My Foot Is Too Big for the Glass Slipper: A Guide to the Less Than Perfect Life (6 page)

A friend of mine, who has seen her share of marriages that worked and those that didn’t, doesn’t go for the Shiny Eyes. She believes the shiny eyes routine is too close for comfort to Betty Draper, the beautiful, woman-child of
Mad Men
fame, the classic fifties housewife who was expected to pose sweetly in front of the stove, dutifully tending her spaghetti sauce in her shirtwaist with her apron on, putting on a happy face for the Mister.

My friend misses the point that I’m not doing all this because I have to, or because that’s what women are supposed to do. I don’t do it because it’s behavior that defines femininity. I do it out of pure, modern-day, self-interest.

Laird knows that if I didn’t want to be with him, I would leave. He knows I’m not against divorce—I’ve already filed for it once—and that if the day came when we no longer respected each other, could no longer find a way to stay connected, I’d pack my bags and go. I can easily make my own money, and since we live in two places, we wouldn’t even have to divide anything up. He could stay in Kaua’i—aloha—and I could go back to California.

Every time I don the Shiny Eyes, every time I set aside the domestic lunacy that I deal with daily, it’s me communicating to Laird that I’m in this. When I suppress my grumpiness, I’m saying: this is me doing my part to make this work. By choosing to behave this way, I’m choosing you, and choosing to be
in this with you, and holding up my end. I’m saying, by doing my part, I hope that will encourage you to do your part.

The sum total of my own List? Good, old-fashioned masculinity, which is more complex than we sometimes give it credit for. He’s independent, competent, and brave, but he’s also got a tender, nurturing, providing side—that’s the side that brings home the mammoth.

Once, Mr. Charming was surfing the epic swells, out on his Jet Ski with one of his crew. They were run down by a hundred-foot wave, then dragged underwater for a third of a mile or more. Laird came up for air and saw that his friend had cut open his leg, a huge bloody gash. The friend would have bled out had Laird not stripped off his own wet suit and used it for a tourniquet, then swam a quarter of a mile in the rough surf to get the Jet Ski, dragged his friend aboard, got him to the beach—he’s buck naked during all of this, by the way—and delivered his friend to the EMT. When Laird was done, he went back out there and caught a few more waves.

Cowboys (or their big-wave equivalents) really are my weakness.

I want to do what I can to help Laird be the kind of man I want to be with, which means creating an environment where he’s free to pursue his passion and to be truly great at what he does. (Which sometimes does include being competent
enough and brave enough to save someone’s life.) Frankly, I don’t want him to be worried about whether or not Brody’s monthly fees for her gymnastics classes are paid, or whether we’re out of dryer sheets. I don’t want him to go to baby showers with me.

One of the weirder behaviors of women, I sometimes think, is that we fall for a guy who lives for playing his music, or mountain biking, or writing computer code, or making elaborate meals, and once we land him and settle in, what do we do? Bitch about him for playing his music too much. Or taking off on the weekends with his bros for an epic bike ride. Or staying up too late in front of the computer. Or cooking meals that take too much time or make too big of a mess. Or are fattening.

When the very thing we dug about them cramps our domestic style, we want them to spend less time and energy devoted to the very thing we loved about them in the first place, and usually the thing that makes them feel the best about who they are.

My theory, based on nothing other than my own experience, is that if we make an effort to support our partners and allow them to be themselves, to pursue the things that make them feel best about themselves, a lot of the other bullshit arguments will fall by the wayside. Yes, it may mean you need to do more laundry than you think is “fair,” but wouldn’t that be worth it?

Every other boyfriend I’ve had was less male than Laird, and also less male than I am. This probably comes as no surprise, given I’m six foot three, wear a size twelve shoe, and
once upon a time could leg press 935 pounds. I’m totally capable of handling everything in my life and the life of my kids. Everything. I don’t need a man in my life for that. What I do need is something different, and I get that from Laird. When I get in over my head, Laird saves the day. He always does. With him, I’m no longer the most badass in the room. I get to be the girl in the picture. That’s important for me.

A funny thing happened when we moved into our house on Maui. I drew out the plans, which included where the furniture would go. We’re big people, and we sleep in the biggest bed you can buy, a California King. I had to order all the furniture, including the bed, on the mainland, to be shipped to Hawaii in a container. Months later, it finally arrived, but the big wooden bed frame with upholstered headboard wouldn’t fit through the bedroom door. We spent an hour turning it this way and that, angling it just so, trying to wrap it around the door frame, everything you can think of.

I’m seventy-five degrees and sunny. Nothing much rattles me. But I was about to lose it. All the money, all the time, and this gigantic bed frame was stuck in the doorway. When he told me it wouldn’t fit, I just gave him a look and walked away. I wasn’t even upset; it
had
to fit. There was no question.

I took a break and I went and stared at a bird flitting outside the kitchen window. And I tried to focus on its undeniable beauty and to concentrate on being grateful, rather than letting myself get bat-shit crazy over something that was not important but had nevertheless become a life-or-death issue.

When I went back, there was Laird inside the bedroom with the bed frame in place, just where I’d drawn it on the plans. He’d fetched his Skilsaw, removed the upholstery, cut the headboard in half, dragged the whole thing into the bedroom, screwed the headboard back to the frame and reaffixed the upholstery.

That’s Mr. Charming for you.

None of this—knowing the traits you require in a partner, calling him on his behavior rather than stewing or sulking, behaving like you’re glad to see him, or helping him be the guy you want him to be—works if you don’t have a rock-solid foundation. The degree to which marriage is a lot of work, as people like to say, depends on the strength of your foundation. If you don’t share common goals, or you feel as if you’re not playing on the same team, it’s tough to go the extra mile. And life is full of extra miles.

So many little things can contribute to cracks and chinks in the marital foundation. Maybe you and/or your guy spend money on the sly. Or someone has a little gambling problem, or a video-game addiction. Maybe you’re getting a little too cozy with your old high school boyfriend on Facebook. It’s nothing huge, but just enough to make you feel frustrated, and like maybe making the kind of extra effort a successful long-term relationship often demands just isn’t worth it.

Laird is a great-looking guy who pretty much lives in his bathing suit. And when he’s on the beach, who is usually in his immediate field of vision? Cute girls, also in their swimsuits. I know they flirt with him, and so long as it doesn’t happen right in front of me, I don’t much care. I’ve accepted that this is part of the Being-Married-to-Laird package. I trust him. I know that if the moment ever came where he fell for some surfer chick, he’d come straight home, and we’d have it out, for the simple reason that he would despise having anything monumental like infidelity cluttering his headspace.

No, the crack in our foundation was alcohol. I don’t drink, but Laird used to enjoy a bottle of pinot noir from time to time, and his drinking pounded at our foundation.

He wasn’t out hitting the bars—a fifth grader stays up later than Laird Hamilton—but when he was drunk he behaved like someone I no longer recognized. Sober, he is conscientious, conservative in his risk taking, alert to danger. Drunk, he liked to haul ass around our property on Maui on his ATV, roaring over hills, catching air, bombing around like a lunatic. There were nights I was convinced he would flip over and kill himself. He went to a place inside that was wild and disengaged from the girls and me. When he drank, we were no longer a team, which is perhaps why he drank, as a way to recapture his lone-wolf days.

The problem, unfortunately, was that he was no longer a lone wolf. Setting aside myself for a moment, he was a father of three. Did he really want to do something stupid and deprive his daughters of a father?

I told him I didn’t like him when he was drunk. I didn’t like the part of him that revealed itself, and I didn’t like dealing with him. Once I said, “Hey, maybe you can drink until the girls are teenagers, so they can see firsthand what lunacy it is and then maybe they won’t do it. So at least we’ll get something positive out of it.”

He heard me. He knows I don’t say stuff like that unless I mean it.

I would never have issued an ultimatum and told him to stop drinking, but Laird is far from stupid. He saw what it was doing to me and my willingness and ability to be one hundred percent devoted to our marriage and partnership. In 2007, he gave up his pinot noir. That helped me to feel our foundation was solid; it’s what I needed to go the distance.

As I was putting my husband’s clean underwear away, I tried to do the math. Living together for seventeen years, married for fifteen, laundry done once a week (usually more often, but we’ll say weekly for ease of calculation): I’ve done this chore 780 times.

On occasion, I’ve preferred this chore to working out.

Even though I’m a fitness advocate, and even though I know that everything good in my life, and I mean everything—my attitude, moods, health, ability to be a good family member who doesn’t fantasize about walking out the door and joining up with a merry band of (childless) pirates—flows from my working out and staying active, but sometimes I’d rather do anything else. Like put away Laird’s tighty-whities.

People imagine that because of how I look and what I do, I bounce out of bed every morning with a twinkle in my eye and a song in my heart: woohoo, I can’t wait to workout! I’d say my desire to train at any given moment is always about fifty-fifty. Yep, that means half the time I’d rather lie on the couch and eat a bowl of cereal.

I’m just like you.

Actually, probably not just like you. Probably a little more challenged in the movement department.

Fewer than one percent of American women are taller than five feet ten. I was six feet tall at age twelve, six three at fifteen. The popular wisdom is that my height must have made me some natural-born, badass athlete, but just the opposite is true. My arms and legs are so long, sometimes it feels as if I have twice as many moving parts as the average woman. Despite my level of fitness and my aptitude for volleyball, not a moment passes where I don’t struggle to find and maintain my center of gravity, where I don’t despair about how uncoordinated I feel in my own body. In a few minutes I’ll stand up from the chair I’m sitting in as I write this, and there’s no guarantee I won’t trip over my feet between the desk and the door. It makes me anxious.

This isn’t something new. When I played volleyball at Florida State, I worshipped our coach, Dr. Cecile Reynaud. I would do anything Cecile asked of me. I was a hard worker, tough, and serious. But during water breaks at practice she would make the team walk the length of the court on their hands, on the way to the drinking fountain. I couldn’t do it.
I wouldn’t do it. The thought of going up on my hands felt scarier than jumping out of an airplane. My head felt so far from the ground, and I was sure my arms would collapse and I’d crack my skull open. Cecile’s solution was to stick me on the sidelines doing push-ups. It was humiliating, but I accepted it. There is no aha moment in this story. I busted out those push-ups for Cecile until I graduated.

So when I bang the drum for working out, it’s not as if I’ve had it all dialed in from day one.

•  •  •

Still, regular exercise is the secret to everything. There is nothing else we do about which we can make that claim. Unless you were just rolled out of the operating room, there’s hardly ever a reason not to go out for a walk. We all know that exercise is necessary for weight loss, developing muscle tone, and cardiovascular health. But the benefits just keep on coming: regular workouts prevent low back pain and varicose veins, boosts your immune system, and wards off the common cold; it gives you the glowing complexion of a chick many years younger; and gets your digestive tract on track. Exercise reduces your chance of dying young, of suffering a stroke or heart attack. It’s not only a natural cure for depression, but also deals out all those great endorphins, the world’s best high, natural or otherwise.

Even if you can convince yourself your abs are perfect the way they are, or you inherited your dad’s naturally low blood pressure, or all the women in your family lived to be a hundred
and two, there is one thing that exercise fosters that everyone can use: the feeling of being glad to be alive.

Exercise makes you happier. And even if you don’t particularly want to be happier (I know a few people who groan and complain as if it’s a sport), it will make you more even-tempered, and thus make everyone around you happier, which will make everything else in life
easier
.

In a perfect world we’d be able to connect to all these reasons for making exercise a priority, but in the end, whether we’re aware of all the benefits or not is irrelevant. I once wrote a magazine article in which I tried to lay out all the good reasons, the smart scientific reasons, for working out and I wound up just saying, “Screw it! You need to work out because it makes you look hot.”

And still, how many of us say, I want to look hot, I’m dying to look hot . . . after I eat this cupcake.