another ongoing love letter
May all of my successes be measured through the lens of my relationships.
One of the unexpected pleasures of Maple’s departure to college is that she has taken up sending beautiful, long, handwritten letters. I have been reciprocating to the best of my ability and I find that this kind of communication and connection is a slow delight. I love it. There is a sharing in these letters that doesn’t happen so readily over the phone or FaceTime and I feel so lucky at my daughter’s clever initiation into this correspondence. Freddy has been joining in a bit here and there as well; if he is around while I am writing one he is quick to make his mark to slip into the envelope along with my crowded letter. He has mastered the F at the start of his nickname and will bust out a half dozen “f-cards” and add them in as his own special message to his beloved big sis. Last week I suggested he try writing his whole name, all six letters, and without any help other than the visual to transcribe, he wrote his name for the very first time and sent it off to moo.
Freddy is having his own rapid growth and development season and Chris and I are at turns thrilled to bear witness to the boy he is continuing to become, and also treacherously tender at the finitude of early childhood in general. I have always leaned deeply nostalgic and over the past several years, and certainly since the addition of our youngest, Chris has landed with two boots solidly fixed in this sentimental terrain. I am beyond thankful to share this reality with him. It is good to have a life-mate who is just as unafraid to cry as me. Let it fucking flow baby.
Chris joined us for much of the past retreat weekend up at Sterling Forest and it was incredible to share some of that experience with him. There were several couples on retreat this go-round and I am enjoying learning what this particular dynamic offers to a group setting. There is a depth between partners and an earnestness that feels valuable to occupy and hold space for. The depth of intimacy a committed couple can contribute to the group offers both ease as well as an inherent vulnerability. Am I able to be exactly who my partner thinks I am and also explore myself in this more personal way? That is a question I think this format may offer folks that are interested in exploring the space, whether partnered on retreat or not. Anyhow, a young couple on retreat is expecting their first baby at the beginning of next year. It was lovely to connect with them and hear them explore their thoughts and feelings on the front end of this transformational life journey.
One afternoon when Chris and I were off hiking he shared with me the feelings that were being stirred up for him in connection to this couple. He said that it wasn’t that he was jealous, but perhaps a little envious, of them being on the front end, at the onset of this grand becoming as parents and family. They get to meet their child for the very first time soon. They are at the very beginning of what for Chris and I has been the journey of a lifetime. The path that has made us who we are as individuals and also as a pair. Bonded through time and space and all eternity no matter what lies ahead by the cellular replication and evolution that is Maple and Eider and Freddy. We cannot un-become their parents. My guy shed some big juicy tears and his face became so soft and open in this way that age and time’s passage are only making more and more magnificent for me to behold.
I have been re-reading Esther Perel’s “Mating in Captivity” this week. I read it a little over ten years ago when Chris and I were fresh off the tremendous cataclysm of our married lives. It was a life raft for me in a dark and uncharted ocean of recovery and reclamation. Back then, it suggested to me the possibility of something that I could only pray might become true for us through the conscious perseverance of committed love. Now re-reading it I am experiencing it as the affirmation of what is wholly possible on the path of the life-long love and becoming of two people who continue to choose one another. It is a triumph rooted in the real. One which speaks not just to the work but also to the ecstasy possible in mating for life. It is not for everyone. But it is most certainly for me. I am discovering the depth of my own heart and my capacity for love in my life by virtue of my ongoing collaboration with Chris. We are in deep process with one another and it is the work of a lifetime. May all of my successes be measured through the lens of my relationships.
In the last 30 minutes of the audio version of her book, Perel leaves a shimmering trail of jewels for us to follow. One that was not visible to me a decade ago and that I now find to be a clear and guiding force. I found one such gem in this line: “You have to trust people a lot to let yourself forget them”. I cannot imagine that I would understand this sentiment if I were not living inside of this love. That to trust him completely is to also have the capacity to free my consciousness from any concern or preoccupation over his narrative about me. Or in her words here: “Romance doesn’t necessarily fade over time, but it does get riskier.” Can anyone even begin to imagine the level of vulnerability required to sustain this sort of intimacy through decades? I had no clue. No model for it. No talk of it. No idea. And yet now, it is what we are living and I cannot imagine un-knowing what I know. I have stepped solidly and wholeheartedly into the parallel universe where this is not only possible but has become so real that it is what I know to expect in terms of my, as well as Chris’, capacity for love and living.
Chris and I have never been particularly private about our sex life. We have tried to be discreet but we have also always lived in small spaces, very close to one another. Maple and Eider would probably beg to differ here and bring up some childhood narrative of the two of them hanging out on the big water catchment barrel outside of the old house in Mount Horeb while mom and dad were upstairs not so quietly “wrestling”. I like to wrestle with Chris. What can I say? And I do think that the sex that is alive between us, sometimes a loud pulse at others a distant hum, is fundamental not just to our married life but also to our life as a family. It is good to for our kids to live inside of the expectation of our physical as well as emotional love.
Not to say I do not value some degree of privacy. I most certainly do but I also know that to hold out for a time when all the stars are perfectly lined up with the house being empty or everyone sleeping is a perfect formula for never fucking my husband. And so, I have simultaneously curbed my expectations and also become an opportunist. We do, after all, share a bedroom with one of our children and have for the past 5+ years with no definitive end in sight. We have a loose plan taking shape for Freddy’s departure from his little closet bedroom within our room and over into the one Maple will move out of once we have provided her a feasible space to move into. I am wholly uncomfortable with removing a space of her own even though she will likely be coming home less and less and less. I want the option to always be there for her, and for each of our kiddos which is both very Vermonty and very me. Hense the cabin project and its impending commencement. There will be a place for each of our offspring to call their very own home that also generates the cash to cover its development while they are not. That is the plan and we are bumping our way closer and closer to it.
In the shortening meantime, we like sharing a room with Freddy. The way the three of us occupy the space together works for each of us and we feel close and comfortable in ways that do not yet feel limited. I imagine we are moving in the direction of Freddy’s desire for his own autonomous space growing bigger than his desire for the snug coziness of his nest within a nest. For now, we enjoy being close. And Chris and I are comfortable freely enjoying our own and each other’s bodies while the little dude saws logs across the room under the muffling fuzz of the sound machine.
We opted for close spaces with our kids a long time ago and the inherent benefits of this arrangement far outweigh the occasional inconveniences. Especially the inconveniences I tell myself are about my ability to feel free and comfortable and connected in my skin. That, I do believe, is a farce. The other night, Maple called me late- her hours have morphed into full art school insanity which, to be honest, has been where she was headed since birth. That girl turns on in the wee hours. She is ready to really connect and dish it once the sky is dark and the stars are out. I was so tired, as I always am by 10 or so, and wanted to wash my face and floss and get my ass in bed next to my warm man. But she was ready to talk and so I did my best just as I have tried to do for all of the years that she would corner me in our small shared family bathroom as I was ready for sleep. Why wouldn’t I? I gave up believing the myth of permanence long ago when it comes to my kids and if my daughter wants me I want to be there. Go ahead. Tell me everything. So what if I am so tired that my face is falling off and I can barely stand? If this is the hour when your heart has a voice it wants to she with me then how dare I consider being anywhere else?
After she hung up I slid under the sheets and Chris and I giggled about how she can still get me even when she is miles away in her new place by the sea. We might have also cried about it a little as well. We definitely cried. We are who we are and this life is full of feelings. And the feelings are not limited to a room or a house or a hillside. Besides, nostalgia is one of our gateways into both the real and the beyond. The infinite universe as it spins and expands around us and within us. This way. Today and through all time and all space.