Marriage Lesson 1 (TBL)

I always imagined that having someone love you as much as you loved them was bliss. And simple. And peaceful. And required minimal effort and you could both just blissfully exist.

I swear to God this is what I believed.

Turns out it's slightly different. Turns out it's still a charade of emotions and pushing back and tip-toeing and apologizing and losing your temper and freaking out and screaming and needing your personal time and hating him for being near you and hating not being alone so you make him go for a walk and then you start questioning what the hell you signed up for and scheming how you can change things back to the time when it was just you and you had as much alone time as you wanted, and even much, much more alone time than you wanted, which makes you realize that you kinda liked having this fellow around after all and maybe you don't want him to go for a walk.

And then Google Latitude comes in handy.

September 11

Yeah, I remember where I was. I was 16 days into my 21st birthday and going out every night. And I had this boyfriend who wasn't that into me, who never wanted to see me, so the best compromise we could agree on that semester was lunch every Tuesday, usually Burger King. So after class I walked to the Union only to see the second plane hit on TV, and I called him to see where we should meet for lunch.

"DON'T YOU KNOW WHAT IS HAPPENING?!" he asked me.

"Yes, I saw it on TV. Are we still meeting for lunch?"

… of course we weren't.

And I remember having difficulty feeling whatever it was I was supposed to feel at that time. And I went out to see my family one night that week and when I was driving back to college, all the people who lived in the farm houses were standing lined up by the road holding candles. And those people seemed to stretch the entire way back to campus. And I remember starting to feel something.

Little Sisters of the Poor

Sr. Grace called out "Honey!" to catch me before I entered the dining room alone. After a limp handshake she started explaining how tonight was going to work. It was interesting for me to hear a nun with a Chinese accent, gesturing with her nun arms just like the best of them, but speaking with that accent and not having blue eyes.

I thought my first night would be spent helping serve food to the residents, not be seated at the table and have the nuns serve me right along with everyone else. They were ladling cream of mushroom soup into Corelle bowls for everyone, passing out rolls and cheese slices and pouring hot water for tea. The main course was chicken patties and corn, with two kinds of chocolate cake for dessert.

Even more charming were the two ladies at my table, L'Jean and Joyce. They were fairly new - 6 months and almost 1 year, respectively, and both talked very highly of the place, listing things they liked to do and places they liked to go. Joyce asked me what type of work I did, and when I told her I was a chemist, she kind of looked me up and down, blinked slowly and said, "Well I didn't know that." I mentioned most people seemed surprised when I tell them I'm a scientist and she said, "Well sure, they probably assume you're a secretary." I shared that my sister was an English teacher and my other sister a social worker, so we'd all gone different ways. She said, "All you need is a doctor in the family!" When I told her I had a PhD (I was told ahead of time she was highly educated too) she said, "No, I mean a medical doctor. I have a PhD too, well I have several degrees, but I didn't mean that. Are you a reader, Colleen?" and she went on to tell me how much she loves to read. And it showed.

I was introduced to Madlyn when everyone was done eating, and Sr. Grace informed me that Madlyn was a third person I was expected to visit, and how I was supposed to call Sr. Grace beforehand to let her know precisely when I would plan to visit and with whom and for how long, so that she would make sure they remembered and were prepared. And that if we decided to play cards, we had to talk as well, because we ought not focus on just the game but one another.

I stayed a long time standing in the dining room with L'Jean and Madlyn, just chatting, and mentioned HF lived separately from me. Madlyn said it reminded her of when her husband played baseball and had to travel around, and how she had her daughter when he was overseas in The War and how when he came home, she didn't know who he was and how bad he felt about that. Then she told me she had two great great grandchildren. L'Jean will be 90 this summer. Madlyn will be 89. Oh, and Joyce is 92.

L'Jean was showing me to the lobby, and I asked about her name, and whether the "L" stood for anything. She explained, "Well, a hundred years ago it would have - I'm saying that because I'm almost a hundred. When I was born there were so many Laura-Jeans. The doctor said there were enough Laura-Jeans and just wrote down L apostrophe Jean. I never had to explain it to anyone until I came here." I said goodnight when we got to the lobby, and she pulled me aside, "By the way, did Sr. Grace call me "Luh-Jean" instead of "El-Jean" earlier?" I told her that yes, she actually did, and when I saw L'Jean rolled her eyes I told her not to worry - I know how to pronounce it now.

Tuesdays with Adaline, The Denture Edition

I let myself in her screen door one Tuesday around 7:00, and when I was sitting down at the kitchen table, her bright white smile made me hesitate for a second. I didn't say anything. When she was talking, she sounded different. I noticed her teeth were straighter and much larger than normal. Maybe I made a face, maybe I was staring and her mouth while she spoke, but for whatever reason she decided to share, "Pete don't like when I wear these dentures. He says, 'Mom, you don't look like yourself.'" I laughed but didn't want to tell her I agreed with Pete.

It made me remember a time when I was 15 years old and it was summertime and Poppy was driving me in his truck and dropping me off at St. Anne's Home on weekday afternoons. I remembered Velma, the tiny 94-year-old woman who I would push in her geri chair to the physical therapy room, and how she would grab my arm and smile and tell me how much she loved me and how beautiful I was. And I would respond by telling her how beautiful she was, because her smile was just so joyful, contagious and beautiful. And then I remember the one day all summer when her son decided to visit, the obligatory semi-annual check-in, or whatever it was. I was invisible walking by her geri chair in the hallway, because she was looking up lovingly at her son, smiling a gigantic toothy smile that made me confused. Later I wondered if Velma's son wanted to see his mother smiling with teeth that resembled her teeth from long ago, or whether he preferred her natural toothless joyful smile.

I liked the first smile I saw on Velma's face. And I liked Adaline's first set of dentures. And even though I am more ashamed of my teeth than most other physical parts of me, I was thinking today about how when I get dentures (not too long from now) I'll probably ask them to replicate the same shape teeth as I have now.

Sweetums

There's a woman at my work who reminds me of that big muppet who marches in on The Muppet Show on the bottom floor, kind of stomping, leaning to one side and the other with each step, the big muppet with long body hair and long arms and a big bottom frowny lip on its face.

There was a lab tour organized so that business partners outside our department could come by and learn about our capabilities and measurement techniques and other services we can provide. I went through the tour just out of curiosity/nosiness and to support my coworkers. When I went into her lab to listen to her presentation, I noticed that she was wearing eyeliner today. And I thought, "She was getting ready this morning, remembered the lab tour was today, and decided to put some makeup on." And I thought about the days I have some important meeting or a presentation to give, and how I pick out a special outfit and do my hair really good on those days. There was something so innately human to it, and I felt a kind of connection to this person with whom I otherwise have little in common.

Really nice woman but kind of reminds me of that muppet.

Time

Someday someone will look at our wedding picture and say, "Wow, she looked so young in that picture." And another day, someone will look at our wedding picture and ask, "Who were they?"