A Cup of Comfort for Couples (8 page)

I'm
not ready!

You were at my bedside when I awoke. Holding my hand. Stroking my hair. You pretended not to notice when the bandages came off, when it became obvious that even with reconstructive surgery, I would never look exactly the same again. That's when you kissed me, right there in the hospital, right at the very moment when I felt the most unkissable. And that's when I knew. Three new words.

I need you.

As I healed, you learned how to cook chicken paprikash. To shuttle kids to band practice. To fold laundry into neat, fluffy stacks. You learned how to correct algebra problems. To write limericks. To braid a girl's hair. And to my surprise, you learned when to draw back the shades and tell me about all those little things that happened during the day. And when to say nothing at all.

I need you.

In time, I grew strong again. Strong enough to reclaim my place, to fall back into my old routine. But as I did, I began to notice something: How wonderful bakery bread smelled. How winning a game of Yahtzee could make me feel good all day long. How everything that had seemed so dull and tedious before seemed to sparkle now.

That discovery made me want to take a walk with you. A walk down by the river, with jeans rolled up to our knees, hands lightly touching. I could feel the sun's warmth slipping away and the soft moss beneath my feet. You stopped to skip a stone across the glassy water. That's when our eyes met, so much older now, wrinkled at the corners by every twist and turn of life. For a moment, the wind seemed to still. The leaves hushed. Songbirds quieted. It was as if they were all watching and waiting . . . wanting the words to come. Those three little words.

But instead you took my hand and we walked away in silence, past the crook where we used to stop, farther than we'd ever gone before. We walked without words because the silence seemed to be enough. Because all the growing and changing and accepting had made our love become something more than three little words.

So much more.

—
Madeleine M. Kuderick

When His and Hers Becomes Ours

Last year, after ten years of dating, my boyfriend moved in with me. Our respective children are nearly out of the house or about to leave. They've been alternately amusing and needy, lovely and obstinate, fun and exhausting, and now it's time for us. Yes, we're finally having our own grown-up adventure.

Make that groan up.

You never get the full flavor of someone's personality until you're sharing the same space — linen closet, bathtub, packed-to-the-gills garage, mailbox, and recycling bins — 24/7.

After fifteen years on my own following a divorce, I'm sharing space again with a man: a small ranch with galley kitchen, a combined living/dining area, and a master bedroom no bigger than some friends' mud rooms.

Tonight, I'm holed up in my daughter's former bedroom, now my study, because I'm mad at my guy. Usually, he's thoughtful and considerate. He brings me coffee every morning, calls me at work daily, and does the food shopping, a task he knows I dislike. He's patient to a fault and a great listener. Yes, he's a catch. So what's the catch?

He can be inflexible. He's a neatnik who likes to point out others' messes. He gets angry and won't talk; in other words, he's perfected the art of stone-walling. It's a tricky, sometimes dangerous, trifecta.

Tonight, he's accused me once again of making a muddle of the kitchen cabinet above our sink. True, I've sneaked back in the set of bright orange plastic drinking glasses he hates, strewn matchbooks and incense sticks all over, and — I freely admit — defiantly placed, front and center on the bottom shelf, a jar of honey-mustard pretzel-dipping sauce he explicitly said to toss. The offending jar, nothing we'll ever use, is the first thing you spot when opening the cabinet door.

“I see you've made a mess of this again,” he said earlier while dishing up some leftovers. A casual comment, perhaps, but it got my goat.

So here I sit, steaming, thinking about that old truism of relationships: Something I once found endearing about this man — his sock-sorting, pillow-plumping, silverware-straightening penchant for order — is the very same thing that makes me crazy now.

Living together means sharing household items, easier promised than practiced. Take last winter. There we were, nestled by the fire on a snowy evening. My partner lay on the couch, my feet in his lap. The television clicker was positioned in hand.

His hand.

He clicked us through a parade of news, iceskating and HGTV shows, and a
Gilligan's
Island
rerun. When the Bette Midler tearjerker,
Beaches
, flashed on screen, I yelled, “Stop!” And then, the four words that strike the most fear in a man's heart: “Give me the clicker.”

To my astonishment, he kept clicking.

“You're not going to give it to me?” I said, where-upon, smiling Cheshire Cat-like, he strengthened his grip around the black device.

“What do you need it for?” he asked, his knuckles turning a paler shade of white.

I saw, in that moment, a side of my loving, evolved, progressive guy I'd rarely seen: Cro-Magnon. I was suddenly reminded of the fact that in the first photo I ever took of him, he was curled in a club chair, clicker in hand.

I rustled myself out of my sleepy position. “I want it.”

“Why?' he asked this time.

I could feel my anger grow as I watched him clutch the plastic gadget even tighter. I never knew he had such strong palm control or such dogged determination about matters so inconsequential. Disgusted, I got up and stalked off to the bedroom, to another TV and a clicker of my own.

He thought I was being childish. I thought him unreasonable and, well, controlling.

Stalemate.

A part of me feels foolish even mentioning our remote-control tiff. Eventually, we talked. We walked it off. We laughed. Some relationships sizzle, some offer an oasis of calm. Ours? It's true that when we click, we click. He made a peace offering of the remote every night after that. (
Beaches
, anyone?)

Living together means sharing decisions. Again, easier said than done; easier when you are in two separate houses, his and yours. Harder when you're both living in yours and you've got an old swimming pool that neither of you uses or wants to maintain.

The pool liner is leaking; the cover is ancient. It's time for a little TLC. Or is it? It will cost us thousands to get the pool looking spanking new and working flawlessly again. Clearly, my swimming pool and I have arrived at that point where all complicated relationships end up sooner or later: commit to the long haul or break up.

Despite the costs, I would like to keep the pool. After fourteen years together, we've got history. My partner thinks otherwise. He promises me apple and pear trees, flowering bushes, a deck, if only I'd agree to excavate. He'll build me a little cottage-studio where I can make art, or perhaps we could enjoy some other form of luxurious liquid, like a pond with fish, Japanese water garden, or fountain.

“Don't rule those out; they are beautiful,” he says, upping the ante in his efforts to change my mind.

“We'll see,” I say. I can stonewall, too.

Living together means sharing the thing that enlarges the more you give it away: love. And there are many ways to demonstrate it.

“Remind me to put a jacket on the water heater,” my guy says, stepping out of the shower, which, he notes, is running tepid.

I wait a beat for the follow-up wisecrack, the punch line, the laugh at my expense. We are hopeless kidders. But his face is so open; his tone, guileless. He isn't joking.

Forget the roses, the Riesling, the Lucinda Williams tickets. (Well, don't forget them entirely.) I thrill to the thought of my partner rushing out to Home Depot to find the perfect wrap for the tank that will give us a stream of continuous, hot water.

In these tough times, is this the new language of love?

Later that evening, while we're at an antiques auction, he returns to the topic. “Maybe you'll help me pick out the water heater jacket.” He nudges his seat closer to mine. “They have different types, you know.”

“They do?” Okay, now he's pulling my leg.

Up front, the stern auctioneer with the ricochet voice is belting out prices, trying to coax the crowd to bid on drop-leaf tables, brass footstools, art deco ashtrays.

“Really,” my guy says.

“They don't,” I insist.

“Plaid.”

“They make Burberry jackets for water heaters?”

My guy smiles. I smile back. My thoughts are warm and cozy.

In another lifetime, another partner, this one a husband, wrapped me in mink. But this seemed to have everything to do with him, nothing to do with me. Status.

Don't get me wrong, I took the fur and wore it for years before my conscience kicked in. I sold it for a fair price to a stranger with cancer who said she wanted to own a fur coat before she died.

But wrapping the water heater has everything to do with me and the man in my life, and more importantly, with us.

Living together means planning for the future. Last weekend, at another auction, we bought a set of midcentury Adirondack twig furniture — beautiful settee, two matching chairs, and a table — for the house in the mountains we don't own but might some day.

Being coupled means taking a leap of faith, even when you feel the other person is cramping your style. And learning that love can thrive in that slippery, uncomfortable space between feeling stuck and preparing to soar.

—
Tina Lincer

As Long as Forever

W
earing an old black overcoat to warm his frail body, an argyle sock on one foot and a black dress sock on the other, Dad leaned forward in his easy chair, staring disconsolately around him. “I'm looking for something,” he told me.

“What is it, Dad?”

“Well, it's about this big,” he began, raising a hand up from the ground, “and it's hard to describe, but . . . well, I can't quite get a hold of the, the . . .”

“The name of what it is?” I wondered aloud.

“Yes. What is the problem? I need to know.”

He got up and began wandering about, through the kitchen, past the couch, back to his chair, and stopping when he was once again in the kitchen. Then he walked back to his easy chair again.

“Did you remember what you're looking for, Dad?”

“It's just that I need to experiment so I can think. I can't think, for some reason.”

“Do you need me to get you something, Dad? Maybe a snack?”

“No. I'm not hungry. Well . . . yes, I need something, but what is it? I don't remember. It's so irritating when I don't remember.”

I sighed, wishing I could do something to help him. I was babysitting Dad for my mother, his main caregiver. Dad has Alzheimer's, and Mom can't get away to do anything unless someone can watch him. That night, she had to spend the night at a hospital for a sleep test, so I stayed with him — my first time spending the night at my parents' home in years.

“Dad, maybe you're looking for Mom?”

“Yes, that's it! Where is she?”

“She's at the hospital getting a test. She asked me to stay here with you so she could go get the test because she needs to find out what's wrong to get better medicine. She'll be back in the morning.”

“That's good,” he said. “But it causes a problem for me. I have to call someone to come pick me up.”

“Dad, if someone takes you somewhere, you won't be here when Mom gets home and she won't know where you are.”

“Oh, yeah. Well, I guess I'm just stuck with a problem then.”

He walked around the island separating the living room from the kitchen and rummaged around in a drawer for a few minutes. I heard him mutter, “A tablespoon. That will do.” Then he went over to the cupboards. There, he pulled out some napkins and paper towels and headed over toward me.