Blog 3/23/2020

SYMBIOSIS?

I’ve learned so many good things from my husband. Who’d 'a' thunk he was learning stuff, questionable stuff, from me?

Last night I jokingly accused him of something, I don’t remember what. Something silly. We’ve been married almost 32 years. In that time I have symbiosised a lot. He is thoughtful, patient, knows how to compartmentalize—all qualities I have tried to emulate with some minor success. 

I’ve seen him, in the course of a cab ride of 25 blocks down 5th Avenue, change the driver’s mind on an important political point. 

To say that I was in awe is to understate. 

He doesn’t get mad. He takes them from wherever they are, and starts there with his reasonable analysis. Taking people at face value is part of it. But this suggests naivete, and it’s not. But somehow he doesn’t remember old stuff and pile it on in an argument. He just takes the situation and keeps it simple, and it works a lot of the time. I try. This was meant as an example of how his stuff has rubbed off on me.

I didn’t have the wit to consider that my stuff, mostly not that good, could be rubbing off on him.

Back to last night. I accused him of a little thing—maybe he hogged the bedcovers, or ate the last of the gluten-free pasta I had made, according to our friend Bruce’s amazing recipe (more about that and the key lime pie later). At any rate, He whirled around, put his hands on his hips, lowered to a semi-crouch, stuck his head forward threateningly, and gave me a look. My look. My pose. My stance. My way of responding sometimes to a tease and sometimes to a serious situation. I couldn’t believe it. He learned that from me!!!!!

It was really funny. We both laughed and I’m sure that’s the last he thought of it (compartmentalizing, remember?) I hope hope hope he didn’t learn the really bad stuff.

Not that that pose, or little series, hasn't served me well. It had, in fact, a huge role in creating my current state of marital bliss. You see when we met, he was still getting over the trauma of a bad marriage, in which the wife seemed to change overnight, become a crazy person, as soon as they were wed. He said he wanted to marry me, “Just not yet,” not just once.

So, as yet unreformed by decades of good example from him, I would confront him from time to time. I wanted to be married. To him. Not getting any younger. As I constantly compared the benefits of our happy, if unmarried, life together, against my diminishing shelf-life as a woman of a certain age in Los Angeles, I was torn. If not now, whatever that now happened to be, when?

One Thursday I noticed that the following Monday would be a cool date. It would be 8/8/88. Lucky numbers. Lucky date?

So, I assumed the pose. I put my hands on my hips. I jutted my head out. I got into a threatening crouch like a witch over a too-low cauldron.  And I confronted him again. I believe my exact, now-immortal words were, in a not terribly inviting tone, “Too bad you don’t want to marry me yet,” I said. I believe there was a sarcastic element in my delivery.

He, taking it fresh as he always did, said, “Why do you say that?”

“Because Monday would be a great date. It will be 8/8/88,” I triumphed, as if I had bested him somehow.

“Okay,” he said, “let’s do it.” We did.