some initiative around the house, you will never be rid of the squalor. And if you keep waiting for her to feel joy before you let yourself feel any joy, then life is going to pass you by completely. And it doesn't have to be like that.
Do you remember, she went on, how you once told me that for you love is not an emotion? You used the metaphor of the ocean, and you said that love isn't the splashing and spray up on the surface, which come and go with the weather, be it calm or storm. You said love is more like the rock floor underneath, which is absolutely solid and which stays the same always -- regardless of the storms up above. It's a perfect metaphor, but you missed the most important part. After all, the most vital part of the ocean -- the part that gives life to our whole planet -- are the currents, which are between the surface and the floor. They are permanent too, or almost -- the Gulf Stream has flowed the same way for hundreds of years, if not thousands. But they aren't static, like the rock floor. The are always in motion, always surging, always alive. That's what love really is! Yes, it is stable and steady; no, it doesn't come and go with trivia. But it moves, it is alive, and it gives life to everyone around it. This is what you have been missing from your life, and you have got to change your life before it's too late -- so you don't continue to miss it forever.
I hardly knew what to say at this point. D was no longer just talking as we walked -- she had turned to me directly, practically pinning me to a hedge by the sidewalk, and was urging me passionately, from the heart. But it was hard for me to translate this into concrete advice, something I could start doing tomorrow. Did she mean that I should be more diligent in cleaning the house, or that I should run away with her to Australia?
I tried to ask, somewhat feebly, what all this meant for me in daily life.
Hosea, she replied in a tone halfway between exasperation and pleading, you have CDs in your cabinet that were Christmas gifts a year ago, that are still wrapped in cellophane. This doesn't have to be mysterious -- if you want somewhere to start, rip off the damned cellophane and play the music! Music was made to be enjoyed, to be lived -- this is the stuff that love is made out of! Don't leave it wrapped up in the god-damned cellophane for eternity. Don't make your boys grow up their whole childhoods in silence. Fill your house with music! That would be a start, at least ...!
OK, that I can do.
This walk gave me a lot to think about. D spoke with such passion and urgency that I'm not at all sure I understood it all. I'm not even sure I remember everything she said. But the part I do remember? I'm going to have to think about this for a long time before I am confident I understand it. I also know that it is important.
A little later, I stuck my head in while she was working and asked "The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come"? She agreed without breaking her concentration for a moment, "Yes, exactly."
I had no idea what she was talking about, but I didn't think it was a good time to ask her to explain.
It might have been a long time before I had a chance to ask her what she meant, were it not -- oddly enough -- for Boyfriend 5. Now, I haven't written a lot about Boyfriend 5 for a long time, and indeed he hadn't been in evidence this whole week. Honestly I had given no attention to his disappearance, because there was so much else going on that I hadn't noticed one way or the other. But Wife had been doing a lot less of the work during this week -- and had spent a lot more of her time lying in bed with a headache -- so she was painfully aware that it had been days since she had heard anything from Boyfriend 5, since before Christmas in fact. Where was he? Why hadn't he been in touch with her? Why was there no word from him at all?
I had no idea that Wife was going through these agonies; but when D took a break between bathrooms, Wife poured out her heart to her. She was desperately worried, she was lonely, she was afraid something had happened, she didn't know what to think -- but where was he? Why hadn't he contacted her in all this time? What was she going to do?
Wife was crying by this time. D asked her, Have you tried to IM him?
Yes, and I've heard nothing.
Have you tried to call him?
I don't have his phone number, and anyway he is in the Old Country so the call would be way too expensive.
Do you know anybody else you could call?
Oh sure, I have the phone number of a close friend of his in the States ... but I haven't called him either.
What? If you are this upset, why haven't you called Friend?
Hosea would never allow it. I've told you how controlling he is, and he has such an irrational hatred of these people that he would forbid me to make the call.
He'd forbid it? How could he do that?
Oh, D, you don't have any idea how awful Hosea can be.
D smiled to herself, and then asked, How about if I get him out of the house for an hour? Could you call Friend then?
Yes, oh please, I would love to. But Hosea is so awful and so controlling -- do you think you could possibly pull him away from this clean-up task?
Let me try.
Oh thank you D, you're a true friend!
D walked into the study where I was still sorting papers, oblivious to the drama that was playing out in the next room. She said peremptorily, "Hosea, come with me. Walk and talk." I had no idea what was going on, but of course I was glad to take a break and spend a little time with D ... so I dropped what I was doing and we went out to walk around the block.
Of course my first question was, To what do I owe the break? D filled me in briefly on the situation with Boyfriend 5, and how Wife wanted to call Friend. This told me we had at least an hour to walk around ... not enough time to go back to D's motel, but plenty of time to talk.
So my second question was, What did you mean by your remark about the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come?
D said, Oh that. All I meant was that having someone else scrubbing your bathrooms for you should be like the Ghost appearing to talk to you. Sorry, I thought that was clear.
I'm still mystified.
Let me try to spell it out. Do you remember Dickens's story A Christmas Carol? The three Ghosts appear to Scrooge, and they show him Christmases Past, Present, and Future. But there is more to it than just showing him these scenes. The message that they keep repeating is "You have to change the life you have been leading. If you don't amend your life -- your whole life -- then this is how it is going to be from here on out." And Hosea, that's how it is for you. You have been living a certain way, and I have seen more of your life in this week than I ever saw before in nineteen years. And you can't keep living like this! Or you can, ... but if you do then this is the way your life is going to look, on into the future forever. Hosea, life can be glorious and golden and rich and joyful -- and you are missing all of that. And the state of your house just shows this so plainly. You can't keep waiting. You can't keep waiting for Wife to change, for her to be more responsible around the house, for her to feel more joy in her own life or to communicate any more joy to the people around her. If you keep waiting, nothing is going to happen. If you keep waiting for her to take some initiative around the house, you will never be rid of the squalor. And if you keep waiting for her to feel joy before you let yourself feel any joy, then life is going to pass you by completely. And it doesn't have to be like that.
Do you remember, she went on, how you once told me that for you love is not an emotion? You used the metaphor of the ocean, and you said that love isn't the splashing and spray up on the surface, which come and go with the weather, be it calm or storm. You said love is more like the rock floor underneath, which is absolutely solid and which stays the same always -- regardless of the storms up above. It's a perfect metaphor, but you missed the most important part. After all, the most vital part of the ocean -- the part that gives life to our whole planet -- are the currents, which are between the surface and the floor. They are permanent too, or almost -- the Gulf Stream has flowed the same way for hundreds of years, if not thousands. But they aren't static, like the rock floor. The are always in motion, always surging, always alive. That's what love really is! Yes, it is stable and steady; no, it doesn't come and go with trivia. But it moves, it is alive, and it gives life to everyone around it. This is what you have been missing from your life, and you have got to change your life before it's too late -- so you don't continue to miss it forever.
I hardly knew what to say at this point. D was no longer just talking as we walked -- she had turned to me directly, practically pinning me to a hedge by the sidewalk, and was urging me passionately, from the heart. But it was hard for me to translate this into concrete advice, something I could start doing tomorrow. Did she mean that I should be more diligent in cleaning the house, or that I should run away with her to Australia?
I tried to ask, somewhat feebly, what all this meant for me in daily life.
Hosea, she replied in a tone halfway between exasperation and pleading, you have CDs in your cabinet that were Christmas gifts a year ago, that are still wrapped in cellophane. This doesn't have to be mysterious -- if you want somewhere to start, rip off the damned cellophane and play the music! Music was made to be enjoyed, to be lived -- this is the stuff that love is made out of! Don't leave it wrapped up in the god-damned cellophane for eternity. Don't make your boys grow up their whole childhoods in silence. Fill your house with music! That would be a start, at least ...!
OK, that I can do.
This walk gave me a lot to think about. D spoke with such passion and urgency that I'm not at all sure I understood it all. I'm not even sure I remember everything she said. But the part I do remember? I'm going to have to think about this for a long time before I am confident I understand it. I also know that it is important.
.
Friday, January 23, 2009
Second date 5, Anger depression and sex
Up till now, I haven't said a whole lot about how D and I interacted during this intense clean-up ... at any rate, not after the first morning. And partly this is because the work itself just drowned out everything else. Oh, we might sneak a kiss if nobody was looking. We might trade arched eyebrows when Wife started in on wanting to save her grandmother's antique dust bunnies. But most of the time we were just working, and if one of us said something to the other it was probably "Did you see where I set down the ammonia?" The overall level of romance was not terribly high. True, we did fuck again Monday night after I took her back to her motel. (Have I mentioned that D is inexhaustible in this area?) But Tuesday morning when I went to get her, we just kissed and talked. Tuesday night I left her at her motel with a big hug, a bigger kiss, and a case of exhaustion so severe that I had to go straight back home to bed. Wednesday morning we went out to Starbucks for coffee and had our conversation about narcissism ... useful and important as far as it went, but hardly romantic. If we hadn't been knocking off a bottle of wine each night with dinner -- good stuff, that Wife and I had been saving for "some day special" -- it would have been hard to tell that we loved each other.
I should say something about the wine: it is off-topic, but it was really odd. Quite a few years ago, Wife and I had joined a wine subscription club. After a while we dropped our membership, but we still had much of the wine left over. A lot of it is red, which Wife doesn't care for; I never bothered to open "the good stuff" if it was just for me; and we don't often have guests. So there it sat -- chilled but unopened -- apparently until Doomesday. When D suggested that we could use a glass of wine after our work the first day, I figured this was as good a time as any to open one of the remaining "subscription" bottles. Why not? I offered some to Wife, who declined. And so D and I each drank a glass while making dinner together, ... and another glass with dinner ... and finished the bottle by the end of the meal. And this became the pattern for the subsequent nights. Wife never took any, even when I uncovered a bottle of white which we had overlooked years before. D and I finished a bottle a night. And I will never forget the image one night when the kitchen was full of boxes and the dining table was full of junk so we ate on a cardboard box on the floor: Wife sat at one end of the box with a Diet Coke; the boys crowded around with milk or water; and I sat down holding two glasses of wine, one of which I handed to D as we began to eat. It was as if I were watching myself from the outside as I did it, and all I could think was, "That's such a marital gesture! Does anybody else see it?"
But I digress.
Wednesday, when she was overwhelmed by our Augean study and needed a break, D had organized the boys into cleaning their room. Usually in the past they have done this by shoving everything under the bunk bed or piling it on the dressers and then announcing, "The floor's clean!" But with her help they got it clean. On top of the dressers, under the bed, behind the door, in the back of the closet ... it was clean! And over dinner, D asked me if I had noticed. Well, I hadn't gone into the room but once for a minute or so, but I told her what I had seen, that the floor was remarkable. In my best clueless-dad voice, I asked what else had gotten done during the (comparatively short) time she had been working in there. She didn't say much, but I noticed that her attitude seemed to change subtly. I couldn't even put my finger on when the change was, exactly. All I could tell was that by the end of dinner, something was out of kilter. But D didn't say a word.
As I drove her back to her motel that night, I tried rather tentatively to probe, to find out what was wrong. At first, D didn't say anything. Then when I asked a second time, she burst forth with:
"You know, this family is really short on gratitude!"
Huh? Can you possibly think we are ungrateful for all the help you are giving us? Is this about Wife and her antique dust bunnies?
"You wouldn't think it would be so hard. When Jesus ate with his disciples it was the most natural thing in the world -- he broke the bread, gave thanks to his father in Heaven, and ate. But I sure don't feel any gratitude around here!"
By this point I had started to worry. I knew D had been working her fingers to the bone, and anybody who had worked as hard as she did the last three days would have been entitled to the occasional tantrum. Hell, Wife could have parlayed that much work into a full-fledged nervous breakdown. (Well, almost.) But I also worried, from my experience with Wife, that this could blossom completely out of control. On the whole I figured D to be more stable than Wife, but there was a nagging voice in the back of my head that just wasn't sure. And you, my readers, have already heard me wonder aloud why I seem to be attracted to psychologically demanding and emotionally high-maintenance women. So I thought that maybe, just maybe, I had bitten off more here than I could chew.
In a very small voice, I tried to say that I, at least, was more than grateful for her coming out here and doing all this.
"But when you came into the boys' room, all you saw was the floor! You didn't notice the rest of it!"
No, I'm sorry, I didn't ... but I wasn't there for long and I thought I gave you a chance to brag about it over dinner. It's not that I was ungrateful, just maybe unobservant.
At this point, D was almost in tears. "But you didn't even look! You didn't even notice the dressers!"
Why? Were the dresser-tops clean?
"The dresser tops were clean. The clothes inside the dressers were folded neatly and organized. All the space under the bed was clear. The shoes were lined up neatly against the bed. The closets were clean. Every last shirt that had fallen down behind something was picked up and hanging neatly on a hanger. The shelves were dusted. The floor was vacuumed. And you never noticed any of it!"
Wow. That's really great. The room probably hasn't been that clean since we moved in. Thank you. Thank you very much.
"You're welcome. But you could have noticed without my having to tell you!" The tears were flowing freely by this time. I don't know about anybody else, but a woman in tears sets all my internal alarms on red alert. At this point I would have done anything -- including travel backwards in time to fix the problem, if only I knew how -- to make her stop. And about this time we got to her motel.
We went in. I was apologizing every way I knew how. D was still grumbling, but starting to simmer down. I sat down on the floor, and she sat near me. She tried to reach an arm out to me, but I was curled up with my arms around my knees, and I couldn't trust or accept the arm she was extending.
The next thing I knew, D was expressing all sorts of worry and concern for me. Why did I look so shell-shocked? Why had I withdrawn so far? Why wouldn't I cuddle with her?
Ummm ... shit, I dunno. Maybe because a moment ago you were yelling at me, and crying? Call me crazy, but that might have something to do with it ....
And D looked shocked. Oh my God, Hosea, don't withdraw on me. Yes, I was angry, but you don't have to withdraw. I'm so sorry, I had no idea you would react like this. I just thought you would engage with me, we'd wrangle for a bit, and it would be over. It never occurred to me that you would be this stung and frightened.
And then she said something that really struck me. "You know, Hosea, you talk about Wife suffering from depression, and maybe she does; although, as we discussed this morning, I think any depression is secondary to narcissism. But you really do suffer from depression. You really do! When you first told me about taking anti-depressant medication, you made it sound like you took it for energy ... you made it sound like coffee. But it's not just for energy. It's because you are really depressed. Sweetheart, I will never yell at you like that again. I just won't. It's not useful. Because the way you respond is to withdraw into a deep depression, and I don't want to cause you to go there. If there's ever something we have to work out in the future, I'll handle it some other way. I'm really sorry. Can you sit over here by me and hold hands? Please?"
Well what could I do, after an invitation as sweet as that? I put aside my fears, scooted across the floor to where she was, and held hands. And after a minute, we kissed.
You may have noticed by now that kissing is a big deal for us, because it is usually the key to a lot more. And so after a few minutes we climbed up onto the bed, wriggled out of our clothes ... and then kissed and held each other and kissed and fucked and kissed some more. And after a couple of hours we showered and I got dressed again and went home.
It must be the best possible way to end a fight. Wife and I never in twenty-five years mastered the art of make-up sex. But it didn't take long for D and me to figure it out.
Thursday was New Year's Day. Wife was especially tired and turned in especially early. Nobody wanted to open the champagne I had bought for the occasion. So D and I had even more time together back at her motel -- and I had yet another surprise there, in a week that was plainly full of them. I have always figured I was a pretty pedestrian lover. If you had listened to Wife over the years, you would have heard my overall ratings slide slowly from "just fine or at least not bad" to "barely adequate" -- but only once or twice has she said anything better than that. So I was totally unprepared Thursday night to hear D gasp out in ecstasy at one point, "How did you do that?" I was so unprepared, in fact, that all I could think to say was, "I don't know." For some reason this answer made D laugh uncontrollably for a while, after which (still laughing) she added, "Well if you don't remember, sweetheart, I do and you can be sure I'll remind you!"
The week was intense. The highs and lows -- and the surprises -- were all pretty extreme. And on Friday I finally heard from the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come.
.
I should say something about the wine: it is off-topic, but it was really odd. Quite a few years ago, Wife and I had joined a wine subscription club. After a while we dropped our membership, but we still had much of the wine left over. A lot of it is red, which Wife doesn't care for; I never bothered to open "the good stuff" if it was just for me; and we don't often have guests. So there it sat -- chilled but unopened -- apparently until Doomesday. When D suggested that we could use a glass of wine after our work the first day, I figured this was as good a time as any to open one of the remaining "subscription" bottles. Why not? I offered some to Wife, who declined. And so D and I each drank a glass while making dinner together, ... and another glass with dinner ... and finished the bottle by the end of the meal. And this became the pattern for the subsequent nights. Wife never took any, even when I uncovered a bottle of white which we had overlooked years before. D and I finished a bottle a night. And I will never forget the image one night when the kitchen was full of boxes and the dining table was full of junk so we ate on a cardboard box on the floor: Wife sat at one end of the box with a Diet Coke; the boys crowded around with milk or water; and I sat down holding two glasses of wine, one of which I handed to D as we began to eat. It was as if I were watching myself from the outside as I did it, and all I could think was, "That's such a marital gesture! Does anybody else see it?"
But I digress.
Wednesday, when she was overwhelmed by our Augean study and needed a break, D had organized the boys into cleaning their room. Usually in the past they have done this by shoving everything under the bunk bed or piling it on the dressers and then announcing, "The floor's clean!" But with her help they got it clean. On top of the dressers, under the bed, behind the door, in the back of the closet ... it was clean! And over dinner, D asked me if I had noticed. Well, I hadn't gone into the room but once for a minute or so, but I told her what I had seen, that the floor was remarkable. In my best clueless-dad voice, I asked what else had gotten done during the (comparatively short) time she had been working in there. She didn't say much, but I noticed that her attitude seemed to change subtly. I couldn't even put my finger on when the change was, exactly. All I could tell was that by the end of dinner, something was out of kilter. But D didn't say a word.
As I drove her back to her motel that night, I tried rather tentatively to probe, to find out what was wrong. At first, D didn't say anything. Then when I asked a second time, she burst forth with:
"You know, this family is really short on gratitude!"
Huh? Can you possibly think we are ungrateful for all the help you are giving us? Is this about Wife and her antique dust bunnies?
"You wouldn't think it would be so hard. When Jesus ate with his disciples it was the most natural thing in the world -- he broke the bread, gave thanks to his father in Heaven, and ate. But I sure don't feel any gratitude around here!"
By this point I had started to worry. I knew D had been working her fingers to the bone, and anybody who had worked as hard as she did the last three days would have been entitled to the occasional tantrum. Hell, Wife could have parlayed that much work into a full-fledged nervous breakdown. (Well, almost.) But I also worried, from my experience with Wife, that this could blossom completely out of control. On the whole I figured D to be more stable than Wife, but there was a nagging voice in the back of my head that just wasn't sure. And you, my readers, have already heard me wonder aloud why I seem to be attracted to psychologically demanding and emotionally high-maintenance women. So I thought that maybe, just maybe, I had bitten off more here than I could chew.
In a very small voice, I tried to say that I, at least, was more than grateful for her coming out here and doing all this.
"But when you came into the boys' room, all you saw was the floor! You didn't notice the rest of it!"
No, I'm sorry, I didn't ... but I wasn't there for long and I thought I gave you a chance to brag about it over dinner. It's not that I was ungrateful, just maybe unobservant.
At this point, D was almost in tears. "But you didn't even look! You didn't even notice the dressers!"
Why? Were the dresser-tops clean?
"The dresser tops were clean. The clothes inside the dressers were folded neatly and organized. All the space under the bed was clear. The shoes were lined up neatly against the bed. The closets were clean. Every last shirt that had fallen down behind something was picked up and hanging neatly on a hanger. The shelves were dusted. The floor was vacuumed. And you never noticed any of it!"
Wow. That's really great. The room probably hasn't been that clean since we moved in. Thank you. Thank you very much.
"You're welcome. But you could have noticed without my having to tell you!" The tears were flowing freely by this time. I don't know about anybody else, but a woman in tears sets all my internal alarms on red alert. At this point I would have done anything -- including travel backwards in time to fix the problem, if only I knew how -- to make her stop. And about this time we got to her motel.
We went in. I was apologizing every way I knew how. D was still grumbling, but starting to simmer down. I sat down on the floor, and she sat near me. She tried to reach an arm out to me, but I was curled up with my arms around my knees, and I couldn't trust or accept the arm she was extending.
The next thing I knew, D was expressing all sorts of worry and concern for me. Why did I look so shell-shocked? Why had I withdrawn so far? Why wouldn't I cuddle with her?
Ummm ... shit, I dunno. Maybe because a moment ago you were yelling at me, and crying? Call me crazy, but that might have something to do with it ....
And D looked shocked. Oh my God, Hosea, don't withdraw on me. Yes, I was angry, but you don't have to withdraw. I'm so sorry, I had no idea you would react like this. I just thought you would engage with me, we'd wrangle for a bit, and it would be over. It never occurred to me that you would be this stung and frightened.
And then she said something that really struck me. "You know, Hosea, you talk about Wife suffering from depression, and maybe she does; although, as we discussed this morning, I think any depression is secondary to narcissism. But you really do suffer from depression. You really do! When you first told me about taking anti-depressant medication, you made it sound like you took it for energy ... you made it sound like coffee. But it's not just for energy. It's because you are really depressed. Sweetheart, I will never yell at you like that again. I just won't. It's not useful. Because the way you respond is to withdraw into a deep depression, and I don't want to cause you to go there. If there's ever something we have to work out in the future, I'll handle it some other way. I'm really sorry. Can you sit over here by me and hold hands? Please?"
Well what could I do, after an invitation as sweet as that? I put aside my fears, scooted across the floor to where she was, and held hands. And after a minute, we kissed.
You may have noticed by now that kissing is a big deal for us, because it is usually the key to a lot more. And so after a few minutes we climbed up onto the bed, wriggled out of our clothes ... and then kissed and held each other and kissed and fucked and kissed some more. And after a couple of hours we showered and I got dressed again and went home.
It must be the best possible way to end a fight. Wife and I never in twenty-five years mastered the art of make-up sex. But it didn't take long for D and me to figure it out.
Thursday was New Year's Day. Wife was especially tired and turned in especially early. Nobody wanted to open the champagne I had bought for the occasion. So D and I had even more time together back at her motel -- and I had yet another surprise there, in a week that was plainly full of them. I have always figured I was a pretty pedestrian lover. If you had listened to Wife over the years, you would have heard my overall ratings slide slowly from "just fine or at least not bad" to "barely adequate" -- but only once or twice has she said anything better than that. So I was totally unprepared Thursday night to hear D gasp out in ecstasy at one point, "How did you do that?" I was so unprepared, in fact, that all I could think to say was, "I don't know." For some reason this answer made D laugh uncontrollably for a while, after which (still laughing) she added, "Well if you don't remember, sweetheart, I do and you can be sure I'll remind you!"
The week was intense. The highs and lows -- and the surprises -- were all pretty extreme. And on Friday I finally heard from the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come.
.
Yes, I'm still alive ... tired, depressed, but alive
Sometimes it takes me a while to look at the calendar and realize how much time has gone by. Then I get an e-mail like the one this morning from a reader who asked,
So yes, I'm alive. I can probably even claim "functioning" although that point is more arguable. But I have been both busy and tired the last couple of weeks, so my posting has taken a real hit.
Part of it is just the sheer weight of trying to lead multiple lives. In the giddiness of first getting together with D, I didn't really think about how much time it would take out of my schedule. But since she left after her Great Cleaning Expedition to go back home and to work, we have talked on the phone almost every night. The thing is, I wait until Wife and the boys are all snugly in bed and asleep. (Never mind what time this is where D lives, but it's not exactly convenient for her either.) I call on my cell phone. (Let's all have a big hand for unlimited evening and weekend minutes!) I make sure I am somewhere I can't be overheard. And then we talk for hours.
Where do those hours come from? In the first place, out of my blogging time -- that's the most immediate victim. In the second place, out of my sleep. In the third place, out of paying our household's bills or keeping up with the mail or any of those other routine kinds of things. So I have been getting short-tempered, ineffective at work, and sloppy about keeping up with our bills or other paperwork. Not that we're actually late on anything ... yet, as far as I know ... but I am the kind of person that starts getting nervous when those sorts of deadlines get too close, and I'm not happy with how close I've let them get.
The easy solution would be to spend less time talking to D, right? Yeah, right. Somehow it hasn't worked out that way. There is always more to discuss. And it's not just whispering sweet nothings into each other's ears, although that has been part of it: we talk about our jobs, our spouses (Wife more than her husband, since she talks to Wife so regularly), our kids, our own childhoods, politics, religion ... all kinds of good stuff. After several calls where I suddenly hit a wall in the middle of a sentence and had to hang up and go to bed, we decided to set a limit. (D gets really upset when she hears that exhaustion in my voice -- it sounds too much like depression to her, and she worries about that in me more than I do.) So we told each other, from now on we'll limit these conversations to 60 minutes -- 90 max! -- and then I'll hang up and go to bed. The first night after agreeing that, we stopped at just about 60 minutes on the nose. The second night it was more like 92 or 93 minutes. And the third night it was closer to 160 .... So much for the easy solution.
This week there was an extra monkey wrench thrown into the gears. For a while now, D has been suggesting as quietly as she could that it would really be great for us to figure out the next time we can see each other. Don't I need to have a business meeting somewhere away from home, sometime soon? This week the topic started coming up more often, and with somewhat greater urgency ... and D finally explained that this really is a big deal for her because of how much time she spends all alone. She is a teacher, working at a school that is far enough away from the house she shares with her husband that she lives in an apartment during the week. Her own kids are already in college. So once the kids leave school, many nights she has nobody to talk to except me until the next morning. And she is in many ways a less solitary person by nature than I am. So the loneliness is really getting to her. And the conversation has turned more and more into, "Come on Hosea, how hard can it be to make up some kind of conference you have to go to? You have the vacation time at work, you have the Frequent Flyer miles, let's just go somewhere!" Only the tireder I am, the less likely I can turn on a dime that way.
A couple days ago I found myself wondering -- not for the first time -- Why do I even have a girlfriend anyway? It can't just be for the sex, because I was coping without that before. Did I not have enough headaches in my life? Did I not have enough people who wanted things from me, and who were going to get upset and personally hurt when I can't make them all happy? Do I just have rocks in my head?
Fortunately all I told D was that I was exhausted and couldn't talk to her that night. I was, too -- I couldn't eat dinner that night, and I fell into bed 5 minutes after the boys did. The next day I got a note from her which said, in part:
So I'm "walking around" ... not making any rash decisions when I know they are prompted by exhaustion and not my real feelings. I know I still love her, an awful lot. I won't jeopardize that out of crankiness. But I really have been awfully tired.
Sorry I haven't written.
.
Hi, H - are you alive? functioning?Which tells me it has been a while since I posted.
So yes, I'm alive. I can probably even claim "functioning" although that point is more arguable. But I have been both busy and tired the last couple of weeks, so my posting has taken a real hit.
Part of it is just the sheer weight of trying to lead multiple lives. In the giddiness of first getting together with D, I didn't really think about how much time it would take out of my schedule. But since she left after her Great Cleaning Expedition to go back home and to work, we have talked on the phone almost every night. The thing is, I wait until Wife and the boys are all snugly in bed and asleep. (Never mind what time this is where D lives, but it's not exactly convenient for her either.) I call on my cell phone. (Let's all have a big hand for unlimited evening and weekend minutes!) I make sure I am somewhere I can't be overheard. And then we talk for hours.
Where do those hours come from? In the first place, out of my blogging time -- that's the most immediate victim. In the second place, out of my sleep. In the third place, out of paying our household's bills or keeping up with the mail or any of those other routine kinds of things. So I have been getting short-tempered, ineffective at work, and sloppy about keeping up with our bills or other paperwork. Not that we're actually late on anything ... yet, as far as I know ... but I am the kind of person that starts getting nervous when those sorts of deadlines get too close, and I'm not happy with how close I've let them get.
The easy solution would be to spend less time talking to D, right? Yeah, right. Somehow it hasn't worked out that way. There is always more to discuss. And it's not just whispering sweet nothings into each other's ears, although that has been part of it: we talk about our jobs, our spouses (Wife more than her husband, since she talks to Wife so regularly), our kids, our own childhoods, politics, religion ... all kinds of good stuff. After several calls where I suddenly hit a wall in the middle of a sentence and had to hang up and go to bed, we decided to set a limit. (D gets really upset when she hears that exhaustion in my voice -- it sounds too much like depression to her, and she worries about that in me more than I do.) So we told each other, from now on we'll limit these conversations to 60 minutes -- 90 max! -- and then I'll hang up and go to bed. The first night after agreeing that, we stopped at just about 60 minutes on the nose. The second night it was more like 92 or 93 minutes. And the third night it was closer to 160 .... So much for the easy solution.
This week there was an extra monkey wrench thrown into the gears. For a while now, D has been suggesting as quietly as she could that it would really be great for us to figure out the next time we can see each other. Don't I need to have a business meeting somewhere away from home, sometime soon? This week the topic started coming up more often, and with somewhat greater urgency ... and D finally explained that this really is a big deal for her because of how much time she spends all alone. She is a teacher, working at a school that is far enough away from the house she shares with her husband that she lives in an apartment during the week. Her own kids are already in college. So once the kids leave school, many nights she has nobody to talk to except me until the next morning. And she is in many ways a less solitary person by nature than I am. So the loneliness is really getting to her. And the conversation has turned more and more into, "Come on Hosea, how hard can it be to make up some kind of conference you have to go to? You have the vacation time at work, you have the Frequent Flyer miles, let's just go somewhere!" Only the tireder I am, the less likely I can turn on a dime that way.
A couple days ago I found myself wondering -- not for the first time -- Why do I even have a girlfriend anyway? It can't just be for the sex, because I was coping without that before. Did I not have enough headaches in my life? Did I not have enough people who wanted things from me, and who were going to get upset and personally hurt when I can't make them all happy? Do I just have rocks in my head?
Fortunately all I told D was that I was exhausted and couldn't talk to her that night. I was, too -- I couldn't eat dinner that night, and I fell into bed 5 minutes after the boys did. The next day I got a note from her which said, in part:
There's plenty in my own life that causes me to pause
and reflect. I understand that some choices have to be made, and none of them
are easy. That said, there is no rush, and I much prefer to walk around a
situation several times before actually coming to any hard and fast conclusions.
My current circumstances cause me to be more vulnerable than at other times, but
being alone, as you note, is not a new experience for me. Whatever the future
holds, the center does not. Change is certain, and some of it is out of my hands
completely. What random fortune will offer is also unknown. Frankly, accepting
that ambiguity is not scary; it seems real. And as Son 1 noted, I am a practical
person. I don't prefer fantasy to reality.
It is true to say I am quite passionately in love with
you. I never expected it to be easy; I never expected it at all. Our love is a
journey, without any maps, it seems, and I'm just beginning to learn celestial
navigation. Be patient with me, as I will be with you, and surely we will find
ourselves together again, and as you once said, it will be right.
So I'm "walking around" ... not making any rash decisions when I know they are prompted by exhaustion and not my real feelings. I know I still love her, an awful lot. I won't jeopardize that out of crankiness. But I really have been awfully tired.
Sorry I haven't written.
.
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Second date 4, Narcissus in the suburbs
Wednesday morning, the second day of working on the study, I got to D's motel as she was getting dressed and she told me she wanted to go out for coffee before we went back to the house. So we went down the block to the nearest Starbucks; and as we walked, D asked me:
"What is Wife's primary psychological diagnosis?"
"Primary diagnosis? Depression. Why?"
"Depression? Really? You know, I've been watching her closely the last couple of days, and that's not what it looks like to me at all. Of course, I'm not a licensed psychiatrist. But you remember I spent years as a court-appointed guardian ad litem, and I saw a lot of cases where families were pulled apart by psychlogical issues of one kind or another. And you know, the way I have seen Wife interacting with the rest of the family for the last couple of days just doesn't match the patterns I saw in cases of depression."
"OK, I won't argue. Sometimes her psychiatrists have reached for something more serious, like bipolar disorder. But that still comes down to some variant of depression as a key factor."
"No, I don't think that's the main issue for Wife at all. It might be a secondary diagnosis, but it's not the primary one."
"Well, what do you think it is, then?"
Pause.
"I think she suffers from Narcissistic Personality Disorder."
"What's that?"
Long silence, which I finally interrupted:
"Umm, ... D? What's that?"
"I'm sorry, but I'm trying to choose my words carefully. I'm not just talking about some case study here, I'm talking about your wife -- the woman you have committed your life to. So if you don't already know what this is, I have to be careful how I say it."
"Oh shit, just spit it out. I can take it."
Pause.
"Narcissists see everything and everyone else in the world only in terms of the impact on themselves. This means ...," she paused again, "... that they can never really love anybody else. Everyone that they say they love is really just seen as an extension of themselves. The other person's triumphs are their triumphs. The other person's defeats are their defeats."
"You mean, like the way that Wife gets so enthusiastic over the boys' triumphs in sports, when she hates sports."
"I mean like the way she has responded to this whole cleaning project. Hosea, when I started cleaning up all that useless sewing crap in the study -- crap that she is never going to use for the rest of her life! -- did you see how she reacted? When I tried to make a space where the boys could work, all she could think about was how it displaced her stuff. Hosea, if you truly love somebody else, then you are happy when he is happy. Did you see how thrilled Son 2 was, that he finally had a desk of his own, decorated with his own medals and memorabilia? He was delighted! He was dancing! Wife says she loves him and would move heaven and earth for him -- but all she could think to say was how much she resented having her stuff moved. She never even noticed how happy Son 2 was! And if she had noticed, she would just have punished him for it."
"You have known Wife for twenty years. How is it that you are just thinking this now?"
"Hosea, narcissists use other people as tools to prop up their own self-esteem. As a result, they are usually very charming, because that lets them manipulate others more successfully. And so I think I was led astray because Wife isn't charming. I mean, she's not! So until I had a chance to see the four of you interacting as a family, it never occurred to me as a possibility."
"I see. Although, to be fair, when I first met Wife she had a kind of rough charm about her ... a charm with sharp edges, you might say. And she has to have had some kind of charm to attract all her various affairs."
"Fine. I won't argue that. But after watching how she has reacted to every bit of cleaning I've done, I really have no further doubts."
"So if you are right, what are the treatment options? Is this disorder treated with any of the same kinds of chemicals that are used to treat depression? Or are you going to tell me that Murphy's Law applies here, and the treatments for depression and NPD are exactly opposite?"
Again, D was silent for a minute. Then she said, in a low voice, ...
"Hosea, NPD is what's called an Axis-2 disorder. That means it is untreatable. Hosea, if Wife has what I think she has, she's never going to get better. I'm sorry."
.
"What is Wife's primary psychological diagnosis?"
"Primary diagnosis? Depression. Why?"
"Depression? Really? You know, I've been watching her closely the last couple of days, and that's not what it looks like to me at all. Of course, I'm not a licensed psychiatrist. But you remember I spent years as a court-appointed guardian ad litem, and I saw a lot of cases where families were pulled apart by psychlogical issues of one kind or another. And you know, the way I have seen Wife interacting with the rest of the family for the last couple of days just doesn't match the patterns I saw in cases of depression."
"OK, I won't argue. Sometimes her psychiatrists have reached for something more serious, like bipolar disorder. But that still comes down to some variant of depression as a key factor."
"No, I don't think that's the main issue for Wife at all. It might be a secondary diagnosis, but it's not the primary one."
"Well, what do you think it is, then?"
Pause.
"I think she suffers from Narcissistic Personality Disorder."
"What's that?"
Long silence, which I finally interrupted:
"Umm, ... D? What's that?"
"I'm sorry, but I'm trying to choose my words carefully. I'm not just talking about some case study here, I'm talking about your wife -- the woman you have committed your life to. So if you don't already know what this is, I have to be careful how I say it."
"Oh shit, just spit it out. I can take it."
Pause.
"Narcissists see everything and everyone else in the world only in terms of the impact on themselves. This means ...," she paused again, "... that they can never really love anybody else. Everyone that they say they love is really just seen as an extension of themselves. The other person's triumphs are their triumphs. The other person's defeats are their defeats."
"You mean, like the way that Wife gets so enthusiastic over the boys' triumphs in sports, when she hates sports."
"I mean like the way she has responded to this whole cleaning project. Hosea, when I started cleaning up all that useless sewing crap in the study -- crap that she is never going to use for the rest of her life! -- did you see how she reacted? When I tried to make a space where the boys could work, all she could think about was how it displaced her stuff. Hosea, if you truly love somebody else, then you are happy when he is happy. Did you see how thrilled Son 2 was, that he finally had a desk of his own, decorated with his own medals and memorabilia? He was delighted! He was dancing! Wife says she loves him and would move heaven and earth for him -- but all she could think to say was how much she resented having her stuff moved. She never even noticed how happy Son 2 was! And if she had noticed, she would just have punished him for it."
"You have known Wife for twenty years. How is it that you are just thinking this now?"
"Hosea, narcissists use other people as tools to prop up their own self-esteem. As a result, they are usually very charming, because that lets them manipulate others more successfully. And so I think I was led astray because Wife isn't charming. I mean, she's not! So until I had a chance to see the four of you interacting as a family, it never occurred to me as a possibility."
"I see. Although, to be fair, when I first met Wife she had a kind of rough charm about her ... a charm with sharp edges, you might say. And she has to have had some kind of charm to attract all her various affairs."
"Fine. I won't argue that. But after watching how she has reacted to every bit of cleaning I've done, I really have no further doubts."
"So if you are right, what are the treatment options? Is this disorder treated with any of the same kinds of chemicals that are used to treat depression? Or are you going to tell me that Murphy's Law applies here, and the treatments for depression and NPD are exactly opposite?"
Again, D was silent for a minute. Then she said, in a low voice, ...
"Hosea, NPD is what's called an Axis-2 disorder. That means it is untreatable. Hosea, if Wife has what I think she has, she's never going to get better. I'm sorry."
.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Second date 3, The study from Hell
I never really believed D was going to try to tackle our study. Oh, she said that was part of the plan, and I nodded politely. But there was no way to clean the study until you could get to it, and that meant finding your way through all the junk. I figured that we would talk nicely about how maybe something should be done in the study one day, and then we'd go clean stuff that was truly clean-able. And after that we could sit around and visit ... or maybe it would get late and Wife would go to bed and I would take D back to her motel to fuck. Or something practical like that.
For years our study had been the storage place of last resort. Once upon a time, back before we had kids, Wife had fantasies of using it as a sewing room: so it still had a couple of sewing machines in it, and a wall of shelves full of thread, and crafting books, and notions, and patterns, and just slightly fewer than a million buttons. A lot of this was stuff Wife inherited from her mother, who was a very active seamstress. Wife learned to sew at her mother's knee, and has always felt that sewing was an important part of her self-definition. Whatever else you might say about her, she could always tell herself that, by God, she was her mother's daughter and she could sew her own clothes if she wanted to -- and make them look better than anything store-bought, thank you very much. It might be years between one garment and the next, it might even be years since she had pulled anything out of the mending basket ... but she could do it. She knew how. Her mother had trained her to be better at it than the next girl. And when her mother died, she had inherited all these supplies which she was going to use (some day) to make something really great. Wearable art. Not right now, but maybe next week ... just you wait and see. After all, that was her inheritance ... her destiny, even. Her identity. (Admittedly, this identity has always sat alongside several other, possibly incompatible, identities to which she has clung just as fiercely. But that's not relevant just now.)
Once the boys were born we needed a bedroom for them; so we moved the desk and computer out of the room where they had once sat (thus creating a second bedroom) and we jammed them awkwardly into the sewing room. And for the next ten or twelve years, whenever we had some project get stalled about halfway through, we would park it in a corner of the floor "for later". Did I mention that I'm not very good about throwing away papers (bank statements, paid utility bills, or any of Wife's voluminous medical papers, for example) ... and that I frequently didn't find time to file them either? But hey, that's no big deal ... there was room on the floor between the desk and the first sewing machine for two or three stacks of paper. Besides, as long as the paper is bracketed that way by furniture, you can stack it pretty high without any fear it might fall over.
You get the idea.
So, bright and early the second morning, D walked into the study and said, "Sit down Hosea. I need you to tell me how you work."
Huh?
"How do you work? We have to make this study a place that four people can work. You pay bills for the household; Wife manages a discussion list online; Son 1 and Son 2 each have homework from school. And everyone has a different style. So tell me how you work."
I don't even remember what I said, but Wife interjected, "Wait a minute. That's only part of what this room is for. I also have to be able to sew in here."
And for the first time in this lunatic project, D brushed her off with abrupt impatience: "No you don't. I've talked with you on the phone every day for six months; you spend hours telling me what you do each day. Not once have you mentioned sewing. Maybe you used to sew in the past but you haven't done any sewing in a long time, and this house is too small to leave a room set up for Some Day. We need a solution that will work for today, and you no longer sew today. Tthat means we need a study that four people can use as a study. If that changes later, the room can be rearranged then."
With that, she summarily asked the boys to bring in a large box of sturdy trash bags, and she started throwing stuff away.
I should have written this all down back then, I know I should have. Today, as I write these words, this all took place a fortnight ago, and there is no way I will remember it all. But the highlights? The overall gist? That's easy. Wife lost it.
You can't throw that away! That's a family treasure! I got that from my grandmother! Besides I use that every single day! How dare you?
This? Don't be crazy. There's fifteen years worth of dust on this, and besides that it's broken. You can't possibly tell me you use it every day ... in fact, you can't tell me you have used it even once.
But it is old! You can't throw away something that old!
Stop and focus. The job is to make this a study that four people can work in today. We can't do that if you insist on keeping every single solitary piece of broken trash. Get a clue.
But it's a family treasure! Have you no respect for my family treasures?
After about the twentieth shrieking repetition of this particular harangue, D finally lost her temper. "No," she said; and, pointing at the boys, she went on, "those are your treasures! And they have no place in this house that they can use for themselves because it is so clogged with leftover memories of the past. If you care about them half as much as you say you do, then help me clean out all of this Past from the house so they have room to live and work and grow in the Present! I know your mother and father are both dead -- but I lost my mother too, a lot younger than you did, and you can't keep people alive by hanging onto things!"
There was more. I can't even begin to remember how much more. Work on the study took two solid days, Tuesday and Wednesday, until well into the evening. D's return flight had been scheduled for Wednesday afternoon, but Tuesday night she gave me all her reservation information and said, "Change this. Extend my stay until Saturday. I can't leave the job half done, and there's no way I can be done before Saturday. I'm sorry but I can't deal with the airline on top of everything else right now -- just make it happen." The active papers were separated out; all the rest went in boxes -- unsorted, unfiled. So did the patterns. The duplicate and triplicate and quadruplicate office supplies -- notepads and Post-It notes to last us "until Jesus comes again!" -- all went in the trash. So did most of the buttons, the notions, much of the thread. Wife started prowling through the trash bags, pilfering stuff out again that she absolutely had to save: bobbins, for example, to fit a sewing machine that is no longer in production, so that new bobbins are totally unavailable. It was awful.
To be fair, D also had us bring some new stuff into the study. My old desk from when I was in elementary school had been in the boys' room all this time, covered in junk. D made the boys clean their room ruthlessly. And the motivation she offered them was simple. Here are empty boxes: these ones are for things going to charity, and those ones are for things going to the trash. I will pay $20 for each box that you can fill all the way. Once my old desk was clear -- and once she had cleared out enough floorspace in the study to accommodate it -- she had us move it in there. She also had the boys bring in personal items -- trophies, photos, mementoes of one kind or another -- to decorate the desk and the shelves. She insisted that you can't expect someone to work effectively in a space that feels like it is not his own; so if the boys are going to do their homework in the study, they need to be able to see some of their own personal stuff surrounding them. When Son 2 saw his own personal memorabilia decorating the shelves over his desk, he danced an improvised jig out of excitement.
Wife, however, was not excited. Every step of the way, Wife asked, But what about me? Where is my personal space? You are giving Hosea and the boys space that is all theirs, and the only person giving up anything is me! Why is that fair? The first few times Wife asked this, D tried to answer patiently that up till now the entire room had been hers, and the current effort was just to make it equitable. After a while, she gave up and stopped answering the question.
In the end -- finally, somehow, we came to an end -- we had stacks of boxes filling the entire kitchen, and we had nearly 350 pounds of trash in bags strewn across our driveway. But the study was clean and usable. The desks were clear. The shelves held office supplies and memorabilia, but nothing else ... and they had a lot of empty space between one item and the next, so we could find stuff easily. We opened a bottle of wine, ate dinner, and fell apart. Wife was angry at D and me for throwing away so much stuff (for no better reason than that it was useless junk); D and I were mad at Wife for obstructing so much obvious progress. Everybody was snapping at everybody else, and even the bottle of wine -- plus the bottle of riesling that I opened for dessert -- didn't do enough to smooth that out.
But the study was clean and truly usable for the first time since we moved into the house almost 15 years ago. Anybody who doubts the possibility of miracles should stop by so I can show off the before-and-after photos.
Thursday we took all the boxes to our storage unit, and I took the trash (all 350 pounds of it) to the dump. And as Friday dawned, D was ready to clean the bathrooms.
For years our study had been the storage place of last resort. Once upon a time, back before we had kids, Wife had fantasies of using it as a sewing room: so it still had a couple of sewing machines in it, and a wall of shelves full of thread, and crafting books, and notions, and patterns, and just slightly fewer than a million buttons. A lot of this was stuff Wife inherited from her mother, who was a very active seamstress. Wife learned to sew at her mother's knee, and has always felt that sewing was an important part of her self-definition. Whatever else you might say about her, she could always tell herself that, by God, she was her mother's daughter and she could sew her own clothes if she wanted to -- and make them look better than anything store-bought, thank you very much. It might be years between one garment and the next, it might even be years since she had pulled anything out of the mending basket ... but she could do it. She knew how. Her mother had trained her to be better at it than the next girl. And when her mother died, she had inherited all these supplies which she was going to use (some day) to make something really great. Wearable art. Not right now, but maybe next week ... just you wait and see. After all, that was her inheritance ... her destiny, even. Her identity. (Admittedly, this identity has always sat alongside several other, possibly incompatible, identities to which she has clung just as fiercely. But that's not relevant just now.)
Once the boys were born we needed a bedroom for them; so we moved the desk and computer out of the room where they had once sat (thus creating a second bedroom) and we jammed them awkwardly into the sewing room. And for the next ten or twelve years, whenever we had some project get stalled about halfway through, we would park it in a corner of the floor "for later". Did I mention that I'm not very good about throwing away papers (bank statements, paid utility bills, or any of Wife's voluminous medical papers, for example) ... and that I frequently didn't find time to file them either? But hey, that's no big deal ... there was room on the floor between the desk and the first sewing machine for two or three stacks of paper. Besides, as long as the paper is bracketed that way by furniture, you can stack it pretty high without any fear it might fall over.
You get the idea.
So, bright and early the second morning, D walked into the study and said, "Sit down Hosea. I need you to tell me how you work."
Huh?
"How do you work? We have to make this study a place that four people can work. You pay bills for the household; Wife manages a discussion list online; Son 1 and Son 2 each have homework from school. And everyone has a different style. So tell me how you work."
I don't even remember what I said, but Wife interjected, "Wait a minute. That's only part of what this room is for. I also have to be able to sew in here."
And for the first time in this lunatic project, D brushed her off with abrupt impatience: "No you don't. I've talked with you on the phone every day for six months; you spend hours telling me what you do each day. Not once have you mentioned sewing. Maybe you used to sew in the past but you haven't done any sewing in a long time, and this house is too small to leave a room set up for Some Day. We need a solution that will work for today, and you no longer sew today. Tthat means we need a study that four people can use as a study. If that changes later, the room can be rearranged then."
With that, she summarily asked the boys to bring in a large box of sturdy trash bags, and she started throwing stuff away.
I should have written this all down back then, I know I should have. Today, as I write these words, this all took place a fortnight ago, and there is no way I will remember it all. But the highlights? The overall gist? That's easy. Wife lost it.
You can't throw that away! That's a family treasure! I got that from my grandmother! Besides I use that every single day! How dare you?
This? Don't be crazy. There's fifteen years worth of dust on this, and besides that it's broken. You can't possibly tell me you use it every day ... in fact, you can't tell me you have used it even once.
But it is old! You can't throw away something that old!
Stop and focus. The job is to make this a study that four people can work in today. We can't do that if you insist on keeping every single solitary piece of broken trash. Get a clue.
But it's a family treasure! Have you no respect for my family treasures?
After about the twentieth shrieking repetition of this particular harangue, D finally lost her temper. "No," she said; and, pointing at the boys, she went on, "those are your treasures! And they have no place in this house that they can use for themselves because it is so clogged with leftover memories of the past. If you care about them half as much as you say you do, then help me clean out all of this Past from the house so they have room to live and work and grow in the Present! I know your mother and father are both dead -- but I lost my mother too, a lot younger than you did, and you can't keep people alive by hanging onto things!"
There was more. I can't even begin to remember how much more. Work on the study took two solid days, Tuesday and Wednesday, until well into the evening. D's return flight had been scheduled for Wednesday afternoon, but Tuesday night she gave me all her reservation information and said, "Change this. Extend my stay until Saturday. I can't leave the job half done, and there's no way I can be done before Saturday. I'm sorry but I can't deal with the airline on top of everything else right now -- just make it happen." The active papers were separated out; all the rest went in boxes -- unsorted, unfiled. So did the patterns. The duplicate and triplicate and quadruplicate office supplies -- notepads and Post-It notes to last us "until Jesus comes again!" -- all went in the trash. So did most of the buttons, the notions, much of the thread. Wife started prowling through the trash bags, pilfering stuff out again that she absolutely had to save: bobbins, for example, to fit a sewing machine that is no longer in production, so that new bobbins are totally unavailable. It was awful.
To be fair, D also had us bring some new stuff into the study. My old desk from when I was in elementary school had been in the boys' room all this time, covered in junk. D made the boys clean their room ruthlessly. And the motivation she offered them was simple. Here are empty boxes: these ones are for things going to charity, and those ones are for things going to the trash. I will pay $20 for each box that you can fill all the way. Once my old desk was clear -- and once she had cleared out enough floorspace in the study to accommodate it -- she had us move it in there. She also had the boys bring in personal items -- trophies, photos, mementoes of one kind or another -- to decorate the desk and the shelves. She insisted that you can't expect someone to work effectively in a space that feels like it is not his own; so if the boys are going to do their homework in the study, they need to be able to see some of their own personal stuff surrounding them. When Son 2 saw his own personal memorabilia decorating the shelves over his desk, he danced an improvised jig out of excitement.
Wife, however, was not excited. Every step of the way, Wife asked, But what about me? Where is my personal space? You are giving Hosea and the boys space that is all theirs, and the only person giving up anything is me! Why is that fair? The first few times Wife asked this, D tried to answer patiently that up till now the entire room had been hers, and the current effort was just to make it equitable. After a while, she gave up and stopped answering the question.
In the end -- finally, somehow, we came to an end -- we had stacks of boxes filling the entire kitchen, and we had nearly 350 pounds of trash in bags strewn across our driveway. But the study was clean and usable. The desks were clear. The shelves held office supplies and memorabilia, but nothing else ... and they had a lot of empty space between one item and the next, so we could find stuff easily. We opened a bottle of wine, ate dinner, and fell apart. Wife was angry at D and me for throwing away so much stuff (for no better reason than that it was useless junk); D and I were mad at Wife for obstructing so much obvious progress. Everybody was snapping at everybody else, and even the bottle of wine -- plus the bottle of riesling that I opened for dessert -- didn't do enough to smooth that out.
But the study was clean and truly usable for the first time since we moved into the house almost 15 years ago. Anybody who doubts the possibility of miracles should stop by so I can show off the before-and-after photos.
Thursday we took all the boxes to our storage unit, and I took the trash (all 350 pounds of it) to the dump. And as Friday dawned, D was ready to clean the bathrooms.
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Second date 2, The kitchen
As we got to the house and started some coffee, D outlined her plan: the kitchen on Monday, the study on Tuesday, the bathrooms on Wednesday morning and then catch her flight out. And I was thinking, "Yeah, that should work -- I think I just saw a flock of pigs flying past the window, and this morning's weather report made a point of mentioning the sudden cold snap in Hell that has left frost on all the brimstone. Piece of cake." But who am I to stand in the way of progress?
D wanted to start with the kitchen because she was burned out from her trip and she figured that it would be mindless. But she soon found that it was anything but. In the first place, she couldn't clean the counters without getting to the counters, and she couldn't do that without putting away all the appliances. And after all, she asked, how often do we really need the blender and the mixer and the Cuisinart? Do we use them daily? If not daily, they shouldn't take up prime real estate so let's put them up in the cupboards. All perfectly logical. And with that she hit her first -- and biggest -- real obstacle.
The obstacle was Wife, who wanted D to clean the kitchen and give us more usable counter space, without having to put anything away.
"What if I want to use one of those appliances? They are too heavy for me to lift down by myself!"
"Ask Hosea to do it. Or ask Son 1 to do it -- he'll be a teenager any day now, and he is already as strong as some men."
"But Hosea will be at work and Son 1 will be at school."
"So ask them the night before. How often do you need an industrial-strength mixer without having at least 24 hours' notice?"
"But I want to be able to handle this all independently!"
"You also want counter space, and you can't have both."
That point took a lot longer to resolve than I have described here, but I insisted that D was only being logical and Wife finally gave up. (To say she was persuaded would be a little too optimistic.) This victory, though, didn't accomplish much. If the appliances are going to be put up into the cabinets, then which cabinet?
"That one. It's easy for you to reach."
"But it's full already."
"With what?"
"Ummm ... well, there are some jars of 20-year-old jelly that was canned by my mother back when she was still alive, and there are a lot of empty Mason jars."
"You are saving an entire cupboard of empty Mason jars?"
"Sure. You know, some of those jars date from the 1940's -- you just can't get jars like that any more! Besides, I want to have them handy for when I want to do canning."
"How much canning do you do?"
"I can things all the time!"
At this point I (Hosea) interrupted the discussion to point out that the last canning Wife did was during the summer of 2004 ... and that I couldn't remember whether she had ever done any before that in all the years of our marriage. So the few jars of jam and pickles got integrated into the pantry, and the Mason jars went out. Wife protested, sputtered, whined ... and then just sulked.
In the interests of strict chronology, I should clarify that this particular conversation actually took place in mid-afternoon. But it summarizes nicely the problem that D found she was facing. Wife wanted this project to improve a lot of things; but she was unwilling to make more than token changes to the way she herself was living, and she was unable (or unwilling) to see herself and her own choices as prime contributors to the state the house had fallen into. And so every significant step forward was made in the teeth of opposition from Wife, who had in some ways commissioned the whole project from the beginning.
Needless to say, Wife did not see herself as an obstructionist. After all, she was more than willing to part with this bauble here and that doodad there. But meanwhile, D was plowing through our cupboards asking more fundamental questions. Do we really need to save Tupperware containers for which we no longer have lids? How about Tupperware lids for which we no longer have matching containers? Does any house really need three ladles? Or service for 24, when there are four people living here? Is there some logical reason that we have four, ... no five, ... is it six? ... no it's seven different cheap plastic spatulas, all more or less the same size and some of them cracking with age? And so on. And on. And on.
Then there was the inside of the refrigerator, which had unidentified goo encrusted all over the shelves. OK, let's pull out the food so we can clean the shelves. By the way, this head of lettuce has completely dissolved into mush -- is there a reason you're keeping it anyway? Why is there a half-gallon container of ice cream in the freezer with no more than three ounces of ice cream left inside? Does anyone remember what exactly was being stored in that jar in the back, and can someone explain to me why the contents now seem to be moving with a life of their own? And could you please bring the trash can a little closer, because I can't quite reach it from here?
In all this, D kept the rest of us busy and organized as well. Not Wife, to be sure, since she spent much of the day sulking in bed with a headache. But the boys and I were going full tilt all day. She set Son 1 to scrubbing the burners on the stove top: when he was done they didn't exactly look new ... but I would have given long odds against ever again seeing enough of the black grime removed that the underlying metal could glint through, and he got them to at least 90% clean. Son 2 scrubbed all the unidentifiable stickiness out of the cupboards under the stove. And whenever D needed some little task handled, they were both there to do it. When I drove D back to her motel that night, she praised their contribution so unequivocally that I told them the next morning it had made me proud to be their father.
It is worth noting that Wife can almost never motivate the boys to help clean up. That D got them energized and eager to help -- partly by praising their work instead of carping, partly by promising them a magnificent dessert as a reward, and partly (I think) by contributing to the work herself instead of just ordering them to do it from afar -- none of this sat very well with Wife either.
By the end of the day, the kitchen was clean, the countertops were clear, the cupboards were usable, and the floor was mopped. The trash cans were completely full, and several boxes of stuff had been set aside to give to charity. Not bad for a day's work. We got dinner and opened a bottle of wine, and D announced that Tuesday she would take care of the study. Little did she realize at that point that the study would make the kitchen look like a walk in the park.
D wanted to start with the kitchen because she was burned out from her trip and she figured that it would be mindless. But she soon found that it was anything but. In the first place, she couldn't clean the counters without getting to the counters, and she couldn't do that without putting away all the appliances. And after all, she asked, how often do we really need the blender and the mixer and the Cuisinart? Do we use them daily? If not daily, they shouldn't take up prime real estate so let's put them up in the cupboards. All perfectly logical. And with that she hit her first -- and biggest -- real obstacle.
The obstacle was Wife, who wanted D to clean the kitchen and give us more usable counter space, without having to put anything away.
"What if I want to use one of those appliances? They are too heavy for me to lift down by myself!"
"Ask Hosea to do it. Or ask Son 1 to do it -- he'll be a teenager any day now, and he is already as strong as some men."
"But Hosea will be at work and Son 1 will be at school."
"So ask them the night before. How often do you need an industrial-strength mixer without having at least 24 hours' notice?"
"But I want to be able to handle this all independently!"
"You also want counter space, and you can't have both."
That point took a lot longer to resolve than I have described here, but I insisted that D was only being logical and Wife finally gave up. (To say she was persuaded would be a little too optimistic.) This victory, though, didn't accomplish much. If the appliances are going to be put up into the cabinets, then which cabinet?
"That one. It's easy for you to reach."
"But it's full already."
"With what?"
"Ummm ... well, there are some jars of 20-year-old jelly that was canned by my mother back when she was still alive, and there are a lot of empty Mason jars."
"You are saving an entire cupboard of empty Mason jars?"
"Sure. You know, some of those jars date from the 1940's -- you just can't get jars like that any more! Besides, I want to have them handy for when I want to do canning."
"How much canning do you do?"
"I can things all the time!"
At this point I (Hosea) interrupted the discussion to point out that the last canning Wife did was during the summer of 2004 ... and that I couldn't remember whether she had ever done any before that in all the years of our marriage. So the few jars of jam and pickles got integrated into the pantry, and the Mason jars went out. Wife protested, sputtered, whined ... and then just sulked.
In the interests of strict chronology, I should clarify that this particular conversation actually took place in mid-afternoon. But it summarizes nicely the problem that D found she was facing. Wife wanted this project to improve a lot of things; but she was unwilling to make more than token changes to the way she herself was living, and she was unable (or unwilling) to see herself and her own choices as prime contributors to the state the house had fallen into. And so every significant step forward was made in the teeth of opposition from Wife, who had in some ways commissioned the whole project from the beginning.
Needless to say, Wife did not see herself as an obstructionist. After all, she was more than willing to part with this bauble here and that doodad there. But meanwhile, D was plowing through our cupboards asking more fundamental questions. Do we really need to save Tupperware containers for which we no longer have lids? How about Tupperware lids for which we no longer have matching containers? Does any house really need three ladles? Or service for 24, when there are four people living here? Is there some logical reason that we have four, ... no five, ... is it six? ... no it's seven different cheap plastic spatulas, all more or less the same size and some of them cracking with age? And so on. And on. And on.
Then there was the inside of the refrigerator, which had unidentified goo encrusted all over the shelves. OK, let's pull out the food so we can clean the shelves. By the way, this head of lettuce has completely dissolved into mush -- is there a reason you're keeping it anyway? Why is there a half-gallon container of ice cream in the freezer with no more than three ounces of ice cream left inside? Does anyone remember what exactly was being stored in that jar in the back, and can someone explain to me why the contents now seem to be moving with a life of their own? And could you please bring the trash can a little closer, because I can't quite reach it from here?
In all this, D kept the rest of us busy and organized as well. Not Wife, to be sure, since she spent much of the day sulking in bed with a headache. But the boys and I were going full tilt all day. She set Son 1 to scrubbing the burners on the stove top: when he was done they didn't exactly look new ... but I would have given long odds against ever again seeing enough of the black grime removed that the underlying metal could glint through, and he got them to at least 90% clean. Son 2 scrubbed all the unidentifiable stickiness out of the cupboards under the stove. And whenever D needed some little task handled, they were both there to do it. When I drove D back to her motel that night, she praised their contribution so unequivocally that I told them the next morning it had made me proud to be their father.
It is worth noting that Wife can almost never motivate the boys to help clean up. That D got them energized and eager to help -- partly by praising their work instead of carping, partly by promising them a magnificent dessert as a reward, and partly (I think) by contributing to the work herself instead of just ordering them to do it from afar -- none of this sat very well with Wife either.
By the end of the day, the kitchen was clean, the countertops were clear, the cupboards were usable, and the floor was mopped. The trash cans were completely full, and several boxes of stuff had been set aside to give to charity. Not bad for a day's work. We got dinner and opened a bottle of wine, and D announced that Tuesday she would take care of the study. Little did she realize at that point that the study would make the kitchen look like a walk in the park.
Sunday, January 4, 2009
Movie meme, updated
A few months ago, I posted on the Movie meme: whom would you cast in the movie of your life (or at any rate your blog life)? But this post was out of date almost as soon as I wrote it, because that was the same month that my friendship with D started morphing from casual acquaintance to full-blown affair. And whom would I cast as D?
I don't know enough actresses to have a good idea (I think I need to get out more). So a couple of evenings ago, during a lull in our love-making back at her motel (the family were all long since asleep), I asked her. That is, I explained the basic idea behind the question and then asked whom she would cast as herself.
Her first answer was based on appearance: back when she was a young woman, people were always telling her that she looked like Natalie Wood.
Then I made the question a little more precise, by asking her whom she would cast based on character ... or at any rate, based on the kind of character that this or that actress most typically plays. She thought for only a moment and then replied with ... Glenda Jackson.
I can see it, too, or at least parts of it. The high intelligence, the unstoppable energy, the subtlety and sensitivity ... these are all features that they both share. Should I be worried by the fact that it is so easy for Glenda Jackson to make her characters look neurotic? Or is that over-reading the comparison?
I guess I'll find out ....
I don't know enough actresses to have a good idea (I think I need to get out more). So a couple of evenings ago, during a lull in our love-making back at her motel (the family were all long since asleep), I asked her. That is, I explained the basic idea behind the question and then asked whom she would cast as herself.
Her first answer was based on appearance: back when she was a young woman, people were always telling her that she looked like Natalie Wood.
Then I made the question a little more precise, by asking her whom she would cast based on character ... or at any rate, based on the kind of character that this or that actress most typically plays. She thought for only a moment and then replied with ... Glenda Jackson.
I can see it, too, or at least parts of it. The high intelligence, the unstoppable energy, the subtlety and sensitivity ... these are all features that they both share. Should I be worried by the fact that it is so easy for Glenda Jackson to make her characters look neurotic? Or is that over-reading the comparison?I guess I'll find out ....