Tuesday, July 22, 2014

Happy Days

My husband was 46 when we met, I was 59.  He was living on very limited funds, having resigned a full time position in order to explore the possibility of getting a PhD.  I was the holder of a prestigious endowed chair and well known for my books and articles, six years away from retirement.  He was exceptionally handsome, vivacious, and charming, and I was somewhat heavy set, more than a little bit pompous if also witty and fun.  He was in awe of my position and what he perceived to be my many attainments.  I was dazzled by his youth and sexuality.  We have lived together almost from that moment to this, along the way getting legally married in Massachusetts when such a feat was possible.  We are two alpha males, over achieving, controlling, passionate people who are used to holding center stage in a class room situation.  In the early days of our relationship he had to push back against what he perceived as my obvious superiority in position, wealth, prestige, and social position, whereas I was always worried about where I should be making allowances for his various kinds of insecurity, financial, social, educational.  Over time I grew to appreciate his rock solid capacity for endurance and his total commitment to me and our relationship even though in little matters he sometimes seemed unbelievably insensitive, as for instance his nonchalant departure from the table in the middle of a meal when he wanted to verify something on Google (never was the difference of our backgrounds more sharply displayed!).  He is now 71 and I am 84 and this morning at breakfast he was remarking on how most couples seem to experience the most extreme emotional conflicts and ruptures when in the soul destroying process of moving households, but that he felt we had grown even closer together.  It is because, as I don't think he sees it, he has become in the course of this move so very aware of how vulnerable and frail I have become in the last few years.  I am so very much aware of his great patience with my fumbling, forgetting, and slowness, all of which is a very new aspect to my being.  I was happy this morning that after having weeded the garden in my topsy turvy way for two hours I came in to make him scrambled eggs with capers for his breakfast, happy because he was delighted, and I felt that in some small way I was repaying him for the extraordinary amount of the shared labor of preparing the house for the move which he has assumed.  Two days before the movers arrive I will take a train to Manhattan, he will get ready for the van, then drive to Florida, while I will stay north until the van has arrived and unloaded at our condo.  Then I will fly down.  That is the way it is now, and I look forward to hanging the pictures in his company.  I hope he is ready with his hammer and picture hangers, and then maybe I will make him a delicious omelette with smoked salmon.

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