Marriage, Thirteen Years Later

July 20, 2002, 8 AM

I spent the night with my mother at The Colony Club on Park Avenue in New York City, where the wedding reception will take place.

I didn’t sleep much; I was too excited. Instead, I finished reading The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien’s masterful novel about the Vietnam War: an odd reading choice for a bride-to-be, perhaps, but it definitely takes my mind off of the wedding.

Click here to continue reading my latest “Faith in Vermont” column in The Addison Independent.

The Moms Are All Right

This column will be published immediately following the last day of Addison County’s 2014-15 school year.

But I’m not going to write about the complex bundle of emotions that summer vacation inspires in parents: the relief of no longer having to get up before dawn to pack lunches and sign reading logs, versus the dread of 71 long days filled with sibling squabbles, sunscreen and bug spray, and the logistical gymnastics of camps and classes and vacations.

I’m not going to write about that, because now I know that the moms are all right. I’m sure that the dads are all right, too, but I haven’t had coffee with them.

Click here to continue reading this week’s “Faith in Vermont” column in The Addison Independent.

Wake Me Up When September Starts

I just feel like nothing’s going right.

I said this to my husband, standing in our living room one recent Sunday evening.

The night before, I had said: I feel like I have nothing to look forward to for at least the next year.

The four weeks between mid-April and mid-May were hard; some of the hardest weeks I’ve ever lived. During those four weeks, a nasty stomach virus ripped through our family. By the time it had finished, all of our children had gotten it: two of our girls were struck twice, and one had three distinct bouts of vomiting. Multiple days of school were missed. I didn’t keep track of how many loads of laundry I did, although I did count 7 in one day; the total was well into the double digits. Even my husband succumbed, spending two days in bed and canceling his classes.

Somehow I was spared, which — if you’ve spent any amount of time caring for vomiting children and spouses — can feel like a mixed blessing. More than once I thought: If I got sick, at least I could spend a day in bed.

But I was dealing with emotional struggles, instead.

Because during this same time, a house came on the market that I wanted. You can read more details here; suffice it to say that I longed for this house. Against all reason — even against my better judgment — I really thought that this was our house.

My husband was less convinced, which launched us into one of those times when it feels like your marriage is a neglected closet that needs to be cleaned out: We had faith that the outcome would be good, but the work wasn’t going to be much fun. We weren’t fighting, exactly: We were pondering our family’s mission and vision and goals, and how to best live those things out. That might sound noble, but it felt mostly hard. We both spent the better part of two weeks feeling sad and confused.

And then, just when it looked like we might be gaining some clarity, the house sold. Not to us.

[Note: After I wrote this post, a second house on my “interest list” went on the market — and believe me, that this would happen in the current Vermont real estate climate is highly improbable. It was gorgeous, move-in ready, 12 acres with a barn; almost too nice. Also, it was waaaaaaay out of our price range. Another loss, which felt like a cruel joke.]

I dropped into an ugly pit of depression and self-pity: I had thought something, and I’d been wrong. I had wanted something, and I hadn’t gotten it. I had to be patient, but I didn’t feel any hope. And I still had vomiting children home from school.

This is not the first time I’ve found myself in the pit; nor, I’m sure, will it be the last. And as awful as I felt, I knew that I would claw my way out eventually.

What was different this time was my foreboding that, once I clawed my way out of the pit, I was going to have a climb a mountain. That mountain involved a summer at home with all of our children (We don’t do much by way of summer camps or vacations, so there’s a lot of unscheduled togetherness. It’s both lovely and crushingly exhausting.) Following the summer, we faced a year of change and logistical challenges, as we welcomed a young woman who’d be living with us for the year and also prepared to move our family to California for five months — where I would homeschool our children for the first time.

On top of this, I received news that a friend had been diagnosed with cancer — the fourth friend with this diagnosis in a year.

Finally — and least importantly, as it was neither uncommon nor unexpected — an essay I’d sent to a literary journal was rejected.

It was that whole snowball of a month that caused me to say: I just feel like nothing’s going right. I feel like I have nothing to look forward to for at least the next year.

I realized it was ridiculous as soon as I’d said it. There I was, standing in my large, cozy house with a belly full of dinner, complaining to my compassionate husband while our four (mostly) healthy children slept upstairs.

It was a sign that I needed to step back and give myself room to regain perspective. To rest. To recover my mental and emotional and physical and spiritual health.

“There’s nothing in life that you can’t get out of,” my mother used to say when I was growing up. She meant this as reassurance for an overanxious child, and she meant it in reference to things like boyfriends, college, jobs, and drug parties. At that time, she was right. But I’ve realized recently that her saying stops being true once one reaches a certain age: Now, there really are things that one can’t get out of — or rather, there are things which, in order to get out of them, would involve so much ugly collateral damage as to render that option horribly selfish. Things like children, marriage, a whole host of decisions and relationships. Just at the point when one’s bone density decreases, one’s life choices begin to harden and calcify.

But I can get out of blogging.

So I am going to take a break from blogging until sometime in September.

Blogging is a wonderful thing. It enables writers to share their work, build a readership, and receive comments in what can be an isolating and discouraging field. On the other hand, it can start feeling a little bit like a non-stop treadmill: There is self-imposed pressure to keep producing blog posts, there is the fear that one is spending too much time writing 900-word essays instead of focusing on bigger projects, and there is the unhealthy habit of looking for validation in one’s site visit statistics.

Blogging did not put me in the pit, but taking a break is one small step towards getting out of that pit.

I will continue writing for The Addison Independent (and posting those links.) I will also take the time to focus on some book-length projects.

I’m not arrogant enough to assume that my blogging break will be a big loss to anybody. Okay, then, you think, So WHY did you bother telling us all of this? Why not just say: “I’m taking a break from this blog for the summer?” We didn’t need to know about the vomiting kids and lost real estate.

I told you all this because, on several occasions over the past year, it has come to my attention that some people (who may not be paying much attention to this blog) perceive me as “having it all together.”

When someone tells me that, my heart sinks. I used to try so hard to make people think that I had it all together; now, I think that if I’m giving the impression of having it all together, then I am failing to do my human duty.

If I had it all together, I would have no stories left to tell. If I had it all together, I would have no ability to form meaningful relationships; relationships depend on being relate-able, which someone who wears the armor of perfection is not.

Recently, I read an old Asian proverb: “Man finish house, man die.” I think people are like that, too, not just houses. I hope that I am never finished in this lifetime — there’s too much work to do.

On the other hand, I don’t revel in my imperfection. I get the sense from some writers out there — various “mommy blogs” come to mind — that it’s become a point of pride to say “I finish a bottle of Scotch every day during nap time and never clean my house and send my kids to school without their shoes on.”

I’m not saying that. I try. Like most people. I try my best. I get out of bed early each morning, I ask God for help, I do my chores.

And every so often, I fall into a deep pit and have to claw my way out.

You might not know this if you met me in person. I’m a little shy, and I write better than I speak. (Whenever someone introduces themselves to me, saying that they’ve read and enjoyed my writing, I want to apologize because I’m probably a little bit disappointing in person; I can’t edit myself in real life.)

So I suppose that I’m writing all this as a kind of public service announcement, because it never hurts to be reminded that everybody is human. And it never hurts to be reminded that there are times when it is good, appropriate, necessary to take a break.

I wish you all a peaceful summer. See you in September!

A Tale of Two Women

So there was this woman, and she was pretty comfortable. After a decade of moving every few years, she’d been settled in a nice small town for nearly five years. Healthy kids, good marriage. She was mostly “at home” with the kids, but had carved out a little sideline writing for a few blogs and her local newspaper. Life was crazy, sure: She had four young children. But she felt like she’d finally nailed the rest-work balance. Three kids were in school now. She had her village firmly in place: school, church, friends, and her parents, who lived 15 minutes away.

And she was about to lose it all, because the following year, her husband was going on sabbatical. Sabbatical: from the Greek word “sabatikos,” meaning “of the Sabbath” – the day of rest. For her husband, sabbatical was a year of rest from his job as a college professor. For her, it felt like the opposite of rest.

Click here to continue reading this post over at On the Willows.

Children Get Older

That title seems obvious. But is it, really? Like most obvious life facts — you should floss daily, we’re all going to die, squirrels are evil — the always-advancing age of our children is something we’d rather not think about. So, mostly, we don’t.

In this area, I think parents of young children tend to suffer from lack of imagination as opposed to denial. It’s just impossible to imagine (even if you had the time) your helpless baby or your adorable toddler as a scrawny grade-schooler who reads to him- or herself, is capable of running a vacuum cleaner, and who also occasionally rolls his or her eyes, snaps “I don’t care!” and slams the bedroom door.

I myself can imagine only as far as that grade-schooler, because I have one now. Middle and high school are still shadowy places on the distant horizon — although they’re becoming ominously clearer the more I experience grade school behavior.

“Just wait,” every parent of young children has heard from certain well-meaning (probably) and honest (undoubtedly) parents of grown children, “it only gets harder.”

As a parent of four, with one foot in early toddlerhood and one in early grade school, I’m not convinced that “harder” is the right word. There’s not much that’s “harder” than waking up every two hours throughout the night to nurse an infant after enduring toddler tantrums, managing sibling squabbles, and serving as activities coordinator/chauffeur/errand runner all day. Granted, I speak with limited authority — I have yet to see a child through to adulthood — but I think those experienced parents are trying to say that the struggle moves from the physical realm (How do I stay alert and lug the grocery bags and my children?) to the mental/emotional realm.

By mental/emotional realm, I mean a little something like this:

You are standing outside a door that your 7-year-old has just slammed, after rolling her eyes and shouting “I don’t care!” The precipitating event changes (you weren’t properly attentive to her artwork, you let a sibling share first at dinner, you used the wrong tone of voice when making a request), but the underlying issue is always the same: she doubts your love. She’s angry with you for falling short, and she’s also angry with herself for still needing you. It spiraled out of control, and now you stand in the hall, thinking: She needs discipline; I can’t allow her to talk to me like that. I need to set boundaries of respectful behavior, to be tough. But also, she needs to know I love her, no matter how she behaves. She needs affection and reassurance.

And you think that there’s probably some perfect combination — if you could just balance the right amount of toughness with love, or find the exact words — and the lock will spring and her eyes will light up again and you’ll hug and she’ll mend her ways and become a kind, well-behaved, well-adjusted adult. Otherwise, you imagine, she’s in for a lifetime of conflict, broken relationships, hundreds of dollars spent on therapy and pharmaceuticals.

You feel all this, because you’ve been there, on the other side of that door — it seems like just minutes ago. But you can’t quite remember what would have made the lock spring back then; you only remember the hurts that you’re still getting over.

That’s the mental/emotional realm.

[Side note: “I don’t care,” with its dishonest bluster that hides anger behind indifference and shuts down further discussion, has become my least favorite phrase. I understand now why Maurice Sendak devoted an entire children’s book — the classic Pierre — to its dark potential. I’m convinced that most of the world’s ills can be blamed on “I don’t care.”]

What the “It only gets harder” parents never told me is that adolescence — by which I mean the basic Webster’s Dictionary definition of “the state or process of growing up” — seems to begin around 1st grade. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics:

Now prepubertal, bigger, more interactive, and involved with friends, the emotionally developed 7- and 8-year-old child now uses his increasing cognitive strengths and communication skills to plot a developmental trajectory toward mature independence and autonomy. His newly formed superego, or conscience, allows the understanding of rules, relationships, and social mores. Moral development progresses. Early experiences with separation foster individuation.

Or, to quote my college developmental psychology textbook: “Parents report that children at this stage are often sulky, depressed, or passively noncooperative, or that they avoid them after an angry conflict.”

I thought I’d have more time to prepare before the eye rolls, the slammed doors, the “I don’t care”s.

When we were first-time parents, an older friend of my husband’s told him, “All you really have to worry about between birth and 2 years is keeping them alive.” This is good advice. The following two years are spent enduring tantrums. Then, after roughly one year of peace, you find yourself trying to mold them into decent human beings — but it’s too late! They’re already pushing away.

In a jaw-droppingly beautiful essay in the September 29, 2014 issue of The New Yorker, the writer Meghan Daum hashes through her lack of desire to have children and her experiences as a court-appointed advocate in the foster-care system. One of her conclusions is that “maybe creating a diversion from aging is in fact much of the point of parenting.”

I love her writing, but I completely disagree: Since becoming a parent, I have become more acutely aware of aging. It’s not only that parenting has aged me prematurely, with its stress, sleep deprivation, and the physical toll of carrying 20 pounds of child plus 50 pounds of diaper bag. It’s impossible to deny time’s progression when every day my children unfold upwards and outwards a little bit more; I search their baby photos for clues, traces of who they are now, and I can barely recognize today’s child inside the infant they were.

Nothing in my life has forced me to grow up more than parenting.

Working out how to relate to a grade-schooler is only the latest way in which parenting is grinding me into a grown-up. To say that it’s humbling seems far too trite. I’m learning for the thousandth time that life is not all about me; when I’m on one side of that slammed door, if I insist completely on me — on my idea of justice, on what I want and need, on how I feel — then I blow it.

Instead, I’m learning that sometimes it’s best to let perfect justice take a backseat to mercy, because that’s a developing person on the other side of the door. I’m learning to choose my words with care and bite my tongue often, because my words carry extra weight when the recipient is still acquiring a vocabulary. And I’m learning the awful truth that it’s entirely possible to dislike your offspring on occasion, and that the grittiest work of love is not pulling away in moments of dislike, because that’s not an option: This is your child.

Above all, I’m learning that I will blow it, which is okay since it’s not all about me. I remind myself of the power of apology, the resilience of children, and the grace of the other voices in my child’s life.

Sometimes I think that parenting is kind of like what they say about doing volunteer work in Africa: I’m probably getting more out of it than they are.

Regrets (I’ve Had a Few)

October in Vermont is a month that tugs your heart back and forth. It is undeniably beautiful: peak foliage season, bringing busloads of “leaf peepers” and wavering chains of backroad cyclists into our town. Looking out the windows from where I sit at my computer, I feel like I’m inside a golden box. The woods are yellow and brown and red and just the tiniest bit of green, and they glow. It’s a breathtaking time of year.

But it tugs at your heart because you know it won’t last. It’s a quick transition between the emerald warmth of summer and the white freeze of winter. And, like all transitions, it’s not without mess: the green leaves mixed in among the autumn colors, the temperatures that swing wildly from the 30s to the 70s.

It is quite possible that I’m in the October of my life right now.

I spent the first part of the month looking backwards with some regret. “If I’d known then what I know now, I’d have had all the kids right away, in my 20s, and then gone to college,” I told my husband one night. Never mind the glaringly obvious logistical problems with that statement (like: How is it in any way easier to go to college AFTER having four kids?); what I meant was that it seems wasteful that I invested in my education when I was mentally young (i.e. immature), thus delaying offspring until I was physically older. Childbirth and rearing would’ve probably been less taxing when I was physically younger, and higher education would’ve been less wasted on my when I was mentally older.

That’s all beside the point; the point is that I didn’t know then what I know now, and that’s the crucial fly in the ointment of all regrets. If I’d had children earlier, I’d have been a very different mother with very different children. If I’d waited to launch my education and career (such as it is), I’d have skipped over some vitally important formative experiences. Flip-flopping my timeline doesn’t get me to where I am now, just younger and with a better vocational plan: It changes everything.

But there I sat, in October of 2014 and in my own emotional October, looking back with regret, wondering why I hadn’t made better use of my summer.

Blah.

Then the other night, my husband pointed out that this week is the 15-year anniversary of when we started dating. That news sent me into a completely different sort of backward glancing.

It sent me back to that Halloween weekend of 1999, when a young couple on their third date had just finished a nice dinner in Greenwich Village. As they crossed lower Sixth Avenue, they held hands for the first time.

This sort of backward glancing always makes me think about how much fun it must be to be God. Because I see this couple, as if from above, and I think: They have no idea.

We didn’t know then what we know now.

We didn’t know that three years later we’d get married, after a dating relationship that tested every bit of faith and commitment we had in us.

And then, when we were newly married, there was a certain little girl who lived in our building and who always made us chuckle when we shared an elevator with her and her mother. My husband called her “the sassy Asian girl.” He’d say, “It would be fun to have a sassy Asian girl someday.”

He had no idea.

So I’ve spent these final days of October looking back over the past 15 years with this “God’s-eye view.” Revisiting the quarrels and the make-ups, the trips around the world, the years of graduate school and jobs, the loving moments with friends and family, the illnesses and the childbirths. And the thing is, when I take this view, there’s just so much joy. Joy, and wonder at it all.

And yes, there were hard and sorrowful and horrible times. But when I take the “God’s-eye view,” I don’t see any of those times with regret. I just think: I didn’t know then what I know now. I didn’t know that it would be okay in the end. I didn’t know how those moments would become crucial pieces of the whole.

Where does that lead me?

Having looked back with regret, and having looked back with joy and wonder, the common denominator is: I didn’t know then what I know now. Our cosmic ignorance in each present moment can lead to regret, or it can lead to joy and wonder. And, like most things — like October — it’s a both/and. Regrets can coexist with joy and wonder.

But, given the choice, it’s probably better for your heart to try and take the “God’s-eye view.” It’ll keep you warmer come winter.

The Lost Girls

*Composite of video surveillance images of Hannah Graham on the night she disappeared from http://www.wtvr.com*

Last Friday I had a dentist appointment, or what I like to think of as: My chance to catch up on People magazine. So there I was, in the waiting room, flipping through a back issue of People, when I came upon an article about the disappearance of 18-year-old University of Virginia student Hannah Graham.

Although Hannah Graham had disappeared over a month earlier, this was the first I’d heard of it. My life is like that these days. Many of you are probably more familiar than I with the details of the story: the beautiful, bright, and athletic UVA sophomore who disappeared after a party, the video footage of her wandering downtown Charlottesville alone, the man who was taken into custody with possible links to the disappearances and deaths of several other beautiful young women. When I came home from the dentist, I searched the news and learned that human remains that were found on an abandoned farm had just been positively identified as the body of Hannah Graham.

These are the kind of stories that I can’t get out of my head.

As it happens, I have some tenuous personal connections to this particular story: Hannah Graham grew up in Alexandria, Virginia, which is just a few miles from the Northern Virginia suburb where I grew up. My family has a deep affection for UVA — both my father and my cousin attended UVA Law School — and I visited Charlottesville often as a child.

Common geography aside, this sort of story always haunts me. It takes my mind to the darkest places I can imagine. What must it be like to be abducted, subjected to horrors, and killed? What must it be like to be the parent of a daughter who disappears? It’s unfathomable, and my heart breaks for Hannah, for her parents, and for too many other daughters and families who’ve suffered similar ordeals.

But there’s an aspect of the Hannah Graham story that I find especially chilling, and that’s how alone she was. I gather that there’s been some unhelpful criticism on this point already: “Why was she walking alone after midnight?”, “Was she drunk?” Before I go on, I want to be clear that I am not sitting in judgement of either Hannah Graham or her friends; there but for the grace of God go most of us when when we were 18, 19, 20…. No; the fault for this injustice lies squarely on the shoulders of whomever took and killed her.

Still: Video surveillance images from at least three separate cameras showed Hannah Graham walking or running alone through Charlottesville for over an hour. Why was she walking alone? Where were her friends — the friends she’d met for dinner, the friends she’d seen at a party?

This is where I think the Hannah Graham story becomes a commentary on our culture.

My husband and I tell our four daughters that, if they ever find themselves lost and alone — and if there’s no police officer or other obvious authority figure present — the rule is: Look for a mom. Ideally, this would be a mom they know; failing that, look for anybody who appears to be a mom or grandma. (This is not intended to be sexist, it’s just a matter of statistical safety.)

Where were the moms for Hannah Graham? Was she looking for one?

In my opinion, the most heartbreaking image from all of the news coverage on Hannah Graham is the last recorded image we have of her just before she disappears from view forever. She’s walking through a pedestrian mall; the man who was later arrested and charged with her disappearance is several yards behind her.

And between them comes a small crowd of people, walking in the same direction.

When a young girl who is possibly inebriated and probably lost can wander for an hour late at night through public places where there are groups of people out and about, and she ends up dead, that is an indictment on our community. It implicates us all.

She was so alone, but there were people around. And that’s what it’s like to live in our culture today, where it’s possible to have 500 Facebook friends whom you never see in person.

It appears that Hannah Graham did reach out for help at least once: She sent a text message to some friends saying that she was heading to a party but was lost. The technology was there; the technology worked. She had a cell phone. There were surveillance cameras. They didn’t save her.

She needed actual people. She needed the community. Where were the moms?

This is a tragic story. Unfortunately, this side of paradise, there will always be tragedy and crime. But it seems to me that some tragedies might be preventable if the community is aware, and if our children see the community as a trustworthy place to turn for help. If there’s anything to be taken from the tragedy of Hannah Graham, maybe it’s this:

We — all of us, the human community — need to keep our eyes open for the lost girls. And we need to tell our girls that if they’re lost, they should try to ask the right people for help, before the wrong ones offer it.

Mom Goes to Doe Camp

It started with fly fishing.

My daughters were asking to go fishing. Neither my husband nor I, both suburban kids, have any fishing experience aside from some childhood Girl Scout and Y Camp trips. I’ve been keen to learn, though, and felt particularly drawn to fly fishing which, in my mind, is associated with two of my favorite things: Norman MacLean’s gorgeous story A River Runs Through It, and Brad Pitt’s performance in the movie of the same name.

But, as I understand it, fly fishing involves hours of standing in water. It doesn’t seem compatible with being the mother of four young daughters. I decided to shelve it for a few years.

Then, on our anniversary, my husband handed me a tiny figurine of a doe. He was sending me to Doe Camp.

Click here to continue reading this week’s “Faith in Vermont” column in The Addison Independent.

Rest: Why You (Yes, You) Need It!

I would love to hear about your process in realizing you need to “step back” and care for yourself. What happened to cause that? What has changed in the way you go about doing things?

Those lines are from an email I received from a college student we know.

I laughed when I read her email. I’d just been up half the night before having a panic attack. I’d laid in bed, mind racing, breathing hard, every muscle firing. Finally, so as not to disturb my sleeping husband, I went downstairs and walked around, forcing myself to breathe deeply.

Click here to continue reading my latest post over at “On the Willows.”

Scrubbing the Blender

Later this month, my husband Erick and I will celebrate a dozen years of marriage; we’ve spent almost 15 years of our lives as a couple.

Erick and I aren’t a particularly glamorous, romantic, or even interesting couple, but we did “meet cute;” we’d stand up pretty well alongside those couples in When Harry Met Sally… who tell the true stories of how they met.

You can read Erick’s version here.

I was his waitress.

Summer 1999. I was working at a now-defunct restaurant in Greenwich, Connecticut called “Organic Planet.” It was about as much of a hole-in-the-wall as you can get in Greenwich: a tiny space with about 8 tables, next to a vacuum cleaner repair shop on a nondescript street off of Greenwich’s main drag. But it dished up smoothies and tempeh salads to clientele like Tommy Hilfiger. The Tommy Hilfiger. (He was a very generous tipper.)

I had no previous waitressing experience, and was biding my time until I moved to New York City to begin a teaching job that fall. I figured everybody should waitress at least once in their lives, and that I’d probably learn a thing or two. As it turned out, I learned how to pronounce “quinoa,” and I met my future husband.

Erick was working (and often sleeping) at the Greenwich office of a hedge fund startup. The office’s air conditioning was turned off on the weekends, but Erick worked on the weekends and it was summer. So occasionally he’d bring his work to the air-conditioned, tofu scented paradise that was Organic Planet.

My first impression: “There’s a young, skinny Asian guy who seems nice and probably won’t try to hit on me. But why is he lugging around that huge stack of papers?”

Whenever Erick and I tell this story to others, he highlights his subtle strategy for wooing me. Throughout most of the summer, his plan of attack involved timing his arrival for 7:50 PM — Organic Planet closed at 8 — so that he could be the last customer in the place and therefore have more time to talk with me. He’d always order a banana smoothie.

It was only later, after we’d been dating a while, that he told me how precisely he’d orchestrated this. And I, in turn, told him how his plan had driven me nuts.

Because by 7:45, I’d figured that nobody else was going to come in and order a smoothie: Who drinks smoothies at 8 PM? I was anxious to close up shop and get home. So I’d clean the blender.

Cleaning the blender was one of the worst parts of waitressing. Most of the other dishes we’d just slide back to the dishwashing staff, but the blender station was up front, so cleaning it was the waitstaff’s responsibility. Blenders, as you may know, have multiple parts, including blades. Cleaning them involves disassembling the parts, scrubbing under and between the little blades, and then reassembling the whole thing.

As soon as I set the neatly scrubbed blender atop its base, in would walk Erick, asking for a smoothie.

As Erick and I told this story to some new friends last month, I realized that for years I’ve thought of this blender incident as just an amusing anecdote, a cute little detail, when actually it was an amazingly accurate preview of marriage. Because that feeling I had when Erick would ask me to make a smoothie using my just-cleaned blender — that feeling is one of the emotions I’ve felt most often throughout twelve years of marriage. Frustration. Vague annoyance. Martyrdom. Just when I get everything nice and tidy, you come in and make me mess it up again with your needs!

I’ve felt this way more than I’ve felt the soaring highs of early love, more than I’ve felt passion. And that’s not because I don’t love Erick, or because he’s an irritating person; on the contrary, I love him immensely, and he’s one of the least demanding people I’ve ever met.

I think that the “please make me a smoothie in your clean blender” feeling is all tangled up with what it means to have relationships with others. You don’t even have to be married to feel it: I feel it all the time towards my children. If I’m honest, I feel it every time the phone rings.

Because sometimes, at the end of a long day, you just want to sit on the couch eating popcorn and reading a good book, but your spouse wants to talk about their feelings or your day or the budget.

Sometimes, just when you think all the kids are napping (finally!) and you’re sitting down to write your next blog post, the bedroom door slams open and they come pounding down the hall screaming, “Mommy! Mommy!”

Sometimes, when you’re trying to cook dinner or get everyone out the door or call the dog in, the phone rings and it’s a friend who needs help or wants to chat.

Having your neat and tidy life messed up is a side effect of connection. And love is when you grit your teeth and usher in the mess.

When you lay down your book and talk to your spouse.

When you get up from your computer and tuck the kids back into bed.

When you pick up the phone.

When you toss bananas, yogurt, and ice into the blender that you just scrubbed.

If I seem to suggest that love usually entails frustration and teeth-gritting acts of service — well, I think that’s true. It’s what a dozen years of marriage, half of those years with children, have taught me.

But I wouldn’t give back a single one of those years. In fact, I’m probably more romantic than when I put on that white dress twelve years ago. I believe wholeheartedly in love. I believe that nothing has more power to change other people and ourselves for the better than dirtying our clean blenders because somebody else wants a smoothie.

Keeping the blender unsullied, keeping our lives neat and tidy, may sound like a good thing. It may even feel like a good thing, for a time. But after a while, you’re just a waitress sitting alone with a clean blender at closing time. And that sounds pretty sad to me.