Tag Archives: marriage

Park

Leave a reply

Dear Terrence,

I took my kids to the park today. Yesterday, too. “Daddy, can we come back tomorrow?” my daughter asked just before we left, so it looks like we might be heading back tomorrow as well.

VIV_9694-640x424

It’s a real privilege to be able to spend so much time with my kids. It’s one of the perks of being a teacher: I get spring break off too. And so I spend it with my family.

I wonder how many times you got to spend the afternoon at the park with your dad. I know you live with your mom, and for all I know, your dad could be out of the picture altogether. It’s not at all uncommon these days.

I know you’ll likely say, “It is what it is.” Perhaps. It is, but it shouldn’t be. I’m always a little taken aback at how cavalierly some of you guys take the fact that your parents are divorced. I cannot image my parents divorcing; I cannot imagine divorcing my wife. We’re in to for good — there is no problem we won’t work out somehow. And so I’ll always be able to take my kid to the park on sunny spring afternoons. Because it’s important — the smallest things always are.

I hope you’ll take this to heart when you start your own family. It’s likely to be difficult for you, not having any solid role model to serve as a pattern. Still, it’s possible. Just say to yourself daily, “My child will have a more stable family life than I did.” Say it now. Say it again. There — that’s a start.

Tired but satisfied,
Your Teacher

First, Last, and Only

Leave a reply

A local priest, when discussing the Liturgy of the Eucharist — which never changes, from day to day, week to week, year to year; in other words, something repeated hundreds and then thousands of times — discussed how it might be easy simply to drift into auto-pilot (auto-priest?) and run through the liturgy without thinking, without really being there. He told us his secret for preventing such rote recitation is a pray in which he asks for the grace to say the Mass as if it were his first Mass, his last Mass, his only Mass.

It might not be a bad way to approach every task.

I think of the excitement I felt every single “first” day I have had in the classroom: the first day at a new school, the first day ever in front of the classroom, the first day of a new school year, the first day back from a long break. Each and every first day has its own unique excitement, but the fact that it is exciting is the common element. By day sixty-five, that excitement seems somehow to have vanished, or at least diminished. The result is sometimes drudgery.

I think of the excitement I felt the first time I held our daughter. Such a charge, such a responsibility, such a humbling moment. Yet as the years pass and the fussing and independence increase, that energy sometimes seems a little tired. The daily routine, with its predictability, numbs the sense of wonder if one is not careful. Children are blessings, but the sometimes simply wear one down, and while I feel like a “bad parent” for admitting it, I’m sure it will happen with our son as well. It’s simply easier to focus on the now, which can be frustrating, than the thrill that still resonates but sometimes seems hushed.

I think of the heart-stopping moment when I asked K to marry me, and while I love her more now than I did then, and will love her more tomorrow — more deeply, more maturely — than I do today, there are moments when we grate on each other. It’s only natural. Still, in those moments, for the briefest flicker of time, that thrill seems gone. I know it will return; I know it never left; but in my human weakness, I can still focus on that moment and wallow in it for a while.

So what if I could live every moment as if it were my first, last, and only in front of a classroom; my first, last and only with my children; my first, last, and only with my wife. What if I could simply remember to reach each second as if it were my first, last, and only? Could I stand the intensity? The joy?

Seven

2 Replies

Seven years — perfection according to Old Testament numerology. I know I haven’t been perfect in those years, and while K has come close, she is only human.

22a

The relationship itself, though, has been — or as close to it as one could hope in this life.

Marriage and Divorce

2 Replies

One of the blogs tumbling into my Blog Lines account on daily basis is the New York Times‘ “Freakonomics.” Justin Wolfers posted “Assessing Your Divorce Risk” and provided a link to Divorce 360. I was immediately intrigued, for how can one quantify something as personal and diverse as divorce?

This site provides people with information and support for all stages of divorce. I’m not thinking about a divorce — or even close to it — but I was fascinated with the idea of the “Marriage Calculator” widget. When I filled out the necessary fields, I learned the following:

People with similar backgrounds who are already divorced: 4%
People with similar backgrounds who will be divorced over the next five years: 7%

It sounds like the wife and I have little to no chance for divorce, according to this widget. However, it includes the caveat/explanation that “In general for the five-year divorce prediction rates, those with less than 3 percent are at lower risk, 3 – 7 percent are of average risk and more than 7 percent are at higher risk.”

So we’re at average risk for a divorce.

What would go into calculating this rate? As the page loaded and I clicked across to another tab, I gave it a little thought. Surely age at marriage will count. Length of time we’ve been married would also be important, I reasoned. But beyond that, I couldn’t think of anything that might really give any sort of indication regarding divorce.

Fiscal strains present in the marriage? Nah — thousands of marriages survived the Depression and few people in the States are suffering at a level anywhere near that.

What about how long we’d known each other before getting married? A spur-of-the-moment (relatively or literally speaking) decision might be at a higher risk than those who’d taken their time in getting to know each other. At the same time, how would you quantify that for such a survey?

image1

What they ask for, though, is simple: gender, education level, age when married, years married, and period of time when the respondent got married.

Wolfers points out how many just assume “the risk is zero,” and I’ll admit, I still feel that way, even after having taken the survey.

It makes me wonder about the legitimacy of the survey, though. Certainly there are indicators for a higher risk for divorce, but how can anyone determine an “average” risk?

Truth is, I can’t imagine a scenario that might put so many strains our my marriage that we might talk about divorcing: the death of a child can lead to divorce, I believe. Yet there have to be other factors, for not everyone who suffers the loss of a child divorces.

If two people are determined to stay together, to make a relationship work even in the face of a tragedy that tears some couples apart, then statistical analysis is useless. The risk for them is zero, because they’ve both said as much. If two people are determined to make a marriage work, and the success and happiness of their marriage is a major goal in their life and not just something that’s bumping along for the ride, with the mortgage and insurance payments, then it seems to me that all other numbers are useless.

Those other factors that lead me to believe that this is basically worthless. All it says is that you fit into this or that demographic stastic; that’s not the same as risk.

Impersonal

2 Replies

In the spirit of St. Bernard’s via negativa, there are few things to make you more appreciative of your spouse than perusing on-line personals. “Tell me I’ll never be back out there,” Carrie Fisher’s character says to Bruno Kirby in When Harry Met Sally, and after looking through a few on-line personals, the “dating scene” shows itself to be most definitely “out there.”

A good personal ad is an art. Just try describing yourself and what you’re looking for in less than 200 words. Less is more difficult.

Piling words on top of each other is much easier than constructing well-written sentences. But despite the fact that this is the _first_ impression they’re making, no one — neither men nor women — takes it so seriously. Instead, we read things like, “Hmmm about me. I guess you can say I’m a pretty funny broad.” Already we’re smiling at how much her word choice has said about her. Scroll down and we find, “Ok, where to start… like many people, I feel that I am just not meeting the ‘right people’ out at bars” To begin with, start without the “where to start.”

In advertising themselves, people tend to fall into cliché with alarming frequency — then wallow about in it. And it starts with the ad’s header:

  • I’m a nice girl looking for her shining knight.
  • Looking For Mr. Right
  • Don’t judge a book by its cover
  • Is Miss Right out there?
  • Looking for the right one.
  • Looking for Adventure
  • No DRAMA!
  • lookn 4 u!!

Some communicate on so many levels (many of them distressful) that they seemed to be masterpieces of Freudian innuendo:

  • Animal lover seeking non-puppy kicker
  • Gotta pay the cost to be the boss

Yahoo! personals washed up more than its share of clichés and freaks, but there were some thoughtful openings as well.

Well, one: “carpal tunnel love.” It just makes me all the more thankful that I’m married, that I no longer have such worries as “Will I still be alone when I’m sixty-four?”

She’ll still need me; she’ll still feed me.

Nagging, er, Encouraging Kinga to Blog

6 Replies

The original motivation behind this whole blog was the joke domain name, “matchingtracksuits.com.” The “matching” part implies not one author, but two.

That was the idea.

But my wife has been reticent to join me on this blogging adventure, and instead reads what I write behind my back.

The original motivation behind this post was to get readers to direct some encouraging words Kinga’s way. That was the idea.

I’ve been encouraging her to write a bit, if only to practice her written English. She seems hesitant to put her thoughts out for all to see (as if the Vast Hordes visit MTS).

Perhaps there’s a blogging gene and she’s missing it?

I have to admit — I do like this whole blogging thing. It’s a natural extension of my journal, which I’ve been keeping for years and years now. It just includes the added element of “audience.”

Yet, while I like it, it is getting a bit tiresome. The initial thrill must be wearing off. Unlike with various other addictions, I don’t foresee this resulting in heavier doses.

Perhaps some help would, well, help.

Perhaps that’s the real motivation behind nagging my wife about this. But maybe, perhaps, conceivably … there are those out there curious about the other tracksuit.

The Dirty Stairs II

Leave a reply

“Okay — you can check now,” I called out to my wife after I thought the steps had had enough time to dry. I’d looked at all three of the un-wiped-down steps carefully, feeling to make sure there was no dampness, looking at it from this angle and that, trying to make sure it wasn’t obvious.

Part One of the dirty stairs wager is here.

Up the stairs she marched. Straight to the first step. “She’s a cleaning hound,” I thought. “I haven’t got a chance.”

“This one,” she proclaimed, and marched on.

My sporting-chance had now turned into insurance. “She can’t possibly find all three.”

She didn’t — she only found the one, which was in the most brightly lit portion of the staircase. My ego therefore took a beating, but it could have been worse — I was saved by poor lighting, I suppose.

Stunned, I sat wondering what had gone wrong. Now, I’m not a slob. When I lived alone, I didn’t have the cleanest apartment in the world, but it was regularly given a good shakedown. Still, I don’t like to carry things to extremes, and wiping down the staircase after vacuuming seemed like just that.

I was sure that she would not detect a single step.

I went back and looked again. There was no difference in the carpets. At the scene of the crime, there was nothing obviously out of place. It would be easy to chalk this up to gender differences, to come up with a carefully worded generalization that didn’t make all straight men seem like slobs and yet didn’t insult homosexual men, who are stereotypically cleaner than straight men but not always, hence the adverb “stereotypically,” that at the same time acknowledged the high slob-factor of some women without selling the occasional male clean-freak short, that tip-toed the touchy area of gender/orientation distinctions with a nod to a possible cultural influence without seeming overly PC…

All I ended up with was a run-on sentence and the affirmation that I am, despite all my protests, a lazy slob.

The Dirty Stairs

Part of getting ready for Christmas here is cleaning. Massive cleaning. Some people clean all the windows as well as every single rug.

But let’s not exaggerate.

My in-laws are reasonable people, and my wife is equally reasonable. But they’re still Polish, so that means a lot of cleaning. From a masculine point of view.

Today I was helping clean and was asked to do the staircase.

“Vacuum everything,” instructed my wife, as if I didn’t know how to clean stairs. “And then go back with a rag and clean all the carpets.”

Apparently, I didn’t know how to clean stairs.

“Clean all the carpets with a rag? After they’ve been vacuumed?” I asked incredulously. “What for? It’s not like it’ll make a difference!”

Long story short: we made a bet that I could skip cleaning one of the steps and she wouldn’t be able to tell which one.

Off I go, a lean-mean-clean machine.

I am a fair guy. More than fair. Hell, I even let folks do take-backs while playing chess online. So I thought, “If I’m such a sporty, fair-player sort with other people, how much more so should I be with my wife?” So, to give her a sporting chance, I didn’t clean three of the stairs.

And one of them in the most brightly lit portion of the staircase.

It could be more the effect of my testosterone level than any cultural difference, but I was sure she wouldn’t be able to find one.

The question is: how many did she find?