The Second Half

======== “The point of marriage is not to create a quick commonality by tearing down all boundaries; on the contrary, a good marriage is one in which each partner appoints the other to be the guardian of his solitude, and thus they show each other the greatest possible trust. A merging of two people is an impossibility, and where it seems to exist, it is a hemming-in, a mutual consent that robs one party or both parties of their fullest freedom and development…” ― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet =======

In a football game, it usually means you can come back for the win, even if you’re down, dependent of course,  upon the deficit at halftime. 

The second half, implying there are only two sections, the first and then the second, and that, my friends, is it. That's all we got. So here we are perched at the equinox, the equal point of light on the equator, the great divider of the halves. 

The first half went fast. Sure there were drudergy days that felt like centuries. There were those most horrible days that will never be forgotten, and those most glorious days that will never be forgotten, imprinted equally upon my soul. I now stare down the barrel of the second half of marriage, smack in my face. My husband's recent reply to the benign question innocently asked: “how old will you be this year?” and in his most crotchety old man voice possible his reply: “20 years ’til I’m 80!”. 

We are suddenly talking about retirement, not the airy dreamy wavy haze of talks when we were young about gardens and vacations. No, these talks have the twinge of outright bile in my throat reality to them. In how many years do you want to retire? Panic over the short distance that timeline is. The mortgage calculations keep me up at night. 

We’ve been married 23 years, together for 27. Looking at the second half we will be married for 46 years, in the “end”. Anything past the second half I consider overtime with sudden death being the ultimate decider. The year would be 2044. This of course is if we are lucky and all goes according to plan. Which, as we all know, it doesn’t always. 

The retirement numbers, the 401k numbers and the college tuition numbers are hard for me to get my head around, but it's the unknowns that haunt me. What will we do? Will we be able to travel? What will it be like for us to not have a “job” to go to each day? How is this all going to work out? Is it too late for long term health insurance? Is our plan going to work? Do we even want to do our plan or have we changed our minds? What if I change my mind and he doesn’t? 

I must remember; we can do anything when we work together, unstoppable. Including almost tearing “us” down to the nub, the near culmination of divorce as the close call cherry on top of the occasional shit pile. We are easily tangled in the quagmire of worry, insecurity,  stress, a pandemic, politics, overall wolrd madness. 

We have never not had kids together. There have been children in our house for 32 straight years, longer than our marriage. It’s complicated. 

The recipe for a happy marriage, according to a couple I met randomly on a long plane ride told me “take one week a year just the two of you, one weekend a quarter, and one date night a week!” This adorable older couple were on their way to a holiday to celebrate their 50 years of marriage, I was on my way to my parents house mid divorce, three little boys in tow. 

We learned we had to always appear as a “united front”.  It was important to take time away from the consistent din of three sons, one daughter, numerous dogs, houses, jobs, and legos. If we didn’t make “us” the highest priority it would all be for naught. We have  stayed true to our Friday night date nights, and tried to keep to the 50 years married couples formula. 

We saw how easy it could be to simply lose each other in the first half. We held on tight to one another. Maybe a bit too tight. Admittedly I clung to him like a life raft. Our fateful meeting one freezing New Year's eve via a blind date, he came into my life at one of its most difficult and darkest times. I had just completed the nastiest of divorces, hence the three kids I brought to the table. We didn’t realize it that night, but it was the beginning of our first half. 

I had some interesting role models growing up of what “marriage” was to look like, mostly from TV shows. Besides the Bradys, the Arnezes, and the Bunkers of my youth, the longest coupling I ever witnessed was my parent’s. My husband and I were both raised in traditional military style families of the 1970s. Moms stayed home, cooked, cleaned, and dealt with everything in the household. They always had some volunteer positions that seemed “pretty damned important”. Dads worked a lot, usually somewhere mysterious and what they did all day was equally mysterious. They washed the cars on Saturdays. We took a family vacation once a year. Every weekday at 5:30 dad would park his Dodge Dart in his parking spot on the driveway. He was home, it was a distinct point of reference every day. We heard a lot of “it had to be done before your dad gets home” throughtout the days, as well as the often repeated “WAIT until your father gets home!” and the ultimate; “you’re staying in your room until your father gets home!” 

There was a mini celebration with his arrival each day. He’d casually fling his heavy dark green officer’s jacket over his shoulder and stride into his home. He’d walk past my sister and I smacking each of us on our foreheads with a kiss and a “hi girls” - “hi dad” we echoed back in chorus without lifting our gaze from the tv set with “I Dream Of Jeannie” blaring in the background. With his peaked hat, formal and molded, in hand he moved down the hallway in his stiff, highly polished shoes, the scent of starched shirts, lingering cigarette smoke, and mustiness would trail behind. He’d continue his stride to the master bedroom where he would be met by my mother waiting for him on the edge of their twin beds that were pushed together. He would change his clothes from his formal officers uniform, hat tossed onto the top shelf of the closet. Shoes placed neatly side by side. My mom would inspect the uniform, did it need a press? Could he wear it again? Was it too wrinkled from driving in the heat? Depending on her prognosis it would go into the cleaning basket or carefully hung on the wooden hangers made for just this purpose. 

They would emerge in unison from the room, him in dungarees and keds, or in summer, bermuda shorts with hibachi leather squeaky sandals, completed with white socks  and a crisp t-shirt . His good night kisses as he tucked us in smelled of evenings, ice, and a hint of old spice aftershave. My dad was like a real life Mr Rogers changing into his slippers and cardigan, taking off and putting on a new persona. I loved witnessing this ritualistic evening metamorphosis. 

They seemed to be tied to each other, my parents. Like there was nothing sharp enough to cut through their ties, and at the same time hanging together by a frail thin thread. They seemed slightly trapped, but not uncomfortable. I never really knew about each of them before they met. The two of them as individuals, as if they only began to exist once they were married. This was the common model of the time. The idea of one person making another person whole, as Jerry McGuire crooned from the screen “you complete me” being the attitude of modern love. 

I’m realizing that you can only hold on for so long to a life raft, until the stark realization that; you are either going to have to let go and swim, or sink. Eventually something has to shift, no one can hold their grip that tightly for 23 years. My nearly paralytic fingers began to ease the hold when the youngest left the nest this past fall - empty at last. It is as bitter sweet as it sounds. 

I was very much looking forward to this transition for a large part of the first half. I was a mom young. Now some 35 years later, I do not have any children in the house. Yes they will always be my children, I will always worry for them, I will always accept them, I will always love them, and that is made easier when I don’t really know what they are doing and where they are, exactly. I trust them. We all did our best. Here they are world, the most beautiful beings I have ever had the honor to know. They are swimming out there in the sea of life, knowing there is always a home life raft to come hold on to for a while if they get tired. 

It’s an adjustment, the emptiness. Oddly similar to the lacking, the void, of when a family pet dies. They just aren’t where they always used to be.  Leaving behind evacuated space.

Sometimes when boundaries are quickly released it can be like a flood gate breaching. When the wall comes down there is a mad rush to cross the divide, leap over the threshold. A sudden loss of boundaries can run a bit too wild at first. With the edges of responsibilities gone it is hard to know how far to go, or how far not to go.

There are places of rarefaction now, where there once was a child. I try to find a comfortable seat here in the uncomfortable silence of the second half. I didn’t realize the emotions that would accompany the loss and  longing of the second half, all tossed, like a salad, with freedom and joy. 

Without this cloak of motherhood around me who lies underneath these heavy folds? In the bright sunlight she is clearly older, dustier and with wrinkles that have settled in enduringly upon her life experienced sun kissed laugh lined face. Her essence shines from her blue green heavily lidded eyes.  The ojas, of those first half years, diminished. 

Through the hot flashes accompanied by the sometimes rage and frequent tears, he has been standing by. Witnessing the transition of the female body from child bearing to non childbearing may be almost as challenging as experiencing it directly. He is softer now, standing from behind his shield. Softer in body and spirit. No longer feeling the immense responsibility of providing for the large tribe. His salt and pepper thick hair is lustrous. His hands are strong and age spotted.  He is learning to exhale more, to model the best man he can be for his sons and daughter. He dreams of the days when he will be skiing with the currently non existent grandchildren. 

We’ve done some damage to “us” for certain in the first half. Fights: likely, more than most marriages of this duration. At a conference long ago, an innocent attendee walked down a corner corridor in the conference center, only to encounter me screaming into the pay phone at him. I thought I had walked far enough away from public ears, but with great embarrassment I hung up and turned to her and said “that’s passion, it goes both ways.” 

He told our marriage therapist recently, “we know everything there is to know about each other.” We have shared the same house and same bed for approximately 8000 hours. We know each others bodies, each others “buttons”, each others cough in a crowd, and each others inflection when on the phone with their mothers. 

At once he is the custodian, defender, chaperone, attendant and curator of my authentic self. He protects and encourages the waving of my freak flag. We know to be gentle around our tender spots. 

We are now consciously restructuring “us”, him,  me, marking this halfway milestone of our togetherness and our separateness. We have our eyes wider open. We are working to  repair some of the resentments and injuries that were too hastily covered, not given enough air to heal properly in the first half. We are maturing together and individually talking about second half topics. Our commitment to one another is our cornerstone, even with a chip at its base, a little stained perhaps, but strong and holding all together. He said once “all we need to succeed is for one of us at any given time to be fully committed to the marriage, thats all it takes to stay married.” Brilliant. 

We have time and history on our side and that  makes it harder to simply walk away. We’ve come very close to breaking, yet we hold on.  The TV “love” of my husband and wife mentors, above all else, were portrayed as committed and with a deep love for one another regardless of circumstances. Yes Lucy and Ricky were always in tiffs, Archie was downright horrible to Edith and Mike and Carol seemed honestly a bit sterile when together - yet all were a “perfect” marriage on that little box I loved to stare into. There was never any discussion of divorce, or abortion, or affairs, or anything at all uncomfortable. Leaving the viewer to fend for themselves here in real life.

In this second half I see us as the beautiful unique individuals that we are. Independent diverse and distinct humans that will always hold love for one another regardless of what may come. Our autonomous history of likes, tastes and cryptic phrases.  We have lived together the longest we have lived with anyone. We have influenced, swayed and shaped each other into the beings we are today, and still are independent of each other. At the beginning of the second half, its essential that we see our individual silhouettes, like shadow cutouts, in negative space, light shining behind us separately yet always together. 

The marching band has left the field….. 

=============“...But once the realization is accepted that even between the closest people infinite distances exist, a marvelous living side-by-side can grow up for them, if they succeed in loving the expanse between them, which gives them the possibility of always seeing each other as a whole and before an immense sky.” Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet ========