family, Ireland, Life in General, Marriage

Controlling Myself in Ireland

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Ah travel, the thrill of new places and faces, the strange twang of English words twisted with accents that render them unrecognizable to the American ear, the savory surprises of foreign food, the heart-lifting vistas new to these old eyes, and, of course, the stress of constant twenty-four hour, unrelenting contact with your beloved companion.

That much togetherness puts a strain on even the most tolerant and loving of relationships. No matter where you go, there you are, and oh look, honey, we brought all our emotional baggage along. All our pesky husband and wife trigger buttons were dragged across the ocean and landmass so we wouldn’t feel lost in an alien land. Yet, with so much that is unfamiliar, it’s good to know that no matter where you go, some things stay the same, it’s having them amplified that’s difficult. Even if hubby and I were mild-mannered personalities, our emotional triggers can be consistently relied upon (and after twenty five years doing dramatic theatre, we do not qualify as drama free). We may be in Ireland among a green landscape so rich and lush that it brings tears to our eyes, but it still takes only a fraction of a second for him to piss me off royally.

And the feeling is mutual, apparently. (How dare he think me less than perfect!) Let me give you a for instance. My husband loves to announce to total strangers that I am a nervous traveler. This while I’m reading calmly at the airport gate while he rails and sweats over some half-imagined slight from the car rental company. Why he thinks that these exhausted fellow travelers, who no doubt lead full and diverting lives of their own, would find this information pertinent or even interesting is a mystery to me. He goes on to enlighten them that this is because I’m a control freak. Then I go back to my Rex Stout novel and he taps madly at his phone where he is mapping landmarks such as large rocks or random graffiti that will help our cab driver locate our apartment in a Dublin neighborhood that has been familiar to locals for over six centuries.

But never mind, we both love a new adventure, the two of us have traveled extensively, both alone in our pre-each-other lives and with each other during our sixteen years of together-bliss. It seems to escape him that I have lived in exotic locals for months on end while shooting some movie or show, or just off to experience the big ol’ world without any one to tell me what to do or where to go. Say what you will about having a partner in life—which, don’t get me wrong, I prefer because it is him—it can be truly fabulous to answer to no one and do exactly what you want to do all damn day long.

Of course, come evening, nothing compares to having someone to share your discoveries with, especially if you don’t have internet, which we don’t here. Social media is the modern equivalent of telling stories and passing packs of pictures fresh from the Fotomat around the dinner table. Ah, the smell of chemical developer wafting from the paper envelopes when you unfold the flap, the way the prints stuck together, the fun of trying to remember, two weeks after the flight home, where in hell that pile of ancient rocks was exactly. Good times.

Togetherness is a beautiful thing. Until it’s time to drive on the left. We always make sure both of us are covered to drive the rental car, and after my husband manspains the difficulties and I remind him that I grew up with a house on St. Croix, where we drove on the left, and a month in Scotland where I had the most fun parallel parking on a steep hillside that I’ve ever had, (they brought their pints out of the pub to watch me, that’s how entertaining I was) we set out, with him driving and me navigating. This being our first sojourn out of Dublin, I had to allow that even on the generously wide motorway, switching from having the steering wheel on the left to having it on the right, combined with unfamiliar traffic signs while driving a strange rental car, takes a good bit of getting used to. But after a while I had to keep pointing out that hubby was pretty much keeping the left wheels of the car on the yellow lane line, though you would have thought that the rhythmic thump thump thump of the warning bumps would have offered some clue. About the forth time, his nerves snapped and he called me a control freak. So I tried to sit on my hands and shut the f up. It kind of worked…for a few minutes at a time. I do hate to be controlled.

Then we hit the country roads where the roads are as narrow as the leg room in economy class, the hedges rise like the walls of a prison yard on both sides of the lanes, the speed limits are only safe for the delusional, and the possibility of rounding a blind curve only to be confronted with some form of gigantic farm machinery moving at a whopping 15 kilometers are 100 percent. It’s tight here, I mean, inches on either side of the car for both lanes, and that’s when there are two lanes. For some reason, even when we were the only vehicle on the road, hubby felt the need to keep the left rear view window (inches off my left shoulder where I sat in the passenger seat) in the hedges and I constantly flinched as blackberry vines and holly bushes smacked against my window. Once or twice I actually cried out when the tire almost went off the asphalt into a narrow drainage ditch, and while I did not blame him at all for getting nervous when a car, or far worse a lorry, would appear in the oncoming lane, I thought that slamming on the breaks was a bit of an overreaction. Tempted as I was to ask if he thought stopping the car would actually make it narrower, I resisted, but I couldn’t help the involuntary ‘ooof’ noise that escaped me as the seatbelt caught and forced the air from my body. At this point I was accused of ‘freaking out’ and he snapped out “Do you want to drive?”

Now, those of you who have remained married more than a year will know that to answer ‘yes’ at this point would have been the equivalent of contacting a divorce lawyer. Insulting your husband’s driving or letting him know you feel endangered is an absolute no-no. So I said, no, but maybe you are a bit close on the left, and possibly, being mostly human, it was impossible to not react at all when I feel that bodily danger is imminent, to which he answered with a rising hysteria that he was kind of busy trying not to get into a head on collision, which was hard to argue. But he followed that with the accusation that I was over-reacting, which I could have argued all damn day as soon as the seat belt unlocked and I could inhale enough to form words.

We arrived at our destination and were delighted charmed and enthralled. This, the first of three rental houses on this trip of six weeks is placed in a nature reserve with sweeping views of sheep covered hills, deep, verdant forests and skies that Gainsborough might have painted. Inside there is a plethora of beautiful art, first edition books, enamel stoves in every room, and outside are gardens designed to delight and discover. We were so pleased that all the stress fell away and the joy of our destination threw a blanket of forgetfulness over the stress of the journey. Husband took me in his arms and we uttered little spontaneous exclamations of awe at every new discovery.

And it was all worth it. I love my husband, our relationship, our life, our adventures, and the promise of more joy together. Sure, there will always be those rough spots, some friction, and the thoughtless word or twelve, but overall, I’m glad to be where I am.

No matter where you go, there you are.

You can’t control everything while you’re there.

Not even ourselves.

Time to drive into town and post this blog.

Now where did he hide those keys?

 

 

Shari from the Emerald Isle. August 10th, 2018

 

family, Life in General, Marriage

Sleeping Dangerously

 

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When he least expects. 

Put me on the ludicrously injured list. No I didn’t slip on a banana peel or walk into a glass door, or get cool whip in my eyes from a pie in the face. The source of my injury is even more ridiculous than a badly executed pratfall, worse than poorly planned farce. I fell off my bed due to an excess of pillows.

I’ve always been fairly graceful, an ironic result of busting my ass so frequently during my years as a competitive ice skater. I’ve fallen off of rocks, paths, cars, horses, sleds, skis, even the occasional man during a particularity athletic bit of loving, but this one was new.

I fell off my bed. Well, I fell getting into bed. Joseph made me a bed that is especially high, per my request, so that we can see out the window, across a lovely field and straight to the ocean. The breezes waft over us at night and the waves are our lullaby. So, to get into bed, I have to stand on my toes and kind of get one butt cheek up over the edge and then shift my weight up over the top as I draw my legs parallel and collapse safely onto our nocturnal aerie.

But I didn’t count on that extra pillow when I was incoming. The mount started out all right. I gained cheek purchase, swung my legs up, my weight started to counter onto the mattress, but then suddenly I was blocked from continuing the inertia, my momentum was arrested, full stop.  Thwarted, for a split second I teetered on the perilous edge of balance, then my weight started to counter back from whence it came, back out over open air, and…

And I know I’m in for it. Yep, I’m going down. Well doesn’t this feel familiar.

But I’m used to falling, I’ll just hit the carpet and roll, I got this.

Oops, forgot about the bedside table, which is about a foot and half below the mattress. The first thing that hits is one of my ribs on my back left side. It knocks the breath out of me and pain fires off from every neuron in my sensory receptors—all of them, it seems every part of my nervous system wants in on the hilarity.

In turn, the bedside table smashes against the wall with a reverberating crash, I land in a sitting position on the floor between the wall and the bed. I can’t breathe, which might be good because breathing hurts like a mofo, but the mishap is so ridiculous that I am laughing, but I’m not really laughing because there is no air with which to produce a laughing noise.

It sounds a bit like this, “Hee, hee, ahhhrg! Hee, ahhhgh, gasp, gasp, Ow! (shallow, broken attempts to obtain air,) hee, hee, ow, son of a….ha…ow…bitch!”

My husband leans over, “Are you all right?”

Since I don’t have the life force to answer him succinctly, I grunt out an interrupted, “Fi-ine.” But the laughter refuses to be ignored or restrained, even by the pain, my absurdity and that of the situation is making my objective self howl with laughter and pain, negating and stunting each other.

“Why are you crying?”

I huff out in the small puffs of air that I can manage, “Bro-ken,” I manage. “Not…crying…laughing…ow…ow….ow!”

“What happened? Are you all right?”

“I’m fine…” I lie again. “…fell…., too…many pillows.

At which point the unrivalled love of my life makes a mistake. A big mistake. “Ha!” he says, “Pillow karma!”

Now I’m out of breath, laughing, crying, swearing, and filled with a red hot need for revenge all at the same time.

It hurts.

Pillow Karma my ass. This from man who sleeps with a minimum of 4 pillows. This from a man who somehow manages to get the pillow cases and the fitted sheet off the bed pretty much every night, in his sleep.

So even in those first few seconds as I sit shallowly sucking in miniscule puffs of air that stab and twist, giggling painful, twisted noises, I begin to plot his demise.

I cannot, of course, reveal the evil machinations of my plan in this blog. My attorneys have advised against it, as it will offer too much proof of intent to the prosecution. Suffice to say that there are worse ways to wake up than when your wife yanks a pillow she favors out from under your head. There are sticky, smelly things that can be added to down pillows that resist detection and deny one a restful night’s sleep. Those feather shafts can be sharp, especially when that’s all that’s in them.

And of course, he can cuddle his pillows instead of his wife until the cracks in my ribs heal enough for me to take a deep breath and really unleash.

It’s been two days, and I’m doing much better, as long as I don’t have to breathe deeply, lift my left arm, blow my nose, or god help me….sneeze.

Please, I’m begging, no sneezing!

Of course, we are moving in two days, so I am still packing and cleaning.

And because I’m on the comically injured list, I’ve got the bed to myself.

Hubby can just sleep on the sofa with the throw pillows and the dog.

Love him so much.

Into each marriage some dissent must come.

And off of each bed, some idiot must fall.

You just have to laugh at it.

No matter how painful a giggle is.

And absolutely, positively no guffawing.

Karma comes in many colors, shapes and firmness levels.

You just go lay down and take a nap honey.

I’ll…uh, I mean, you’ll feel much better.

Where did I put the honey?

 

 

 

Shari, October 29th, 2017

family, Life in General, men

Rules of Engagement.

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My husband was a bit grumpy when I got home from a recent trip to Northern California. Perhaps it’s because he’d been working 12 to 14 hour days, perhaps it’s because some of the jobs he’s doing on our house right now are, well, disgusting. Okay, when you rip the siding off of a tool room that hasn’t been attended to in fifty some odd years, and find several generations of woodland creatures, adults, juveniles and babies, living behind it,that’s kind of cute, granted. But the fact that their nests are built on the carcasses of their ancestors and decades of excrement bulging through the insulation, it is definitely un-cute. Pulling out the nests of hair and urine-stained, shredded trash doesn’t leave you with a particularly ecstatic feeling. Maybe the fact that I was off hiking in woodland bliss and searching for new homes instead of helping him could have contributed to his vague emotional distance from me, as unreasonable as that sounds. It’s unlikely that I’m ever at fault of course, but hey, anything is possible.

For my part, after a few fun days with our daughter up north, taking in the air and the redwoods and the wonderful food, I spent my five hour drive back thinking about how much I missed him, and how incredibly lucky I am to have him and our life together. I arrived excited to see him, surging with all the passion that I started with for him, plus the years of love and fun squared on top of that, so I’m in a great mood, eager and loving.

Then I drive up to find him standing in the garage, sweaty, bleeding, and filthy, breathing with difficulty, having done as much work as an assembly team in a factory. I didn’t quite get the greeting I had anticipated. Our normal ‘mesh’ is a bit off.

Okay, we’re miles apart, and by the time I get through touring all the work he’s done and telling him all the things he worked so hard on that I’m not crazy about, (hey, I told him about all the things I loved too!) he’s a sliver snappy. I’ve learned over the years not to engage when one of us is in a mood, but that’s not always easy when one of us is feeling vulnerable or pissy.

Because when we try to talk from that frazzled, electrified place, the chances of going off on bizarre tangents ranges from excellent to certain. I will, for example, accuse him of playing the martyr role, he will insist that I have never, ever, ever, ever, ever been happy with anything he has ever done. We both are dead sure that everyone in the world will agree with our personal, and diametrically opposed, points of view. We fall into accusing each other of evil plots against our marriage, of seeing the worst in each other, of never being loved or appreciated.

Too dramatic? You should try running a theatre for 25 years, I’ll show you diva. So, when one of us gets ramped up, the other one takes a turn at playing police psychiatrist on an active shooter site. He will stand at a safe distance from behind the open door of his truck and shout into a bullhorn, “I understand you are upset, but put the rifle down and we can talk.”

When I’m pissed, he withdraws into his den or his work and lets me rage freely, swearing and sighing for all the world at this miserable lot I’ve pulled, but he never misses giving me a goodnight kiss, or offering to share a funny movie once the high octane burns itself out like a nasty oil spill on seawater. When it’s him who is wound up beyond the ticking point, I make sure he has snacks, water, first aid when the time comes, and I stay busy, lurking until his defences are down. This is quite a bit like a siege, but instead of firing flaming rocks into his castle, I’m lobbing sandwiches and beer.

So we went through our evening working our wounded egos out on our own, avoiding flare ups that might lead into something we both know isn’t even about whatever projectile we’re launching, and we commit to talking tomorrow. (That part is important, and the appointment must be kept!) We’re both exhausted and strained, and there’s that touch of unfamiliarity that comes when you’ve been away from each other a few days and haven’t had a chance to smooth it over with a cocktail or three and an episode of VEEP.

In the morning we sat down to talk, and instead of starting with communication, which would be bright, we’re both wasting time and energy justifying our ‘reasons’ for not being particularly generous of spirit or spilling over with kindness, it’s all round about, egos, and excuses, but one theme inevitably emerges, we both feel misunderstood. I thought he thought this and he thought I thought that, and we were both dead wrong.

So we smile sheepishly and I kiss him. “I’ve got an idea, let’s just go back to being madly in love.”

His face crumples into a handsome smile and he says teasingly, “Then you have to be nice to me.”

And I stabbed him with my pruning sheers.

No, not really. We just both laughed at ourselves and each other, and kissed, and got back to the business of loving and being grateful.

Sometimes you just have to get over yourself, and remind yourself how fucking happy you are.

I know I do.

Shari, April 30th, 2016