A Repair to Remember.

When I was in my very early twenties and living on Vancouver Island, I had a sweet little red bicycle. It was a basic, red ten-speed type-useful, reliable, but not aesthetically pleasing.  I was a strict vegetarian, and someone thought it humorous to stick a large, imposing “I LOVE ALBERTA BEEF” sticker–with a large red heart and an outline of a steer’s head–on my bicycle.  The ten-speed was then known as “The Meat-Cycle”.  When I eventually left Victoria and returned to my university studies in Kamloops, the meat-cycle was left behind but not forgotten.  How I missed the freedom of a bicycle.  To not be at the mercy of public transit, to weave through traffic with ease, to attain the firm thighs and buttocks that resulted from a daily commute.  Once back in the hilly terrain of Kamloops, it just didn’t make sense to struggle up the multi-tiered city with a bag full of books on my back.  Eventually I bought a car, and then a better car and then I stopped thinking of myself as the kind of girl who peddled her way through the world.

Benjamin has always been an avid cyclist, but for obvious reasons left his downhill mountain bike behind in New Zealand. Within the first week of our arrival, we found a cycle shop not far from our future apartment.  In a long line on the sidewalk, basking in the hot Australian sun, was a plethora of possibilities.  There were standard bicycles–functional but not fashionable–and then there were the colourful and classic-looking Schwinn bicycles (at double the price).  My eyes were glued to the bright sunshine yellow “Starlet”, but I was cringing at the cost.  We had come to Australia with $10,000 in New Zealand funds, but the exchange rate made a mockery of our small fortune, leaving us with approximately $6000 to work with.  My head was telling me, “Go for practicality—this will be one more thing you will have to leave behind”.  My style-driven soul trumpeted louder: “Fuck practical, I want the pretty one”.

Never one to make an impulse purchase, I was reluctant to blow a solid fraction of our savings.  I got a serving job within that first week, at The Old Swan Brewery, a historical building along the riverbank. The day after my successful trial shift, we got a call from the rental agency announcing that our bid for the apartment on Adelaide Terrace had been accepted.  Everything was coming together. I requested the following Friday off for “moving day”— which meant shopping for essentials and taking a cab from the Northbridge hostel to the furnished apartment in East Perth. My request was overlooked and I was scheduled to work a dreaded split shift, which made one thing certain: I was going to need a bicycle immediately.

I thought once more of that lovely yellow Schwinn Starlet.  Benjamin recommended a test ride–just to make sure that I liked it.  I didn’t like it…I loved it.  The wind blowing in my hair, the sun on my skin, the smoothness of a good quality bicycle beneath me—my reflection as I passed shop windows. I had to have it.  We tested a few others, but I knew I had to have that Schwinn.  My hand trembled and my heart pounded as I scribbled my signature on the receipt.  My buyer’s remorse was immediately overshadowed with the everyday necessity of a bicycle in a city designed for cyclists.  The path to my work place was right along the river, and every night Benjamin would meet me and we would ride home together. Benjamin bought a basket and a bell.  I loved my Starlet; I named her “Miss Daisy”.

Benjamin got a job at a construction site less than a block away from our apartment, and soon we began to make a decent collective wage.  My work ethic and spunky can-do spirit was well received and the owner offered full time position with a starting salary of $55,000 per annum.  After the paltry paycheques I had earned in New Zealand, and during university for that matter, I wanted to leap at the chance.  Benjamin reminded me of my own intended policy for employment: “No evenings or weekends”. This job was every evening and every weekend.  Inching closer to the Australian winter, the whole city was bound to slow down. I was grateful for secure steady, well-paying work.   We had so many plans, and none of those aspirations were cheap.   Despite Benjamin’s pursed lips and slow burning disapproval, I accepted the position.  Nothing felt more important than financial gain—quality time together would have to come later.

Our young marriage had been challenged by strange company and circumstances. We met, and fell in love in the course of one evening. Two months later, I left Mount Manganui for Hamilton and we got married a few months later. In that brief stretch of time, there was immigration issues, hiccups, obstacles, dodgy flatmates and stressful time constraints.  Our savings were scraped together as we made plans for Australia. Ben sold and stored his possessions, I packed my bag. We went to the South Island; in Christchurch during the deadly earthquake and the intense aftermath.  By the time we landed in the lucky country, slightly fragile from the natural disaster, we had not even known each other for a full calendar year.  Establishing a home of our own was important, and then my job immediately denied that need.  Though we established budgets, savings and plans, there was a feeling of loss in the day-to-day. Still, I was hooked on the idea of making money, emotional cost be damned!  For me, it was about zoning out during Michael Buble’s sentimental love ballads that played in the romantic restaurant at night, and occupying my thoughts during the day.

When not sight-seeing or café hopping, I was a fixture at the public library. I became recognizable to the staff.  I’d approach the counter with an armload of novels, plays, magazines, albums and classic films, and the clerk would say: “Ah yes, Alicia, we have something on hold for you as well”.  I started to recognize the other regulars myself, the lonely old ladies who dressed up to collect a new cycle of romance novels and celebrity biographies. I saw myself in them, seeking solace and company in stories. I spent my time chasing ghosts, piecing together fragments of research about icons, ideas and eras in this lonesome school for one. As if the pursuit of knowledge will pass the time with purpose; make me forget how lonely I have become in this life.  Benjamin would come home, we’d spend our dinner hour together before I left for work. I’d say goodbye and kiss Benjamin on his unhappy frown. Backing Miss Daisy out of the tiny flat, not meeting his eyes.

Benjamin texted me to say that he could see me peddling my little yellow bicycle down the street from the top of the unfinished high rise.  Later he told me that he watched me ride off into the distance, down past the river, until I disappeared beyond the thick stretch of palm trees.  From that sighting we conceived a ritual: he’d watch for me as I rode my bicycle past the Indian curry shop, through the lights, pass the 24-hour dairy, around the corner, until I rode past the trees.   I would be sure to look up again as I rode past the building.  Benjamin, nearly seven foot tall, was so easy to spot, waving his hard hat in the air.  This went on for weeks.  I felt a tremendous weight of melancholy once I was out of his sight. Sadness thickened my throat and still I rode on.

One Friday, on a drizzly mid-morning, I looked up from the intersection and saw Benjamin, leaning on the railing, waving with one arm in the air.  I waved back, and rode down the street, feeling the comfort of his eyes on me.  I curved around the corner, and as I cruised down the long stretch of road, I couldn’t resist looking up one more time.  With my arm outstretched, and my head intermittently turning between my view of the road before me and the building above me, I stared for a second too long. Careening toward a parked car–with my arm still up in the air like a bull rider. There was no time to brake, and I smashed into the white Nissan on the populated road.

Dropping my arm down, I gripped the handle bars tightly. Breath escaping like a full balloon suddenly released, the force of the impact pushed my body over the bars.  I resisted flipping over onto the trunk completely.  Dazed, my legs akin to not-yet solidified gelatine, I dismounted Miss Daisy and glanced up at the building.  Benjamin is no longer waving.  The front tire wedged in the back wheel-arch of the car, between the tire and the car body.  With shaking hands, I tried to wrench the bicycle from the car.  I invented this fusion of transportation themed Siamese twins, but it was an inoperable experiment.  I tugged once, twice, and on my third attempt, my panic spiral expanded.  I looked up at the building, Benjamin isn’t there.

My mobile rings.   I don’t answer the phone in any traditional sense, it’s more like: “Oh My God, Oh My God, Oh My God, Ben, the bike…the car, its stuck…help me! Help me…Oh my God, Oh My God!”  Benjamin spoke briefly:  “Just hang on; I will be right there”.  In reality, Benjamin would’ve sprinted down nineteen flights of stairs and across the lot, and it would have taken less than five minutes. In my terrified state, it was took approximately the length of two-life prison sentences.  I spent this time intermittently tugging on the Starlet, gaping at the work site and muttering: “Hurry up Ben, what is taking so long?”  If another car drove by, I attempted to lean casually on my bike, as if I was deliberately hanging out in this exact spot because it just felt right.  Nothing to see here folks, move along. My greatest fear was that the car’s owner would discover this tiny, sweating, muttering woman with her safety helmet knocked to the side and worn like a jaunty beret.  My super convincing “casual leaning” rouse would be seen through immediately and the driver would realize that I had gone up his car’s ass without any type of permission or consent.  And then he would murder me.  This collision of my thought train would inspire me to once again, attempt to wrench the bike away from the car.  The rain was beginning to spit gentle specks.

A large, weathered man ambling down the walkway with a cigarette dangling from his mouth approached without a word.  Gulp—this is it, this is the owner of the car. This is the moment before I get strangled roadside while wearing a gawky white helmet.  The stranger, now at arm’s length, reached down, took a firm hold Miss Daisy and effortlessly divorces the pair.  “There you be”, he grunted, not once taking the cigarette out of his face.  He was like this leathery, tobacco laced guardian angel. Benjamin finally appeared, his arms already opening up to receive me.  I immediately become unglued.  “It’s okay, you’re okay”, he whispers as I weep, my helmet thudding against his ribcage in time to my heaving sobs. He asked if I would be alright to make it to the brewery.  I dumbly nodded my head.  Benjamin crossed the street and disappeared beyond the large industrial gates.  I weakly threw my leg over the body of the bike and begin to peddle with cautious uncertainty.  The front brakes were damaged and as the wheels turned, the bike groaned as I rolled down the street.  The rain was still spitting, and my tears were still spilling.  I wanted to go home.  I thought about the classic film An Affair to Remember, one of the many pictures borrowed from the library.

Poor old Deborah Kerr gets mowed down by a New York taxi cab in the middle of the street while Cary Grant paces atop the Empire State Building, unaware that his lover will never rise up to meet him.  At the film’s end, Kerr confesses to Grant about the accident that kept them apart: “It was nobody’s fault but my own, I was looking up.  It was the nearest thing to heaven.  You were there”.  Like Kerr, it was my choice that kept us apart night after night; as for hitting that car, I was at fault there too, because I was looking up, trying to see my husband for one second longer, for one second too long.

Once at work, I locked my bike, and limped into the building. I was stiff, sore and home sick.  It was a quiet afternoon, and after two hours, and several torturous Buble tracks, I knew I had to go home, and stay there.  Another supervisor offered to speak to the manager about my getting the night off.  It was Friday, and it a cardinal sin to be unavailable for work.  The managerial response was an order to cancel the shifts of the casual staff. I hobbled to the back office to plead my case.  The head chef leaned back in his computer chair, examining me with a dubious expression. “So, what’s the problem? You hit a car? Are you hurt? Is that why do you need the night off?”  How infuriating.

I take the most rational approach, that being physically injured=not being able to carry to tray with dignity and elegance. This is a place that served $60.00 crab pasta, surely they wouldn’t  want some weepy foreigner tripping all over the establishment like a wounded pirate. “Listen” he concedes, fake-concerned, incredulous and smug. “Why don’t you leave your bike here, take a cab home, have a bath and a rest, and give me a call at five, and we’ll go from there”.  ‘Okay’, I smile. ‘I’m going to do all those things, and call you at five to say I’m not coming in’.   I hailed a cab, and slumped in the back seat, fuming about the chef.  I gave the cabdriver, an African gentleman with wiry salt and pepper hair the address and unsolicited details about my day.  “I’m hurt, I’m upset and I just want the night off—I hate that they make it so difficult.  Can you take time off if you need it?” I asked the driver.  “If I need to…yes” he answered, “but, there’s nothing more important than work”.  “Yes…work is important, but it’s not the most important thing.  I work hard, and sometimes a person needs a break”.  I snapped, ending the conversation, settling back in my seat with a scowl.  I think of a line from a song I hear every single shift: “…and when my life is over, I’ll remember when we were together”.  I didn’t want to remember my life, our life together in Australia like this: opposite schedules, miles apart, trying to catch a glimpse from a distance.  The money I was making wasn’t worth the price I was paying.

We spent that Friday night on the sofa, curled up under a blanket.  We had a long conversation that led to my giving notice to my employers shortly thereafter. I took my bike to the shop to be repaired, which they did, under warranty—no questions asked.  Rumours spread at work that I had been hit by a car.  Co-workers asked about the accident, “Whose fault was it?”  “Oh it’s hard to tell…it all happened so fast…I don’t want to point fingers.  In my final week of work, when I rode to the Brewery building, I didn’t glance up at the great architectural skeleton looming overhead.   I simply rode past, knowing my husband was up there somewhere watching me, his eyes not losing focus on my silhouette until I passed the palm trees and was out of sight.

Images courtesy of Google, the almighty internet, etc.

Holiday Hemmorhage

On the last full day of our Las Vegas long weekend–a trip that had swiftly followed an eight day road-trip through Washington and Oregon, I was telling myself I was glad to go home. To my dog, my bed, my job, my routine. The heat was blazing in Vegas, and I was lounging poolside as if my life depended on it; fall was fast approaching at home. Summer days were numbered. “Maybe we should have booked another day…” Ben muses, as we shield the sun from our eyes, as the sun shoots a laser beam of light off of the looming golden hotel and spraying heat onto our faces.

Of course, everyone wants to be on holiday forever. Nothing on the agenda but walking, sightseeing, reading, eating, people watching, drinking (lattes! ciders!) and lazing. Sadly, more time equals more money. There’s a point on any holiday where you start to just hemorrhage money…or at least become increasingly cognizant of the ever expanding expenses.  You also stop caring. Go numb. Cost be damned!  This is why we work two jobs! This is why we scrimp, save and budget! Seriously though, prices in Las Vegas are unreal. Sure I can keep the cup, which is approximately the same height as a toddler in high heels, and I can just walk around with it, carrying on with my life with a drink in hand. I could wander into a bank with it and take out the last of my savings to hand it over to the smiling face with the bow tie and vest at the roulette wheel across the street. Does it really mean that I have to hand over a $50.00 and not receive change for the privilege?

It’s like the $20.00 I spent on two hotdogs and two ice teas at NYC street vendor across the street from the Dakota, the apartment building where John Lennon was murdered. Benjamin, weary from roaming Central Park on bike and on foot, was suddenly and desperately in need of nourishment, and the winner of our cash prize was the first vendor we laid eyes on. This is always a dangerous move, a rookie mistake. One should always at least turn around in one full circle to see if their odds are considerably better elsewhere. On the other hand, you also don’t want to wander for hours trying to decide on the appropriate place. Staring into windows, and grazing over menus, shrugging lazily, crippled with hunger and indecision. Once this happened with a couple in Washington DC, wandering aimlessly around Georgetown, travel-worn and looking like Joseph and Mary looking for a damned inn. Sheer agony.How hard is it to pick a place? Go to an Irish Pub and call it a day.  How about finally agreeing on a place but there’s a forty minute wait and no room at the bar? Or you are trying to grab a bite before a concert/play/movie and everyone in the free world went out to eat ten minutes before you did? Or you get to a restaurant, its warm and there’s a free table, but the food is stupid fancy. Once in Vancouver, in a fit of ‘hanger’, a restaurant was selected. When it was revealed that roasted bone marrow was a dinner special, we bolted from the restaurant as soon as the server turned his back. No one is that hungry.

We learned a valuable lesson about the East Coast of Canada. April is still the off-season. Winter is still readily available. Places close early, or aren’t even open yet. Prince Edward Island felt like a ghost town. After hitting extremely bad weather between Quebec and New Brunswick (Benjamin, never having experienced Canadian winter weather, much less while on a busy highway was having a quiet meltdown in the passenger seat. None of the other travellers felt the need to mention that the weather can get much, much worse

The road trip is one of my favorite ways to travel, but there is always that moment when you really just want to gun it to the next destination. Especially in the event of close quarters; being the 5’3 wife of a 6’9 man means you have to give up the extra space to him.

The desire to quench thirst, stretch legs, breathe fresh air, to stand still I fierce.  The road is never ending, the weather increasingly bleak. We get to St Andrews by the Sea, which is also enjoying an off-season, and learn there are very few options available at this hour. It’s pouring rain and we are running across to the dimly lit seafood joint, and a gust of wind blows through, turning my umbrella inside out pulling me backwards. This is where I burst into tears. A hot meal and a cold drink is the only possible reward after a hard day on the road. Starvation is not an option.

Which brings me back to the hotdog vendor along Central Park. I find it odd that he won’t take my money before I take the food. I’m trying to rid myself of the cash so I can get my hand sanitizer on, and he keeps telling me to sit, with an insistent yet cordial air to wait for the hotdogs. I’ll say this. They were big bastards; like if one of those Vegas cups got knocked over onto it’s side. Heaping portions of onions and lettuce, and dripping in the holy trinity of hot dog condiments, mustard, ketchup and relish. This is not a first date kind of food. He hands me two hotdogs, and then tells me the price. He mutters so I think he says ‘eight’ so when I repeat that back to him, and he said ‘eighteen’ my jaw dropped. What a scam! Sure, it’s not the worst crime to happen on this block, but I feel cheated nonetheless. Frankly, set up for disaster, you think $20.00 would merit a few extra napkins. Looking like the Joker, the holy trinity smiling along my cheekbones…I feel a bit like Carlos Santana at Woodstock, when it looked like he was playing his guitar, but in actuality, he was high as fuck and thought he was wrestling a snake.

After slaying the dragon, now the only pressing need is to feel the restorative sensation feeling of freshly washed hands. The search for the bathrooms on holiday is always a noble and necessary quest. I’ll give it up for Las Vegas. Clean bathrooms and all the Wi-Fi you could handle. I guess you’d have to offer those ammenties to complement the giant drinks. There are few things worse than a bursting bladder, and no bathroom in site–or locked doors or long line ups. Or you find a loo and it looks like a junky has just recently died in there.  In Portland, wandering around downtown after two ice cold apricot ciders, we find ourselves in a neighbourhood without a single bar. Or, rather we found a bar, with loud music, red lights and dark corners. The bathrooms were similar to the ones available in hell. I tap each stall door open with my foot and never finding the promise land. The matter grows urgent, a sudden tsunami for the bladder.

This is where men really have the leg up in life. The ability to stand up and pee whenever, wherever. Such options are not available to women, and though it’s never an ideal solution, squatting is best executed while camping or hiking. Besides, since peeing on an overall strap in the eighth grade after drinking a $5.00 bottle of Olde English beer…I wouldn’t dare take my chances again.  Popping my head into an art shop, I spot a man sitting on a stool, hands folded and staring at nothing in particular. ‘Sir, I am a super respectful person, and would like to most politely use your facilities”. He can’t permit access to the bathroom, but does recommend I go across the street to STAG, which was next door to a porn store. “It’s an all male gay strip club”, he recommends that I mixing two of life’s pleasures: a clean bathroom, and room full of lot of wang.  I feel like I’d be crashing a party I wasn’t invited to. We wander further along and find a posh wine bar. I step into the soft lighting and uptempo jazz, and proceed the usual act for the ‘non-patron bathroom usage’.

Act One: “looking for the friend”, scanning the room casually.

Act Two: Can’t seem to find friend. “Might as well freshen up before I sit down for drinks with my friend, who is a real person”.

Act Three: “Hmm. Looks like my friend isn’t here. Better leave immediately, as if having just committed a crime”.

For all its discomforts and inconveniences, the road is my favorite place, the tourist life is my favorite state of being. It is where I am happiest. Travel is transformative; your worst moments become the funniest memories. Wandering around lost in strange cities, brushing past other people’s lives. Listening in on conversations, trying to figure out what the argument across the room is about. Passing though a place that didn’t even know you were there.  It’s my life’s purpose and my greatest passion…I am lucky that my husband wants to share experiences with me. I have to remind myself of all that when I see how the currency exchange adds it’s own flair to our credit card statement.

On the last day in Vegas, following a glorious showgirls performance I strolled along the strip completely satisfied. We witnessed a wedding with Elvis, I got drunk at a Cirque du Solei/Michael Jackson tribute from a MJ themed cocktail–which then led to the deepest sleep of my life.  I saw the most glamorous production that was so glittery and gorgeous that I blubbered like a baby when all the dancers paraded down a grand staircase in their elaborate ensembles.

I’m ready to go back to real life.  Our travel companion Kate, having come from time in Jamaica, New York and DC was spending two more nights in Vegas and then was going to Mexico for a week. This kick-starts the insatiable wanderer in me. A week in Mexico would be good…it would be nice to lay on a beach. Our adventures always include various locations, constantly on the move, onwards and upwards. Always fun, but always something to recover from.

I’m not jealous. I’m perfectly happy to go home. Who needs guacamole and margaritas on the rocks; salt, sleep, sand and ocean water? There’s no place like home remember? See the dog, get back to work, back to the routine. Start planning the next adventure. Midway through my first day of work, when the rising tide of stress-related heartburn returns, I’m struck with regret and longing: “What was I thinking?? When in doubt, always take an extra day!!”  The holiday already feels long ago, in the same way it felt like Vegas went on for ages.  A week on a Mexican beach is suddenly looking like an absolute necessity.

Images Courtesy of Google

 

 

Yah-Mo-Be-There

Fighting on holiday should be banned. Seriously. At the beginning of a recent holiday, while wandering through Seattle’s Pike Place, we spotted a travel-worn couple, standing solemnly amongst their roller luggage. Her mouth agape, her eyes glaring. He’s staring at the pavement, fixated at the concrete, knowing that making eye contact could only mean sudden death.

Yikes. Who wants to be that couple? Travel companionship is a crapshoot, you get along at work, school or at the gym but break down on the beaches on Fiji or the streets of Bangkok.  I once had a total communication breakdown with a friend in the middle of the Southern US. The Bible Belt has a way of making light of religious differences, and somewhere along the way…the tension was impossible to crack. I called my boyfriend from a darkened living room in Arkansas, late at night, blubbering like a baby. Hell is that kind of holiday.

Travel with the same person enough times, you fall into a pattern, become partners on the road. I’ll communicate and he will navigate. (I recently got lost in a Super 8 hotel and am in no way capable of leading any kind of expedition).  Of course, no union is perfect, and conflict happens.  What happens when you fight on the road? A menagerie of bickering, sulking, pouting, arm crossing and big huffing sighs…and whatever my husband is doing, see if I care.

Eventually the call of the road brings you back together, even if it’s in the spirit of neither person wanting to be left in the hotel room while the other person takes the rental car. Ben’s stubborn and I’m bossy; and it’s the equivalent of an ornery Christmas elf trying to push over a Redwood California.

I blame the astrological burden that is our Capricorn birthright. Practical? Humorous? Ambitious? Sure.  Pessimistic, fatalistic, miserly and grudging? You betcha baby. Add these temperaments, throw in excessively close quarters, long distances, and a difference of opinion and you got yourself a real marital bloodbath. Tired, tense and mildly hungover, we set out to drive across a state and a half in one day. Now is the time for quiet, for personal space. Off to the separate corners of the boxing ring to have someone rub your shoulders and hammer you with encouragement while squirting water in your mouth. Only that person is usually your spouse–which makes the vibe all the more somber.

Not talking for nine hours–and not having the excuse of being in a coma is a near mathematical impossibility for me.  I’m a certified chatterbox. If I can’t talk, then I’m going to sing. “You don’t need to take your hands off the steering to sing”, Benjamin mutters. Please. Of course I NEED my hands to sing.  I’m a well caffeinated Celine Dion gunning it along the highway to Yah-Mo-B-There courtesy of the Yacht Rock station on Sirus Satellite Radio.  What a cheesy musical buffet, give me Hall & Oates or give me death! This would be Ron Burgundy’s radio station of choice. Sassy saxophones, cheeky jazz flute, and the oh-so-funky synthesizers…nothing melts tension like Lionel Richie’s All Night Long.

In truth, he totally saved our marriage. Hopefully one day we will be blessed with twins, so that we may name them Lionel and Richie. Maybe we’ll have triplets, call the third one Nicole. Ben switched over to a 90’s station that was featuring Coolio’s Gangsta’s Paradise, which we rapped along to merrily. Marriage counselors should recommend AM radio and the open road to quarreling couples. With just a smidge of rippity rap on the side. I wonder if this is how Beyonce and Jay-Z settle an argument.

Images Courtesy of Google

Sink or Swim

Though the limitations of our immigration process was no longer looming overhead, we struggled to wrap our brains around the idea of freedom. Now that a new year is upon us, it felt necessary to take an hour to treat our personal lives like a business and write out a five-year plan.

*What are your projections for this year?

*What do you wish to achieve in the next five years?

*What do you wish to achieve in January…what will you have hoped to achieve by June…by this time next year? 

*What are your goals and what responsibilities in making such achievements?

It’s a really interesting task in one’s marriage to touch base like that.  How are we doing? Could we be better? How can we improve? How are we spending our money? Where are we going? How are we getting there? Are we going there together? Personally, I love a list for even the most mundane of things.  I need a list if I’m going to get it all done.  Writing it down is like a commitment, a contract of sorts. And there’s nothing better than crossing something off your list.

When I was engaged, and the wedding was on the brink of cancellation, I used my love of lists to try to find an equal ground.  I said “Let’s write separate five-year plans and see how they match up”.

Ideas flowed from my pen; my future flowing like black ink, making my mark all over the page.  First, I’d graduate university, and then I’d get married, and then I’d go to grad school, which would ultimately satisfy the need to move to a different city.  Travel to Europe, New Zealand, Australia, Asia, East Coast Canada.  I added a baby last…just as an after thought really…just because I thought it said something about me if I didn’t.  When we compared notes, my paper was brimming and his paper was non-existent because he didn’t participate in the exercise. You could cut the symbolism with a knife. All unraveled shortly thereafter, and we went our separate ways.

I used that list as a guideline, what I loved before I loved you. What was the most important thing to me? Travel.  Seeing the world was all I ever wanted.  Come to think of it, I actually wrote that list five years ago now.  I crossed quite a few things off that list. I moved to New Zealand, where I met my husband.  We moved to Australia, and saw Sydney, and the entire west coast of the continent.  We went to Indonesia for our wedding anniversary (which satisfies my Asia requirement if necessary).  When we came to Canada we started in Ontario with my best friend Evelyn and her husband and we drove to Prince Edward Island, stopping in every province along the way.  Really all that remains is grad school, Europe and a baby.

Naturally, when one has been married over three years, is over the age of thirty and looking at a five-year life plan, it’s not unreasonable to question where procreation comes into the equation.

My husband asks me outright, jutting his chin towards my papers and handwritten notes. “Where do babies fit in to this plan?”

I respond by shuffling the papers and muttering under my breath.  Where do babies land on this list…in five years I’ll be (gulp) 37.  And from what I’ve gathered, the fallopian factory gets a bit more semen selective after the age of 35.

“Don’t you want to have a baby?”

Goodness yes…later on.  I welcome it.

Benjamin, very gentle, presses on step further.  “I mean…you’re 32 now, and if 35 is the cut-off…um…”

Welcome to my window, and it is closing.

Alec Baldwin can become a father again at 55, but for the ladies out there, there’s only so much time before you have to look into renting uterus’ or become a science experiment in golden years gestation.  There’s a fine time line to walk in these few years of fertility.

After the mumbling and paper shuffling, Benjamin smiles.  “You didn’t really answer my question”.  I look down at my writing.  My husband tries a new angle “What would you need to do before you want a baby?”.  There’s about twenty different countries that come to mind.  I look out the window now, watching the cars pass along on the highway.

“So we need to go to Europe this year then”, he says, because I haven’t.

My lips quiver into a smile.

That would be nice.

Sometimes I feel genuinely anxious about never seeing the world. That Benjamin couldn’t leave the country made me feel terribly claustrophobic. Now that we could hit the international terminal with ease, now it brings up the issue of cost.  As we crunched the numbers over our new year budget, (yes we did the math), we realized that we could afford it, at the expense of…oh I don’t know a down payment of a house?

Lucky bastards.  Back in the day when men wore suits, women wore hats, houses were cheap and smoking was good for you. “It’s your goal. Write it down” Benjamin says.  But how does one afford that? Get a second job waiting tables three nights a week and save all of the tips for a holiday? Not bad.   Get discovered by some media mogul who pays me to travel and make witty observations? Better.  Wherever you are, generous benefactor, now would be a good time to show your face and dollah bills.

Don’t get me wrong.  I’d love to have a little baby bear with my big Benjamin Bear.

I love the idea of this little buddy lying between us in bed kicking chubby little legs, smiling, slobbering, giggling.  Sitting on Benjamin’s shoulders, resting comfortably on my hip while snoozing into my chest. Hearing their little voices, their opinions and thoughts. The intimacy of making a family, raising a child.  I even have baby names picked out.  Hey, I work with children, I 100% get the appeal.

But when my husband wants to put a finger on the calendar to estimate my readiness, I can’t offer that to him.  Yesterday, I visited with my good friend Trish and her baby Melody, who is heart-meltingly adorable.  Trish asked about our family planning future, and I articulated my best possible answer. She, like all the other mothers out there gives me a general answer.  Babies are amazing, but are all-consuming. After you’ve had a baby, you are never not a parent ever again.  So… A) There’s never a ‘good time’ to start a family B) But take your time if it’s possible.

‘

I don’t know why I feel like having babies is something that other people do.  Like for myself, it still seems way too early.  But I’m 32 now, I’m not a kid.  I’m happily married, my husband and I are gainfully employed, mentally stable and caring individuals. I’d be a perfectly loving mother, and I have that love to give. Still there’s something generally panic inducing about cranking out a little one.

Firstly…as a rather petite woman with a nearly seven-foot tall husband, I do fear the size of the offspring.  My mother has on more than one occasion confessed a similar fear…on my behalf.  Which is unnerving, seeing as she gave birth three times without so much as an aspirin, because “cave-women didn’t have painkillers and they did just fine without them”. Therefore she could paint a rather clear portrait on the realities of childbirth, therefore I’d like to go the opposite route as cave-women didn’t have painkillers…but “smoke ’em if you got ’em, is what I always say.

I mean, you can dress it up all you want, but there’s no easy, attractive or painless way to get that baby out.  I wish it were as easy as it was in my Barbie Doll era…this bitch even gets a flat stomach immediately after the baby is removed.

I think my fear of childbirth can be directly linked to Melanie’s experience in “Gone With the Wind”.  We used to watch this movie on a yearly basis in my childhood, and that bit was always perfectly terrifying.

If a baby is stuck…how do you get it out anyhow?  If someone told you they know everything about giving birth, but then at the last-minute said that they didn’t “know nothing”, and the only person that can help you secretly hates you and openly loves your husband, and the civil war is laying waste to all fine young men, keeping every capable doctor occupied.  Wouldn’t you be nervous?

Granted…my situation is not anywhere near “GWTW” territory.  The fear and doubts would subside.  Maybe what I hadn’t achieved beforehand didn’t matter.  It’s not like I’d give birth and immediately fall off a cliff.  I’d still be me, just plus one. I would love this baby.  If we had a baby we’d be perfectly happy.

But I’d like to explore the options, gamble with the numbers.  How late could I push this time back?  33, 34, 35…Gwen Stefani?  She’s 44 and fabulous and doing motherhood her own way.

Halle Berry had a baby at 47, Kate Winslet, 38.  Then again these women are also richer than God, so who knows the amount of money poured into the enterprise.  It’s like Angelina Jolie; only when you are that wealthy can you start collecting children from other countries the way I do scarves and knickknacks in far off marketplaces. And keeping them well-educated and well fed ain’t cheap either.

So if the issue is not if–but when.   How can I take my goals by the horns and get myself where I need to go?

How can I get to the point that I am pushing out this twenty-five pound baby and saying–“I did what I wanted while I wanted and I have no regrets!…also I love morphine!”

And then a new adventure could begin with our new little buddy…and we’ll take them everywhere.

Listen, if I don’t have an answer for my husband or myself…then I really can’t even dream of making something up to finish this blog with a nice conclusive ribbon wrapped around in.  I think as far as all dreams go, it is pretty rare that someone knocks on your door and hands that dream to you.  You need to go out and get what you want.  With the help of carefully drawn plans, we can now set our sights on the future, have some control over our lives.  And this whole baby dilemma will feel a little less like a nightmare.

Images Courtesy of Google

More Than You Could Ever Know

Last Sunday morning, the first of December, was spent doing what I prefer to do best. Cradling a cup of coffee in my fingers, wrapped up in a blanket on the sofa.  We had been dog-sitting from the night before, and I had Harriet nestled upon my lap, curled next to the fire, listening to Micheal Bublé’s Christmas album.

We’re listening to “All I want for Christmas Is you”, another favorite Christmas favorite.  It never falls to choke me up a little at the end of “Love Actually“. Even when Mariah Carey goes there, I can still get behind it.

It’s an ordinarily a fast-paced jingle, (What? Mariah Carey co-wrote it? Huh, who knew?) but Bublé makes it a slow love song.  I am feeling aglow with holiday spirit.  Feeling hopeful for the month ahead.  Benjamin is checking his email and spots a message from Immigration and Citizenship Canada.  He says my name aloud in a stunned tone and reads the email to me.  His permanent residency application had been completed.  We simply had to pay a fee and we would be contacted regarding a time in which to meet an immigration official.  Benjamin joins me on the couch, Harriet still nesting near me.  We kissed and cried as Bublé crooned along.  All we want is to be a normal married couple, free to leave the country, free to make long term decisions, free to make a home. And how lovely that this news comes to us before Christmas.

The December calendar has a lot of writing on it.  Meetings, events, parties, concerts.  It’s all so busy and exciting but unfortunately the temperature is so bone cold that it would normally take dynamite to blast me out of the house. It was -20 yesterday, and I can’t say that I love that.  There’s not even the magic of snow.  It’s that part of the snow cycle where it starts to look like cookie dough, mud and chunks of rock and debris in thick slushy slabs.  The cold is bitter and is mood transferable.  I’ve been so anxious about winter driving conditions.  My tire fell flat the other day.  There was nothing worse than standing by helplessly in the frigid night air as Benjamin set up the air compressor to fill the tire so I could take it to the shop in the morning.  In a moment of sheer anxiety, practically frothing at the mouth my husband took hold of my shoulders.  “Alicia, you have got to accept that shit happens“.  Shit happens?

I know shit happens.  Have you read a newspaper lately?  Across the world and in your very own community lives are being smashed to smithereens.  I’d need both hands to count my major “SH” moments.  Natural disasters, major accidents, violent encounters, broken hearts, I’ve seen my share.  The agony of catastrophe, the inconvenience of tragedy.  Things take forever, and them they come and go too quickly.  Things get broken and need mending.  People make mistakes and need forgiving.  Shit is happening all the time everywhere.  Sure, I could cope better with frustration, I could be gentler with myself, I could go with the flow, but I don’t.  I don’t care for surprises.  Good or bad, I’d prefer ample warning.

From that Sunday on the sofa, feeling blessed, happy and relaxed, and all that shit happens stress in between, came Friday afternoon. I arrive home for my lunch break around 1:30pm and see the light flashing on the answering machine. “Hello this is Immigration and Citizenship Canada, bring your pertinent papers and we’ll see you in Vancouver next Wednesday. I’m not going to give you my name or number so just be there or be square. So…Bye.”  Uh…what? Next Wednesday? I looked at the packed calendar…this was not on the agenda. We have work. It’s so expensive, so close to Christmas. Such a long way to go on such short notice.  We’ve waited forever for news, and now it’s on our door step and the timing is utterly inconvenient.  Not to sound ungrateful; we want nothing more than to resolve this and move forward with our lives.  But it’s a bit like the old librarian in “The Shawshank Redemption“, he had gotten used to imprisonment.  He had a good thing going at the library, had a pet crow, good friends, he was used to the conditions.  When faced with freedom it becomes his undoing.

I called Benjamin, who shared my reaction.  It all seems so sudden.  Not even a week’s notice to make plans.  We speak briefly, and hang up to call our respective employers.  I begin looking up flights, weather reports, all while being on hold with the immigration call center.   I am trying to connect with an actual human on the phone, but an elaborate labyrinth of options always leads to something along the lines of: “We’re super duper busy right now, we urge you to check the website”.  The lunch hour nearly over, and not a single moment spent actually lunching, I try the old trick–to just press zero, but that wily old recording, she’s just not having it. I bellowed…no, shrieked...no raged into the phone. “I JUST WANT TO SPEAK TO A REAL PERSON”.

I was desperate, angry, frustrated.  How foolish were we to think we had any control in this matter.  We did not dream of being called in December, we figured sometime between January and March…maybe in the spring at the latest.  Not next week.  When I finally got on the wait list, I was told there would be at least a thirty minute wait, which was time I did not have.  Okay then…let’s drive to Vancouver in the middle of winter. Why not?

We’ve made lists and arrangements and are warming up to this new development.  I’m nervous about the weather, Ben is nervous about the meeting.  Of course, there’s nothing to fear, our marriage is legitimate and he has every right to be here.  In an immigration office I once saw an beastly, overweight senior citizen with his young Asian bride. She wore a basketball jersey as a dress with striped knee socks and high heels. She complained endlessly about the long wait and he snapped impatiently at her.  Certainly they had more to answer to than my husband and I…but you just never know.  Benjamin has sorted through all the required documents, and already we are discussing what else to bring…just in case.  You could bring every piece of paperwork you ever received, along with your marriage certificate, love letters and photographs and they’d be like “Everything looks great, if we could just get a receipt from the coffee you purchased this morning, that would be great”.   And the color would drain from your face, blanching at the memory of telling the girl at Starbucks to go ahead and keep that golden ticket.

 Fuuuuuck.

It’s as if we cant possibly imagine our lives without that hanging over our heads.  From the moment we met, we have lived under a bureaucratic umbrella.  Separation was a very real possibility if we didn’t cling to each other fiercely, and fill out the appropriate paperwork for three different countries.  To think that by Christmas morning my husband would be a permanent resident, that we could think seriously about our future seems too good to be true.  I can’t let myself imagine the possibilities it until I know the outcome. If you ask my husband he’d like to acquire a dog, truck and a baby.  Those things sound perfectly lovely, but you know me…I’m also excited about being able to leave the country again.  Maybe we’ll get to Paris after all.  As long as we get there together.

Benjamin: husband, friend and bear…best of luck on Wednesday.  All I want for Christmas is vous.

             Images Courtesy of Google

Bears & Little Boys

A grey, Saturday morning, in the house alone for an hour while Benjamin visits the dentist. I’m left puttering around the townhouse in giant warm socks, ones that are too big and bunch in voluminous folds around my ankle.  I spent a small amount of time wandering around, tidying up various piles of messes in various rooms of the house.  Which I like to do first thing on the weekend.  It clears my head.  We’re also moving at the end of the month, and the landlord is wanting to show today.  So yes, there was added incentive to doing it though I was feeling a touch hungover. And why not? After all, I had three drinks over a span of four hours, surely that necessitates a massive headache the following morning.

Nothing a little coffee, breakfast and Miles Davis can’t fix.  And light cleaning of course.  It’s like putting on a bra, it’s not always comfortable, but at least everything is in the right place.  The phone rings, and it’s Benjamin, standing in front of the parking meter downtown.  He was dreading the appointment, which I totally get, it’s rather high on my top ten ways not-to spend a Saturday morning.  Then again…I don’t think anyone looks forward to hard time in the dentist chair.

He sounds tired and vulnerable, out there in the big bad world, short on change.  He said, “I’ve forgotten my chapstick, and I’m worried about getting chapped lips“.  This breaks my heart, for all it’s cuteness, and I can’t help but imagine a bear with a little suitcase lost and alone in the city.

Poor fellah.  To think I kept him out late, after my improv show,  myself getting pre-hungover while he politely sipped ice tea, and then shipping him off to the dentist for a cleaning without appropriate change or chapstick.

I offer sympathy and solutions, and recommend asking the receptionist for change, and the hygienist for Vaseline.  When we hang up, I return to Operation: Relax & Rehydrate.  As I move around the house, there’s a dialogue rolling along in my mind.  There’s a steady thread that is rapidly growing into an afghan quilt of ideas for today’s blog.  Of course, my writing process is a bit like my cleaning–fold three t-shirts in the laundry pile and then wander aimlessly into the kitchen, drink more coffee (which, let’s be honest is like hot, milky anti-Gatorade, for all it’s non-hydrating properties), before moving on to thirty other half-finished projects.  And to be honest, I’m not sure I even know what I’m writing about anymore.  I’ve been listening to the composer Philip Glass, who creates the most exquisite pieces of music, but I think it’s leads me to believe that I too am writing something that is dramatic and timeless, when mostly I’m just blathering incoherently, and trying not to barf on the keyboard. 

By the time Benjamin returns home, I’ve listened to the entire soundtrack of “The Hours“,  did a thorough search of a variety of images that are connected to “dentist” and “hangover” and written two meager paragraphs.  Freshly dentisted, but feeling raw like sashimi, he shows me the spanking new chapstick he got along with his toothbrush.  He pulls it out of his pocket in a way that reminds me of a little boy I know, who always carries a lip balm around, ‘just in case’.  When I met him and his mother at the pre-school-year orientation, he took it out to show me, and explained at great length the importance of hydrated lips.  It was about the cutest thing I had ever heard. When my husband, almost seven feet with a red beard and big blue eyes stands in my office with his new chapstick, all can think of are bears and little boys.  And so I wrap my arms around my husband, who is embodying both boyish and bearish at the same time.  And in my less than sprightly state, I wrap as much of him as I can in my arms, and love him just a little bit more than I did before he left the house this morning.

Images Courtesy of Google

Ring Around the Rosie

This is the last weekend before my sister-in-law comes and we go on our holiday.  Now that it is Sunday I can officially declare that Kate is coming this week!  Naturally, when you have guest come to stay, you clean your house from floor to ceiling, but the real work is pretending you live like that all the time.  Yesterday, the first order of business was to wash ‘Cracking Rosie”, our blessed little Kia Rio.

Sorry, I’m trying something different with my hair (and experimenting with lip fillers) and now I look like Cameron Diaz.  Oops! Not intentional.  I had to get a restraining order for that guy in the background cause he kept screaming that there was “Something about Mary”, when all I was trying to do was suds up my sweet ride.

Wow, I really do look different as a blond, don’t I? I haven’t eaten a meal in about sixteen years, but I can wear a size zero, and to me, that’s more important than things like cheese, booze and bowel movements.

Anyway, we’re at the car wash, my husband and I, with Cracking Rosie.  There are about eight stalls altogether, and they are all occupied with bad-ass pick up trucks.  It was like “Bring Your Big-Sexy-Truck to the Car Wash Day”, and Ben missed the memo.  He is washing, rinsing and waxing the tiny red vehicle with this brave, stoic, stiff upper lip.  I know he appreciates coming to Canada and immediately having a vehicle on-hand. But I think he’s grown tired of sharing a vehicle that requires his now famous “two-pronged attack”, where he has to wedge his upper body into the car, press his weight onto the arm rest, and finally he swing his long legs in behind the wheel.  I know he’d like to have his own wheels, his own vehicular space that he could fill with tools, and other man things…like big slabs of meat, boats and guns.  Instead he is washing Rosie, while I consistently get underfoot like an untrained puppy, asking whether or not he thinks “I’m a good helper”.

I know right? I’m not even washing the car, and I’m spraying the ground! And no good can come of letting that soap dry like that.

In a tantalizing row of trucks that are so big I would require a step ladder, that size suits my seven-foot tall husband just fine.  He looks longingly at the vehicles.  And I feel kind of sad for him.  I know owning a truck is his Canadian dream, it’s the first thing he’s get when we receive a positive word from Immigration Canada.  He wants a truck as badly as I do a book deal…or skinnier thighs.  Yeah…that’s badly.  But it’s not his time, nor is it mine evidently.  And so, we are to make do with the possessions we already have, share them like well-behaved children, and shine them up like new, until the day comes that we get all the things that we desire.

All Images Courtesy of Google

Parton Ways

Several years ago, I played an embittered first wife in Arthur Miller’s play “After the Fall”.  I was meant to deliver this line, “I am a separate person”, with stoney certainty, but at the time, I didn’t quite understand it.  What does that even mean? Of course I’m a separate person, I’m standing apart from you.  But I’m married to you, so I’m connected to you? Either way…you’re leaving me for a thinly veiled version of Marilyn Monroe?

But the play wasn’t about Louise, the nag, the shrew–it was about his second marriage, with Miller’s most famous wife, Marilyn Monroe, the red-hot mess.  (Before he can possibly consider marrying his third wife, the breath of fresh air).   Now, I love me some Monroe, my heart breaks for her, but historically speaking–Monroe was not a spectacular wife.  She just wasn’t. She was a selfish star who self-medicated with pills and champagne.  She was mentally ill, and wasn’t properly cared for.  Of course, Miller tried his damnedest to save her, but it was a truly impossible feat.  It would have been so easy to love her, but it was have been impossible to sustain that affection because it would have been like trying to fill an eternal void with all your precious energy.

The issue for Miller was that he was at a great height in his success, he was a beloved playwright with a Pulitzer Prize, and catalogue of important work.  But under Monroe’s spell, his work dwindled.  His sanity suffered.  He lost himself in trying to keep their relationship afloat.

He worked on her projects, followed her everywhere and even wrote the last film she ever completed, “The Misfits”.  By the end of filming, they flew home on separate planes, and their marriage was over.

Monroe was a rapidly wilting flower, and nothing could be done to change that.  I think she was convinced that marriage could save her life, but that’s a pretty lofty expectation for any relationship.  But Miller wasn’t without fault, he had told reporters that Monroe would make fewer pictures now that they were married: “She will be my wife.  That’s a full-time job”.  And that’s a mistake old Joe DiMaggio made as well, that marriage would somehow tame Monroe’s ways.  When in fact…I think marriage brought out the worst in her.  Anyhow, she and DiMaggio didn’t last a year, and her relationship with Miller failed after five years.  They split in 1961, and she died the following year.

Being married to Monroe would have been an all-consuming gig, and it would not always be rewarding.  (Louise ain’t looking too bad now eh Arthur?)  Demanding to be thought of as a separate person is not a crime.  It’s not a crime to demand that your spouse all but dissolve into your own being, but it’s certainly a misdemeanor.  In marriage, perhaps a bit of separateness is  needed for longevity.  Now married, I am just learning what that means.  We belong together, we live, eat, sleep and travel together, but we are still separate entities.  I think of marriage as a kind of three-legged race.  You are bound to each other, and are trying to run in a unified order in the same direction.  But what if you want to go in opposite directions?  Is that the fork in the road that signifies the end of your marriage?  That’s a perfectly terrifying thought.  In your marriage…or in any long-term relationship, there are decisions to be made.  These range from, “where are we going to order our Chinese takeout from?”, “which grocery store will we shop at?” “what movie are we going to watch tonight?” to “where are we going to live?” “how many children are we going to have?” “how will we spend our money?” “if I become a famous [insert profession here] will you accompany me to [insert award show, press junket, photo shoot here].  These are serious questions, and when the answers vary, it’s cause for concern.

As a couple, my husband and I are polar opposites.  He is a strong silent type, and I just won’t shut the fuck up.  I want to be onstage, and he’d prefer to be behind the scenes.  I’m a social butterfly, and he’s a solitary bear.  He’s a sturdy structure, and I’m a twister swirling all around.  Our unifying quality is that we are both stubborn as  hell, and we often lock horns.  Our marital three legged race can be a challenge, I want to go one way, he the other.  But we don’t want to break up, fall apart, get divorced.   Is it possible to remove that tie and change the game?

These conversations have been occurring more frequently: “your thing doesn’t have to be my thing”.  Of course, I’ve never been married before, and obviously all my relationships failed before I met my husband, so I’m no expert on how to get these things right.  I love him deeply, I am committed to him, but I still belong to myself.  How do you successfully live your life as a spouse without letting go of your personal goals.  How does that important role not engulf you?

Last night, lying in the dark, thinking about my marriage, my husband, myself, my thoughts turn (naturally) to Dolly Parton.  Hasn’t she been married for ages to a man that has nothing to do with her career?

Yup. Dolly Parton has been married for a staggering 47-years to Carl Dean, whom she met at a laundromat when she was 20 years old.  Dean has absolutely nothing to do with the public aspects of her career.  She explained this in an interview with Oprah–another gal that knows a bit about being a “separate person”.  She and her partner of 25 years, rarely appear together publicly, and prefer it that way.  They also never married and claim that is what kept them together.

As for Dolly and her camera-shy husband, they learned quickly what worked for them:

“Early on in my career, I’d won [Song of the Year] in 1966, and I asked him to go with me. … He was so uncomfortable…He said: ‘Now I want you to do everything you want to do. I want you to enjoy every minute of your life. But don’t you ever ask me to go to another one of these things. Because I am not going.'”

And so, she never pushed him into partaking in another public event ever.  What is really interesting is that in exploring these ‘separate’ relationships, I’ve noticed an abundance  of criticism and suspicion.  Open marriages, secret lesbianism– Parton is rumored to be in a homosexual relationship with her best friend, a rap Oprah has also dealt with. God forbid it has anything to do with being comfortable in your marriage and and confident about going your own way.  And it is just that–she wanted to go this way, he wanted to go that way, but at the end of the day, they wanted to come home to the same place.

“He’s proud of me. He’s just basically shy about things like that. He doesn’t like crowds.  And I respect his privacy. I respect the fact that he loves to be out of the limelight. That’s one of the reasons I think we’ve lasted so long.”

(Wow, they seriously do not appear together in public, pictures of them are hard to find, and those you do see are grainier than a poorly made sex tape).

This is revolutionary thinking.  When Ben comes home from work, I’m invigorated by this concept–that I can have a life that I want, and the husband that I love, and that I have solid evidence that separateness can occasionally work.  I’m following him around the house and jabbering away about Dolly Parton.  A smile creeps across his face when I explain that Dolly happily goes it alone, and her husband happily stays at home.

Now, my husband doesn’t want me to be alone, but he’s relieved at the thought of having his own choices as well.     What I’m learning is that while there is room for growth, people have unchangeable qualities.  And I’m pretty sure that would appear on any ‘Ways to Not Cock-Up Your Marriage” lists:  don’t try to change your partner.  If you marry someone thinking that the ring on their finger will magically make them go against the values they started out with, then it will never work.  For a marriage to succeed for decades upon decades, there needs to be a bit of room; freedom to wander away, and know that there is a place to come home to, and a person who is waiting to hear about what you achieved all on your own.

All Images Courtesy of Google

Red Beard

When my mother was a young woman, she knew this super foxy guy with a super groovy beard.  Total bearded bell-bottomed babe-fest until he inexplicably shaved his face, and to my mother’s chagrin she realized that he didn’t have a chin.  Now I was old enough to be told this anecdote, but young enough that I really couldn’t understand how someone didn’t have a chin.  “Like it’s just his lips and then nothing?”  But that story really stuck with me; imagine that something as simple as a beard could totally create or destroy your appeal.

I’m going to just put this out there.  I love a good beard. I enjoy neatly groomed facial hair–I preferred tousled, bearded Ryan Gosling in “The Notebook” .

Many fine men had mighty fine beards.  Whatever your feelings are about Jesus, you’ve got to admit that he had a rocking look going for him.

Ernest Hemingway, Santa Claus; so similar you’d get them confused.

There is something so rugged and manly about a beard; when Clooney and Affleck got all “lets grow beards for Argo award season, I was totally supportive.  And they sort of consider me their muse–so they listen to me.  So you are welcome, I am responsible for this:

Courtesy of digitalspy.co.uk

And I’m not adverse to an excellent mustache; I love Tom Selleck in Magnum PI…that is actually me he is talking to on his giant phone.

“No, I’m just blogging about you right now…no I won’t make fun of your chest hair”.

But let me make this clear before we go any further into this facial hair forest.  Not all you card carrying penis-slingers are eligible for beard-dom.  Sporting play-off beards for such occasions as the –Stanley Bowl or Super Cup—whatever the fuck sport is ruining my life that day, is not always acceptable.  I hate to say it–Movember, the growing of mustaches to raise money for prostate cancer awareness–it’s a noble cause, but it’s such a long, filthy-looking growth road.  I once had a boyfriend during that month that grew the saddest, weakest little rat ‘stache.  It was the ‘Rudy’ of facial hair.  From a distance it looked like a dirt smear.  I could have grown a better mustache.  That November was, historically speaking, the longest month of my life.

My husband grows a nice beard; it’s actually quite magnificent.  It’s copper in color, and with his blue eyes and tall stature, I just want to throw him in a plaid shirt and watch him chop wood.  All winter long Ben’s beard grew mightily.  This was his second beard, the first time he grew it out was during a long road trip up the Western Australian coastline.  He looked as rugged as the territory around us.  Once home, he just shaved it off without warning, just came out of the bathroom a bald faced stranger.  The most recent time, Ben felt that with the impending summer heat, that it was best to lose the winter whiskers.  I tried to fight for his facial hair, but to no avail.  Ben was going to shave his face, and there was nothing I could do.  He shaved his head and his face was hit with instant regret.  A moment ago he looked like:

Courtesy of captain-redbeard@deviantart.com

…and now he looked like a really tall new born baby.  He stared at his naked face in the mirror, and picked up a clump of hair from the sink and tried to stick it onto his face.  “I miss my beard…I’ve made a mistake”.  I’m standing in the door…laughing through my devastation.  “You look like Daddy Warbucks“.  He looks at me; “I don’t know who that is”.

“Yes, you do”.  And then I start babbling about “Annie” and Carol Burnett, and don’t know whether I am helping anyone.

I mean, he’s got a nice face, and I’m all for clean-shaven, it’s just that you get used to a certain look.  There’s a pretty crucial scene in “A Star is Born” when Kris Kristofferson tries to chop his luscious salt and pepper facial locks (intense, I know).  Barbra Streisand stops him, wrenches the scissors out of his hand,  and says: “I don’t even know what you’ll look like, I may not even like you without a beard”.   And he doesn’t shave, they embrace passionately and it is glorious.

It’s a good thing he didn’t waste his magnificent face muzzle, but that’s the good thing about beards, they always grow back.

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Watch Closely Now

Hot on the heels of my divine plan to lavish my husband with a post-work day feast, he falls off the face of the earth for over three hours.  He’s usually finished work at 330, and if there is even a notion that he will be late, he will call.  In the three years we’ve been together, we have been in each others pockets.  He’s been the only person I’ve known in a city or country. We have been together on planes, trains, hostels, hotels, tight places and crowded spaces.  We were sitting side by side in a movie theatre in Christchurch when a deadly 6.3 earthquake occurred in 2011.    We were in the middle of the city, and had to make the treacherous journey back to Ben’s mother’s house on the beach.  We eventually abandoned the car on the side of the road–and crossed a damaged and distorted bridge towards a wooded area. We sprinted through the forest, which was flooded from broken water mains.  The ground below was rumbling and there was an audible growl as the earth prepared to shudder once more.  It was as if we were being chased by an invisible monster; and this creature could kill us and we’d never see it coming.  Ben was ahead of me, his hand around my wrist, pulling me, his grasp refusing to let me go.  Without slowing his speed, he looked back at me with wild eyes and said: “You know I love you–right?” And for a moment I thought those were the last words I was ever going to hear.  As a consequence of this experience and the exhausting days that followed, we are very safety and contingency plan focused.  We’ve discussed exit strategies, we have decided on a meeting place in case we are separated during an emergency or disaster–no matter what, we need to be able to find each other, it is the most important thing.

Yesterday, I rushed to do all my errands and tasks so I could have my evening free (see Good Housekeeping).  I tried to call Ben at noon and at again at three–half an hour before he was due to be off work, but both his phones were out of service.  And then hours went by without a word.  Ben is an considerate, consistent man and this was the most uncharacteristic thing ever…and it made my blood run cold.  I called my mother and we practiced the age-old art of two women cooking up reasons for why a man hasn’t called.  He was working out of town so there were realistic reasons for his not being within reach: cell phone service, driving time, working overtime etc, but feeling so alone in the house, I felt strangled by fear.  There is something so terrifying about loving someone so much, and  watching them go out into this unstable and unpredictable world everyday.  I say this to my mother on one of our phone calls, and she concurs by saying that with parenthood it’s even worse; your happiness is directly linked to their safety.  My mother suggests that I call the office, or the manager of Ben’s latest work site.  Which I do, and he has enough information to ease my nervous state from red to yellow.  But I will not exhale until my husband walks through that door.

While I wait, I try to occupy my time, but I had done already everything on my list.  I organize my office, sort out the file cabinet, trying to bring order to my life.  I can’t focus on anything else–I can’t read, I’m not even trying to write, and I can’t watch anything, which is a shame because I had Barbra Streisand’s “A Star is Born“, and would have happily tucked into that bit of cinema gold if I were in a happier place.

“A Star is Born” would easily appear on my top ten-all time greatest movies ever, not because it is a perfect movie–it’s cheesy, it’s dated, it’s over-dramatic, but it’s just wonderful.  It’s a devastating love story about a self-destructive rock star who elevates a struggling night club singer to stardom, which ultimately leads to his own demise.

I have seen this movie a number of times, and when I first saw it, my life was changed for the better.  The music! The chemistry! The tragedy! The passion, my god the passion! I mentioned it at work recently, and a co-worker, a prickly widow who does not always enjoy my presence, piped up at the reference.  “I love that film”.  And thanks to this 70’s musical, we found a wormhole of common ground.  She had not seen the movie in years, and I wanted to bring that picture back into her life.  I rented it and brought it to her the next day, so she could watch it on her days off.  I wanted to connect with this woman, I really felt for her, having lost her husband.  I worry about the kind of hurt you have to live with every single day, I worry about those who have to carry it around.  She brought the movie back, and of course enjoyed it all over again, because it is (if I haven’t said so already) an amazing movie.  I too wanted to revisit the film, but this is one of those “Cairo Time” kind of movies where Ben draws the line in the cinematic sand.  But last night, as I paced around the house, not knowing how to wait gracefully, I couldn’t bear the thought of that movie.  The agony of losing someone, the thought of that absence is too much to bear, even if it belongs to someone else, even if it’s just fiction.  Even if it’s just a movie.

This film had many writers, but two of the final writing credits belong to Joan Didion and her husband John Gregory Dunne.  I love Joan Didion, she is one of my favorite writers, she is real icon in the world of essays and creative-non fiction.  In recent years she wrote the memoir “The Year of Magical Thinking“, which examines the year following her husband’s death.  I read it once, cried about seventeen times and I swore I would never read it again.  It was that good;  good in the most devastating possible way.  The loss was too much to bear so in order to release it or make sense of it,  she has write about her pain, and thus, continue that relationship by recollecting it and repeating it in her own words.  At the end of “A Star is Born”, Esther Hoffman sings her own version of her John Norman Howard’s famous song “Watch Closely Now” along with her own “With One More Look at You”, and nobody have ever grieved through a musical medley quite like this.  Both women find their own path through the mire because there is no other way to survive.  But they’d much rather have their partners than the art form that remains.

Ben walks through the door after seven, and he knows what the worry will look like on the other side of the wall.  I am so relieved to see him that I wrap my arms around him and sob into his chest.  And I do in fact, stare at him all night like a dog watches someone while they eat. Though this is my day off, I miss a rare opportunity to sleep in and I visit with Ben before he goes off to work.  He will be back at the same site, working late and out of cell phone range.  He kisses me goodbye, and walks down the street to catch his ride. I watch closely  as he moves further and further away—this large man shrinking in size.  He keeps looking back, at the pink bathrobe in the doorway and at his little wife inside of it–who is forever praying for his health and well being.  He waves one last time before edging further out of my vision.  But I don’t close the door until he is completely out of sight.