I Miss You When I Blink: Essays(20)

Later, I overheard him on the phone with his sister, whom he’d called for no reason other than that he loved her and wanted to check in. He did this with his parents, too. His side of the calls with them was all “Yes, ma’am” and “Yes, sir” and “What can I do for you?” His Southern manners reminded me of my grandparents, and I loved how sweet he was, how naturally loving.

He proposed a couple of years later, after we’d graduated, when he was twenty-three and I was twenty-one. If you’re twenty-three or twenty-one and you tell me you’ve just gotten engaged, I will tell you that you’re insane and too young, because when I look at twenty-one- and twenty-three-year-olds now, they look like babies. But at the time, when I was twenty-one, I could not foresee any reason not to marry him. I pictured the timeline of my life ahead of me—inasmuch as a twenty-one-year-old can look at her future life, which is to say in hazy, imaginary terms—and saw no circumstance in which I’d want not to be married to him. Would I want not to be married in fifty years because we’d grow sick of each other? Would I want not to be married after we’d had kids and parenthood changed us? Would I want not to be married if we didn’t have kids? No, no, no. I would never want not to be married to him. I was sure.

Plus, come on, could there be someone better out there for me to find? No, again. And as preposterous as my confidence was on every other question, on this one I was right. I found the best person early. I got lucky.

Marrying John was not an attempt to get an A+ in relationships. It was both the rightest thing I’ve ever done and the thing that had the least to do with the question of “What is right?” This sounds like I’m giving cheesy advice, saying the right way to find love is to stop thinking and follow your heart. That’s not it. I mean, row your love-canoe down the river of dreams or whatever, but what I’m trying to say is that the evolution of a relationship is not something you can entirely control. Falling in love is not a matter of weighing pros and cons. Unlike other big life events—jobs, moves, homes—it’s not a thing you work toward like you’re seeking a personal-life promotion. You don’t pick a human being and go, okay, now we’re going to follow these steps and fall in love and reach the certain knowledge that we want to be together forever. I don’t care what the secret-to-love books and articles say, that’s not how it works. It wasn’t for us, anyway. We met. It happened.

The spontaneous existence of love where before there was none is the most insanely wondrous thing. It’s crazy magic. You might as well witness your hairbrush transforming into a talking owl right before your eyes.



* * *



We do disagree sometimes. But often when we fight, it’s not really fighting at all. It usually goes like this:

I, deeply unsettled by some existential horror but not willing to face and discuss the existential horror, pick a fight about something else. Often, I take this opportunity after John has benignly pointed out something I’m doing wrong. For example: I decide to reheat some leftovers in a Styrofoam container. As I put it in the oven, John says, “Hey, Styrofoam melts. Shouldn’t you put that food in a pan?”

I say something sarcastic to indicate I couldn’t possibly be wrong. (“Why would a restaurant put leftovers in a container that can’t be reheated? I know how an oven works.”)

John presents evidence to support his point, thinking he’s helping. (“Uh-oh, look—the Styrofoam is dissolving.”)

I lash out at John and accuse him of calling me stupid. (“WELL, THIS IS OBVIOUSLY SOME FAULTY STYROFOAM. AND MAYBE YOU COULD COOL IT WITH THE GLOATING.”)

John says he is not calling me stupid, and offers to help correct whatever is happening because of the thing I have done wrong. (“Okay, I’m just going to put out the fire in the oven.”)

I stomp off in a snit.

Fifteen minutes later, I come back and tell him whatever’s really bothering me. (“I’m sad that summer is almost over and seasons keep changing and the kids are getting big and soon they’ll leave us and I’ll miss them so much I’ll die.”)

John listens. I talk more. I flap my hands around in wild gestures; he watches. I exhale in a big huff, and he exhales, too, to match me.

Fifteen minutes after that, I’m in good spirits again.



* * *



When I am packing a suitcase and I’ve crammed every last rectangle of folded clothing into the bag and added shoes, makeup, a just-in-case-it’s-cold cardigan and a panicked last-minute backup outfit or two, and I’m mashing everything down as hard as I can, and I go from zero to psycho in a second because I can’t get the bag zipped, and I’m stomping on the bag and hammering at it with my fists, he calmly opens it, rearranges a few things, and zips it.

Sometimes he says exactly what pops into his head. On a visit to Augusta: Over dinner, my mother picked up some fancy little utensil—a silver fish knife or something—and held it up. “That’s pretty,” John said, dutifully offering a compliment. “Well, it’ll be yours one day,” my mom said. “When you’re dead?” John responded. He heard his words as they came out and immediately reddened, throwing his hands over his mouth. “Yes, when I’m dead,” she answered, as the rest of us laughed.

We went to celebrate our daughter’s birthday in her kindergarten classroom, where there was a tradition of letting the children climb up on the tables and have a dance party. The teachers put something innocuous on the speakers—“The Wheels on the Bus,” maybe. But before the music started, we looked over to see our girl, hands thrown over her head, doing a body roll and singing, “THIS GIRL IS ON FIIIIRE.” The teacher looked aghast. I looked aghast. John looked from the teacher to me, and, sensing my embarrassment, blurted, “I taught her that.” (He didn’t teach her that. I taught her that. We often danced in the kitchen at home.)