365 Nights (22 page)

Interestingly, sex wasn't on the prescription list. My therapist brought it up, to her credit. I had scored poorly on sex in that questionnaire, after all. But after I started laughing (or crying, I can't remember) in reference to her discussing the topic, we agreed to table it. I have to admit, though, she was one of the first ever to suggest that although I might have married the World's Most Perfect Man for Charla, it was hardly a perfect union without some semblance of a sex life. At the time, though, it simply wasn't a part of the repertoire for feeling better
for me
. How can you have sex with someone when you feel so sad? How can you want to be intimate when you're waiting to get home so you can cry in the bathroom away from your kids? How in the world can you feel romantic when it's all you can do to get through another day that feels like you're swimming underwater? I mean, people in the movies and in novels seem to run into the intimate arms of a loved one when things get unbearable. Having sex when you're sad, afraid, or overwhelmed should provide comfort, but I never tried it as it was beyond me. I was quietly inconsolable, and I was convinced that having sex wouldn't change that.

Could regular intimacy with a loving spouse have cured me in some way? I wondered. With depression, I believe not. It never occurred to me that sex—or rather intimacy and all that comes with it—could be a management tool for grief . . . or any host of ills. Stress. Anxiety. Pick an angst and test it. “I feel a bad spell coming on, I need to run home to Brad before I fall apart again.” It just didn't seem practical. But of course, when you're depressed, your libido is buried somewhere deeper than deep, so at the time, there was no way I could have known.

Fast-forward several years to now, and while Little D is behind me (for now), I realize that there is nothing remotely practical about having sex every day with your spouse either. In fact, as part of this experiment I did indeed learn that if I'm regularly engaged in an intimate relationship with Brad, I really can leverage it to my mental and physical benefit in ways I never considered before (see my back pocket research from January). Back then, I was not aware of the healing benefits of sex with a loving spouse in the confines of a happy, adjusted marriage. But I am now. If you had said to me, “Charla, you should really take up road biking. I think biking twenty to thirty miles a day would really help you feel better/look better/seem better,” I would have thought that you were double-dog-down crazy. Ouch, just looking at that tiny seat makes my delicate little arse hurt. But if I was familiar with a bike, I was used to riding it twenty to thirty miles a day, and I had witnessed the many benefits of said activity, then perhaps (1) I would be more apt to believe it, and (2) I would be more apt
to do it.

We moved to our fab new house in our fab new hood and made some fab new friends—but it took some time. I had to work every day to exorcise Little D abit more. Oooh, I hated her. I told a few friends about Little D, but not many. Who really wants to know that kind of thing, and quite frankly, up to that point, I thought myself to be made of different stuff. So it was a shock all the way around. Even my best friend, Rita, didn't believe me, and wanted the name and number of my therapist. “You're not the kind of person to get this,” she said. “Who did you talk to? I want a second opinion.” “Not now,” I said. “I'm late for my massage therapy.”

So there I was in all my pitiful, depressed glory. Charla— for better or for worse. And there was Brad picking up after me—literally and emotionally. That's when I noticed that, in marriage, you have the little stuff that you think will drive you screaming crazy (like leaving green toothpaste spit sliding down the corner of the sink
every morning
). And then there's the real stuff—like depression, illness, accidents, infertility, unemployment. Once I hit that big-time stuff, it made me realize how small and petty I used to be. Marriage is sometimes about all those crazy left-hand turns during rush-hour traffic on the way to the house—horns blaring, hearts beating, cars swerving . . . and then, finally, peace and safety at home.

APRIL

Spring Training

My husband is a huge sports fan. NBA, NFL, NCAA—you name it. If it's on, he'll watch it. But his true love, besides me? Baseball. Like most baseball purists, he had the game passed down to him. His grandfather played for the Yale Nine. His father was a high school shortstop. His mother cut her baseball teeth on her father's beloved New York Giants and Bobby Thompson's “Shot Heard 'Round the World.” The Staten Island Scot's “shot” seared the beauty and legacy of baseball in her mind, which she dutifully passed along to her youngest son. To quote
Field of Dreams
(Brad's all-time favorite movie), “The one constant through all the years has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. This field, this game, it's a part of our past; it reminds us of all that once was good and could be again.”

As a young boy, Brad's love of the game would be forged by his mother shouting and waving her arms in unison with Carlton Fisk as he willed his walk-off home run out of Fenway in the twelfth to send the '75 World Series to Game 7. Reggie Jackson hitting three home runs in Game 6 to seal the Dodgers' fate—and his place in history. Bill Buckner's fateful misplay in Game 6 of the '86 Series. And memories that hit closer to home. David Justice's home run off Jim Poole in Game 6 of the '95 Series to beat his hometown Indians in their first World Series since 1954. And of course, José Mesa's heart-crushing blown save in Game 7 of the '97 Series. To Brad, this is what spring is about. It's about baseball.

I'm up against
this
in the spring, too, friends. That feeling of renewal. That excitement of Opening Day. That “army of steamrollers.” That and, of course, the Final Four.

The problem is I am not a huge sports fan, and can't really relate to the mythologizing of sports. On a good day, you could call me a fair-weather supporter of my college football team. I am a tad more passionate about my college basketball team, particularly when they are winning NCAA National Championships, which they do often. But to me, it's just entertainment, it's not life, and it's certainly not obsession.

In fact, when my dad called me in 1995 and suggested that I look into buying some PSLs for the NFL franchise coming to town, I barely blinked.

“What's a PSL?” I asked with the phone wedged on my shoulder as I flipped through files while sitting in my window office on the eighteenth floor of the tallest building in the city. “It's a permanent seat license,” my dad said. “It means that you will forever have the rights to buy the tickets for those seats.” “Why would I want to do that?” I asked as I spun around and sorted through some other files on the floor in my office. “Well, it's a great investment,” my dad patiently answered. “It's a neat way to support your city. You might even enjoy it. And I'll bet there are some guys who would love a gal who has really great seats for the toughest ticket in town.” Picture a dangling phone swinging back and forth after being tossed across my desk in a mad rush to get thee to the stadium and pick out those wonderful guy magnets—I mean PSLs. Okay, I wasn't that spastic. But very nearly.

My dad, in a very sweet and appropriate way, has been my wingman over the years. While girls don't traditionally have a wingman, I did—at least in spirit. And while it didn't really help sort through all my dating dilemmas, you've got to admire my dad for trying. For instance, he used to arm my housemate Dana and me with interesting sports stats to offer up when out and about town mixing and mingling with other young singles.

At the time, Dana and I lived together in a small duplex in the heart of Myers Park in Charlotte, within walking distance of our favorite bar. We had three tiny bedrooms and we used the third as a dressing room/closet (it wasn't nearly as glam as it sounds). We would sit on opposite sides of a small table in front of our giant Revlon makeup mirrors plucking, chatting, spraying, and grooming before we finally headed out around 10 P.M. (I know, can you believe we ever went out that late?) Every once in a while we would call my dad and ask for some relevant sports trivia, and we would rehearse in a giggly girly way while sorting through Lancôme lipstick from our free gift with purchase.

Thus prepped, we would head out to the Pub, feeling good, looking cute, and rather bursting with Pertinent Sporting Information. The Pub was in a converted house in a historic neighborhood. It was dark and smoky and intimate, with a fireplace in one corner, a bar in the other, and oddly mismatched tables and chairs. There were several televisions posted around the bar (tuned to the sports event
du jour
), and in warm weather, they opened a giant brick patio. The Pub served the requisite bar food and lots of ice-cold buckets of beer. It was homey and local and one of our hangouts at which to mingle and pretend to watch sports.

One evening, we were one beer into masquerading as Scintillating Sports Enthusiasts, and before I could even wipe the froth off my lip, bam—it was over. That's right, just like that: Dana had fired off all our collective sports ammunition before she was done with her first Miller Lite. There was not one bullet left in our arsenal about college hoops, the NBA, or how any decent second baseman has to hit better than .315. Nada. I was stunned! I looked around to see if anyone else had noticed. And Dana just stood there beaming in all her Scintillating Sports Enthusiast glory.

I couldn't possibly be mad; I was too busy being surprised. My sweet little roomie, Dana, who was so soft-spoken and kind and not remotely competitive. Well, well, still waters run deep, don't they? I am not suggesting that she was not soft-spoken, kind, or even competitive, but rather my girl knew to seize the moment and so she did. The things you can do when you have a wingman. It's a powerful feeling, as Dana will tell you.

Dana eventually did meet her future husband at a “My Dad as Wingman” expedition, but it was not at a bar. Thanks to Dad, we had enviable seats at a great three-day college basketball tournament crawling with cute eligible postgrads. Chris sat behind us throwing popcorn in Dana's hair (is that guy smooth, or what?) and the rest is history. Now Dr. Phil advises single women to meet guys in a content-rich environment (i.e., sporting venues), and gets highly compensated for it. But my dad knew that years ago, and it did prove out for Dana and Chris. I should really pay my dad for all this great advice.

I know that my friend Julia is cringing right now as she reads this. She comes by all her sports gravitas the good old-fashioned way—she earns it. She is a huge sports fan, fanatically tracks sports stats, and would be so disappointed by our sports plagiarism. But hey, a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do. Because in the midst of finding someone else, don't we sometimes pretend we're something we're not? It inevitably doesn't work, mind you, in the short run or long term, but we're all just scouting, whether it be innocent, or not so innocent. So Dana and I, while we do love a good Super Bowl party or a Sunday tailgate, are not sports fans at heart.

Neither is my friend Allison, who managed to camouflage for a long while that she did not share her husband's fanatical and all-consuming passion for Auburn football. In fact, she was not interested in football, period. She and her husband were at the Auburn/Georgia football game. It was the fourth overtime, 30 flipping degrees, and the crowd was going wild. This game was going down in the history books of football as the stuff of legend, and Allison's husband looked over at her, the woman with whom he'd chosen to share his love and his interests, and
she was checking her watch
. “Up until that time, I had kept hidden my sheer disinterest in football, except as it might pertain to tailgating, what one might wear to the game, or who one might see at the game. But I was totally outed.”

Standing in freezing temperatures as my team went into overtime became a new pastime; I did end up securing those four lower-level, end-zone PSLs (which did turn me from a Pathetic Sports Loser into a Popular Sports Lover for at least eight weekends a year). And I became a very popular girl. It also proved to be a major bonus when Brad and I started dating.

In fact, Brad claims those four little PSLs were a deal maker for him. “I mean, you came to the table with a dowry, for Pete's sake!” he once claimed. “It was awesome.”

“Are you telling me you married me for my lifetime tickets to the NFL?” I screamed. I was incredulous.

“Of course not,” he said. “But it was a nice perk. Kind of like watching the Final Four when your favorite team is in it! You're going to watch anyway—but now it's a lot more exciting!” Alrighty then.

But I guess that's appropriate since most men eat, live, and breathe sports. If they're not watching sports—they're watching sports movies. Men who do not weep at the miracle of their first child being brought into the world will cry like babies when Ray Kinsella “has a catch” with his dad in
Field of Dreams.
My husband becomes a blubbering fool every time it's on. There are movies he could watch over and over no matter when and where he's tuning in. There's
Hoosiers
—what guy, he claims, doesn't get choked up when they run “the picket fence” and Jimmy Chit-wood hits the game winner? Football? Look no further than
Brian's Song.
If you're a man and you don't come unglued during the final scene when Billy Dee Williams's Gale Sayers comes to the hospital as James Caan's Brad Piccolo is taking his last breath, then, according to Brad, you don't have a soul.