What do you fear you could endure?

What is your biggest fear? There's an interesting question for someone who struggles with anxiety. My mind immediately jumps to Franklin D. Roosevelt's first inaugural address: 

"...let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself -- nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts..." 

It turns out, however, there is one thing I fear more than my own fear. A few summers ago I came face-to-face with my fear. I'd love to say I overcame it, but... 

This was nothing like meeting a tarantula, although my whole life I have been petrified by spiders. Literally, if confronted by one, even the itsy-bitsiest of arachnids can send me into heart-pounding, frozen in place, panic. Unlike my friend Lola, I'm not concerned about them laying eggs in my mouth, or accidentally eating them, or even being bitten. The entirety of them being just freaks me the hell out. 

Logically, I know they serve a greater good, so I do my best to live and let live. If a spider is in my space, I can break through my panic to capture it and set it "free." Sure, there'll be a tremendous amount of squealing and running in circles shouting "ewwwww," but I'm a mom. Mom's get shite done. 

Now, if you ask others what their biggest fears are, I'd wager many will admit they fear death on some level. Particularly as we embrace the realities of parenthood, the idea of a premature death can be terrifying. 

While I get that, personally I've reached an age where my own bodily harm and questions about my mortality are frightening only because I am afraid what my loss would mean to my children and my husband. 

My husband, on the other hand, now we've come round to where my deepest fear comes from: his death. Even writing about this creeps me out, in a superstitious way. 

Because, the thing is, I saw it happen. One day, 16 months ago, I watched in horror as my tall, strong, stoic husband slowly collapsed to the floor of a toy store. For reasons that are still a medical mystery, he had a full body grand mal seizure. 

During those long minutes I held on to his hand as he convulsed, soothing him and begging him to stay with me. His eyes rolled back, blood eventually ran out of his mouth, and as his body relaxed in it's unconsciousness, I had a just enough time to imagine what life would be like for me, for my children, if we lost this man. 

I have never been so terrified in all my days. 

Would we endure? Of course, I know we would. As I know my loved ones would go on should a dire fate befall me. 

But if you're asking what I fear more than anything? 

To endure a life without my husband. 

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How I Found MY Prince in a Pile of Frogs

Every now and again I’ll be chatting with people who have older kids and they will ask “How old were you when you started dating?”  

This question always stumps me, because I was never really one to “date” at any point. Sure, long before I was “allowed” to go out with anyone, I had boyfriends. Or I didn’t, which was fine too. But even after I was out of my parents’ house, I wasn’t really a “go out on a date” kind of person. As a singleton in my 20s, living in NYC, I tried dating websites, but all I found was a plague of frogs waiting to be unleashed.  

Now that I'm thinking about this, my mom actually encouraged me to go on more dates. Sometimes this was rejected by me in favor of fun with friends. But more often, time and again really, I ended up diving right into long term relationships.  I imagine the restless nights mom had, worried I was going to run off to get my MRS degree before I finished college. 

She need not have worried. Maturity, they say, is what comes with age. Wisdom is said to come from experience. I considered the lack of these qualities in most of my boyfriends as a strong reason for not getting married young. 

Naturally, I watched many friends walk down the aisle in their twenties. Some of those unions were successful, others were very much not. To my observation, however, age plays no role in the divorce rate. 

Growing up I just had an understanding (reinforced by my mother) that when it came to getting married, it was better to wait. Both my parents were married/divorced prior to marrying each other. As it happens, my husband’s father was also divorced prior to his marrying my mother-in-law. 

It’s therefore interesting, I think, that Hubs was married for close to a decade & in the process of divorcing before we ever met. While I wasn’t married before, I too had been in a long term live-in relationship. If you want to get technical, it was a domestic partnership. 

I suppose it is worth noting that at the time in NYC a domestic partnership was actually intended for same-sex couples to have a "separate but equal" alternative to marriage. It was also a way hetero couples could legally co-mingle without actually taking the plunged. In my head, I saw it as a step toward marriage. Looking back, I’m pretty sure my partner saw it as a sidestep.

This was the relationship I was in when mom died. I’ve said before that after her death I ran from responsibility and kept running until I found someone who made me want to be a grown up again. So it should come as no real shock that after her death my “Legally Not Married” status suited me just fine. True, I’d have protested this at the time, but I was very clouded in those days. Frankly I made poor decisions with fierce abandon. 

Spoiler Alert: The “someone” I was referring to? The guy I now refer to as Hubs. 

"The problems of your past are your business. 

The problems of your future are my privilege. 

That's all I have to say, that's all I need to know."

~John Watson, to his wife Mary, in Sherlock ~

Obviously when our paths joined, my husband and I each had a past. There is always the tricky bit when you first meet, right? How to paint yourself in the best light? 

I was 34, and after nine years in The Big Apple I was finally living life the way I imagined it would be.  I no longer felt a need to try and hide part of myself to please a significant other. Honestly, that shite is exhausting. Suddenly I found myself chatting up someone who seemed even less interested in all that silly preening than I was. 

Better still, in the same way I knew we could have a fight without blowing the whole damn relationship up, we both came in with a "take me as I am" outlook. Maybe that doesn't sound romantic, but my eyes saw the perfect prince to my princess in a tarnished tiara.

We spoke of things in our early months together that I'd never felt safe to talk about with any significant other. You know, the sort of things you in trust to your best friends and swear them to never tell anyone ever? That stuff. Without ever saying it in so many words it was clear: he was asking about my past to know and understand me, not to judge me and someday use my mistakes as leverage in our relationship. 

Not that there aren't still things to learn, of course. One of the best parts of marriage is you can spend a lifetime getting to know someone, especially someone who had 3 or 4 decades of life lived before you got them. I can't speak for Hubs, but every day I gain a little more knowledge. Sometimes it makes me love him more. Sometimes I shake my head & decide I still love him anyway. 

Occasionally on my Facebook page I will post examples of obscure ways I realize my husband is my perfect match. I call these moments #ReasonsWhyWeWork. Romantic, right? Whatever, we may balance the high level of sarcasm with our tender moments, but this is way more accurate than something all lovey-dovey. 

Mostly we are just wryly embracing the beautiful mess we have made of our lives - Together.  

This piece was inspired by, and written as part of the #MarchMarriageChallenge, co-hosted by 

The Eyes of a Boy & Huppie Mama. 

You can find all of the amazing marriage focused posts here. 

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Revisiting Conscious Coupling

I originally published this piece about a year ago, not long after Gwyneth Paltrow & her husband Chris Martin had just announced their separation. Only they were calling it a Conscious Uncoupling. This got an awful lot of press for being a very unusual and new-agey sounding way to say "we are divorcing". 

Today would have been my parents' 42nd wedding anniversary. So much of what I learned about love and marriage came from watching them. I wanted to honor them by revisiting this piece for The March Marriage Challenge. 

Paltrow & Martin's split happened just before we were to celebrate our 3rd wedding anniversary. And while all the talk was about what it meant for a marriage to break up, it got me thinking about the very idea of marriage. More to the point, why my path had led me down the aisle when I could just as easily have skipped it.

Sheesh! Lots of talk on the interwebs today about consciously uncoupling. Who's doing it & what the hell does that even mean?

Eh, no one here in Toddlerville has a clue about that stuff. 'Round these parts we are all about the coupling that was solidified 3 years ago today. That would be Hubs & lil ol' me - Serendipity.

I won't bore anyone will all the delightful wedding details. (5 hour open bar!) I will admit, however, to being outshone at my own wedding by the cutest attendant EVER - the darling Boy, then 10 months old.

Now, some folks would say we did things a bit backwards. Some would probably say we eventually did the "right thing."  I can say with certainty lots of people didn't understand why we were doing it at all. Frankly I would imagine that whatever most folks thought, they reckoned we got married to "legalize" our family.

Of course, there's truth in that. But as beautiful and amazing as my Boy is (or any kid, for that matter), he's no reason to take the plunge into wedded bliss.

In case you're not a regular (of the blog or the bar), Hubs and I met in our local Irish pub in Queens. At the time I was one half of another couple. So we were friendly, but not friends. I can recall three honest-to-goodness conversations over the first year or so I knew him.
1st: about the tandoori chicken he was making on BBQ Sunday.
2nd: about trivia night & my possibly joining his team (never happened).
3rd: a heated discussion about baseball. He is a naturalized Mets fan & I'm a life-long Yanks fan. Yeah... As I recall we rarely chatted for a long time after that one.

Eventually I uncoupled, moved a bit further away & didn't frequent the pub as often. Then yada yada yada... I got a new iPhone and we started spending time together.

Yep, I just yada yada yada'd right over that.

Yes, the iPhone is important. As it happened, he was one of perhaps 4 people I knew with an iPhone. Two of the others were other friends at the pub. They all hung out in their spot at the bar, playing on their phones and talking about apps. Now I would maybe be put off, but 5 years ago it was kinda endearing. Particularly because they were all Irish & weren't gadgety type guys.

So when I got an iPhone I realized I had a reason to chat him up. And the rest, as they say, is history. Without speaking for Hubs, I knew pretty quickly I never again wanted to wake up without him.

For her part, my mother always told me to marry someone who I enjoyed even when we were mad at each other. She would tell me the truest test of a relationship is if you can argue & make up & truly move on.

Which reminds me of a fight we had early on. Hubs was literally grabbing up a bunch of movies he had scattered at my place - basically taking his toys and going home. I remember telling him that he was being silly. We were arguing, not ending. He could leave, but we weren't done by a long shot. I have no idea if that moment stayed with him - but that was it - I knew. Ya know?

The fact is marriage should be a conscious coupling. We had options & marriage wasn't the only, or easiest, one. As the vows often say, it's not something to be entered into lightly. Hubs & I married because we wanted to stand up, in front of all the friends & loved ones we could gather, and declare that we were on this path Together. 

Marriage is a union, a joining of lives and families. So while it was strange to lots of my friends, it made sense to me to take his family name. Frankly, I hardly considered NOT taking his name. 

Did it all make some things easier, legally? You bet. 

But what mattered is just this: I am able to say we are married, he is my husband. These words carry a whole different weight in our society than to say he is my partner. Or my lover. Or the father of my children. Or my best friend. 

He is all of those things. And So. Much. More. And THAT is why we got married. 

I don't know, maybe it's me, but I think that's kind of why anyone wants to get married. Am I wrong? 

*Any reading of this post as either a social or political statement about marriage equality would be solely based on the reader's bias & not the author's attempt to draw such parallels. 

**Not to deny I'm 100% in favor of marriage equality & sincerely don't get why anyone would be against it. But this post is just a little riff on my own choices on the occasion of my 3rd Wedding Anniversary. 

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