Giving Thanks

The bird is in the oven, stuffed with sausage, apples, some rosemary, a squeeze of fresh orange, onions, celery, some pepper and salt. The kitchen is clean, Quinn is napping and the Jacksons are likely all to be reading downstairs. I'm here, in my room, my treehouse with a view of mountains near and far, spruce trees heavy with snow, reflecting briefly on all there is…

I'm still coming down from the high of this past weekend: my fortieth birthday, spent with some of my dearest friends at Topnotch Spa. My sister and brother-in-law arrived Friday to take care of Quinn and set me free. Saturday, Sam and I checked into our room by one o'clock. I was in my swimsuit by two. Jerry and Rebecca had arrived. Corey and Kellam had arrived. Kim and Justin were on their way. Some went off for massage appointments. Rebecca took a yoga class. Sam read magazines by the pool, uninterrupted…his particular version of bliss. I found my way to the lap lane, put on my cap and goggles, and started to swim. Heaven.

There are very few full-length pools nearby; if I had access to one, I would swim every day. In the water, I am somehow lithe and strong. My mind wanders at will, until I find my rhythm. Eventually I am counting breaths, stretching out my glide, savoring the sound of water flowing past my ears, the silk of it on my skin, the strength that is still there in my arms. Once the initial tightness is stretched out, I feel as if I can swim forever…5 hours, 20 minutes is my longest go yet.

On Saturday, at Topnotch, with my friends dispersed in steam rooms, and saunas, and hot tubs, and outdoor heated pools, and on lounge chairs, and massage tables, all of them nearby and no one needing anything of me, I could just keep swimming. Every now and then, I'd stop and look at the clock, feeling as if I should do something else, but really there was nothing else I needed to do, and nothing I would have preferred to do; there were no demands on my time. I swam and swam, gliding away from accumulated stresses, mental checklists, and voices…gliding back into my own body, my muscles, my breath.

By late afternoon, we found ourselves all in a row by the pool in our white spa bathrobes. Each of us had achieved a state of relaxation by some means or other. We ordered drinks. We smiled a lot. Eventually we dressed for dinner, had some champagne, drove to the restaurant. By the end of dinner I was losing my voice. The restaurant was loud and I was hoarse from squealing with delight for so many hours.

I had big plans to sleep late the next morning. Instead I called my sister around seven, knowing she'd be up with Quinn. I missed them. Sam stayed in bed to read some more. I returned to the pool to swim some more. Everyone convened at breakfast. We talked and laughed some more. What more could I ask for…friends, rest, peace of mind…nothing was missing.

When my mother and father had their fortieth birthdays, I was fifteen years old. Each one threw a surprise party for the other. There were gag gifts, jokes about being Over The Hill, lots of laughter. I remember it distinctly and feel somewhat strange that my own daughter is so young…but I feel young too. I've realized that I mind the 9's a lot more than the 0's…thirty-nine felt a bit desperate, like I was running out of time. But, forty feels exhilarating: a new beginning.

I keep thinking about what that means.

To start, I've decided to put an end to the era of leaving my wallet on the roof of my car and driving away; I bought myself a "purse," though I'm calling it a satchel for now because I've always hated "purses." And I replaced the weed colored wallet with a bright red one…something I'll more easily be able to find on the roadside, should I have a relapse.

I've also decided that I need to work on staying young…I need to stop prioritizing work over exercise, over rest, over good meals. I need to enjoy the many fruits of my labor from the past decade. When I turned thirty, I was in a van full of stinky teenage boys driving back to Vermont from Utah, after a semester on the road. I had a backpack and a storage unit and a boyfriend named Sam. Now, at forty, I have a house, a daughter, two dogs, six acres, and a husband named Sam. I have muscles that still work. A mind that still works…These are things I'm thankful for.

My primary goal for my forties is to make it past forty-six, the age my mother was when she died. I also aim to get in better shape, so I'll be ready to take Quinn backpacking, and teach her to climb, and show her how to roll her kayak when it's time to do those things. I'm going to swim more. I'm going to love my dogs more. Garden more…I'm going to take more deep breaths between strokes, stretch out, reach further, glide longer. I'm going to count my breaths, with gratitude.

When we sit down for dinner later today, and we make a toast and wish each other a Happy Thanksgiving, I'm going to be thinking of my sister who has two little cousins for Quinn in her "oven" right now. I'm going to be thinking of my dad who is a really good cook and an excellent late night turkey sandwich maker, and I'll be thinking of Louise who loves him and keeps him company. I’m going to be thinking of Char whose presence at my table will be sorely missed.  And, I'll be thinking of my grandmother who died last night at the very same time I went to bed.

I hope my grandmother was right: I hope there really is a heaven. I hope she feels lithe and strong, and beautiful as she once was. I hope she is, at this moment, gliding back into her own body, her muscles, her breath. I hope her mind is working again. And her memory. And I hope she remembers all the fun she and I used to have together, every Sunday when I went to visit her and have tea. And I hope she forgives me for not being capable of visiting her much since then. I hope she knows how thankful I am to have had her in my life while I did.

And I hope in heaven you get to have your teeth back...so she can eat a really big turkey dinner this afternoon. And I sure hope she gets to pass the stuffing to my mom, and make eyes at her handsome boyfriend across the table.

Nana and Bup  -   Lake Winnepesauke  -   Summer of 1982

On Marriage

I'm pretty sure I've mentioned here already my mantra from my younger years: "For as long as possible, stay free and uncommitted." 

That was the live-in-the-moment me, who had just given away most of my material possessions, had the rest in a small storage unit, and had just started a job teaching for a tiny private high school that shaped its curriculum around two ideas: outdoor adventure and international travel. There were six teachers and a small bunch of kids and each semester we'd pack our backpacks with books and sleeping bags and gear and we'd head off for somewhere. We'd conduct classes wherever we found ourselves, at whatever time of the day would best work with our adventures. In the two and a half years that I was happily homeless, I was sea kayaking and surfing in Mexico, mountain biking and canyoneering in Utah (the semester of 9/11 we stayed in the US), rock climbing, "tramping" and white water boating in New Zealand, back to Mexico for some big wall climbing, then more surfing and boating in Costa Rica, and still more climbing and hiking in Greece.

In the early days of that adventure, I met Sam. And that was both fortuitous and wonderful, and also a bit of bad timing. I met him at the end of my first semester of travel, and I had no desire to stop traveling. I also had no desire to let the man I instantly wanted to marry slip away. What's a girl to do? Well, I kept traveling, for two more years, and I kept hoping that Sam might still be around when I stopped. And he was.

Sam and I are both basically agreed that if we had started our relationship like normal people hovering on either side of 30, and we had lived in the same place, we probably wouldn't have lasted very long. It turns out Sam and I get frustrated with each other pretty easily. I don't think this means that our relationship is bad; I think instead it's a reflection of the fact that we both have strong personalities. (That's probably very generous). I mention this here only because we might have taken those differences as an early sign that we were not a perfect match.

But, we didn't live in the same place and, the way it happened, we met and it was amazing and then I promptly left for Utah. Then I came back and it was amazing again, at first. It was Christmastime so we spent even more time together and suddenly it was a little less than amazing. When I was staying with him, at the school where he was teaching outside of D.C., I decided that he probably didn't really love me, the way I had started to love him, so I woke him up one morning, after checking the train schedule, and asked him to bring me to the station. Okay, I demanded that he take me to the train station.

"What?" he asked, rubbing his eyes to wake up. He was a bit flabbergasted, but I was in "flight" mode and there was no changing my mind. As we unloaded my bag from the back of his truck, in the early morning city traffic, he asked me again why I was leaving. "Because you're not in love with me," I cried, tears pouring down my face.

"Can't I decide that?"

"No," I said, "I don't trust you to make the right decision!"

I sat in the train station balling all morning. I was so pathetic some guy came over and handed me a rose. (I think I might still have that thing somewhere!?) All day on the train I couldn't wait to get home to my dad. I couldn't wait for him to hug me and tell me it would all be okay. My dad and mom had a storybook marriage, or at least that's what it looked like from my young point of view, and I knew that was part of my problem: nothing could ever live up to what they had.

When the train pulled into South Station in Boston, I was still crying. I found my dad in the crowd and hurried toward him. He hugged me, as I knew he would, and I blurted out, in one of the most melodramatic moments of my life: "Dad, he doesn't love me!" My dad's whole temperament changed. "You don't know anything about love," he said and turned to walk to the car.

I hate to admit it, but he was totally right. I had no idea how much work was involved. And how much sacrifice. And I had no idea at that time how good it could actually be. My dad made me call Sam as soon as we got to the house. Sam and I regrouped over New Year's in Vermont, but we each had some doubts after feeling that first burn. Soon after, I left for another semester, but we kept in touch and I saw him again.

Early the following summer, Sam was passing through the northeast on a paddling trip with his friend Andy. He had quit his job and was thinking about moving to Vermont. When people ask him why he moved up here, he always launches into this long story about how he had always loved Vermont (which may be true) and how he had friends who lived up here (which is true), yadda yadda yadda…but I know he really moved up here because he wanted to be with me, and I've gotten him to admit to this in his weaker moments.

Anyway, he showed up and said, "I want to be with you," and he needed to know if I wanted to be with him too. It was all very scary, for both of us. He didn't have a job, and I had a great job that I didn't want to give up…Thoreau was still there in my head...It was all fairly tense. So, Sam said he would let me think it over; he was going to Maine to run a few rivers, and he'd be back. I thought about all the pros and cons, I thought about everything, and when it came down to it, I still felt a bit nervous. It was one thing to try a long distance relationship with someone who had a job and was settled into a life; it seemed like an entirely different responsibility to try that with someone who was willing to move to Vermont so he'd be closer when you came home, and to know that he would be here without his great job and all of his friends. But, what I felt for Sam was undeniable really; I couldn't keep track of all the pros and cons, but I knew I didn't want to never see him again. My doubts weren't so much doubts as they were fears.

I went to Montpelier to surprise him on his first morning back in town. I was ready, I thought. I went to his brother's apartment where he and Andy were staying. It was early, but I knocked. Then I knocked again. He wasn't there, but his truck was, so I figured they had probably walked into town for coffee. I had a little bit longer to think about it. I was nervous all over again. I walked from coffee place to coffee place and couldn't find him. Maybe it was a sign? Maybe it wasn't meant to be?

As I was walking toward the Coffee Corner, I saw this exceptionally handsome guy and thought, "See, there are lots of fish in the sea! This guy is a hottie!" What was I doing worrying about Sam and this BIG decision when I wasn't 100% sure? Then I realized...the hottie was Sam, unrecognizable at first because of his tan, his unwashed hair and his new beard. No, I definitely didn't want to lose this man.

My favorite part of that story is that when I told it to Sam, he told me what happened to him: He was inside, finishing his breakfast, and he looked out the window to the strangers walking by, and he had his moment of doubt too…lots of fish in the sea. Then he saw a girl in red shorts, and he thought, see…lots of fish! But, of course, those were my red shorts.

Unfortunately all of this killed my dream job; whenever I was away I missed him desperately and wanted to come home. I lasted one more year and then gave it up, and came home to Vermont. Sam and I maintained separate apartments for a couple of years, and we had some blow out fights during that period of getting to know each other's day-to-day habits for the first time. But, at that point, we had already invested years into the relationship (2.5 years spent largely apart), and so we kept trying to figure it out. We kept not giving up on it. And in that time, somewhere along the line, I learned something about love.

Recently, a friend shared a quote with me that made me think back to that time, and all that I've learned since that time. It said this: "Apologizing does not always mean that you're wrong and the other person is right. It just means that you value your relationship more than your ego."

By now I value my relationship more than most things. Still, marriage is a crazy concept: forsaking all of those fish for one fish, living together in close quarters when you might actually prefer living in your own space, sharing daily stresses, sharing finances, trying to maintain some of the magic of your initial attractions even as time and age and gravity work against you. But I've come to believe that one of the keys to making all that work is the ability to say I'm sorry when it's necessary to do so. That and trusting each other to make good decisions. (Good thing we don't have a train station nearby!)

I've always believed that an ideal marriage would involve being married to my neighbor. At the end of the day, I could go home to my own space, sleep in quiet and have some room to miss him. I wouldn't have to look at my spouse's stuff, put down where I don’t want it to be. My stove would never have grease on it. The dirty silverware would never get neatly stacked in the side of the sink, with the excuse "I'm not done yet." I would be able, in other words, to control my little piece of the world.

Somedays I wonder whether or not ideal marriage is an oxymoron. But whenever I have a day like that, soon after I have a day when my husband does something like send me a link to an article about a married couple in Shelburne, VT that live in two separate houses, joined by a light-filled breezeway.

Sam gets me, and even if he can't be all things to me at all times, he wants to be and I love him for that. And fortunately I've grown up some and I know that I'm not all things either, and really no one is. The trick is finding someone who is at least close to perfect in all the ways that really matter.

For now I'm going to keep doing what I promised to do four years ago today: I'm going to try, in some way every day, to honor this truly wonderful man and this especially wonderful relationship. And I'm going to reflect some more, on another writer's insights; from Joan Didion's memoir The Year of Magical Thinking: "Marriage is memory. Marriage is time."

I'm grateful for whatever time we've got. I love you Sam.