Day 68: The State of the Marriage

Tonight the president addresses Congress and the nation to tell us how we're doing.  What we've accomplished, what we're working on and the struggles that lie ahead.  This yearly tradition takes precedence and we wait to hear what we mostly already know.

But what if each of us decided to take a night and analyze our own relationships?  To break down this past year and see where we are. It's a scary thing to look at yourself with the eyes of a critic and speak the truth.  Tonight I address my marriage to declare it's state.  To praise our victories and challenge our fallen nature.  There's noone here to listen, but you and me and the dog.   So let's begin. 

This has been a year to remember.  A year of hope and dissapointment.  A year of growth.  Our marriage stretched to the breaking point.  First with the shock of five words spoken in the Spring in a muddy parking lot.  He said, "my sperm count is zero."  And there was no going back to the place we lived the moment before the words were spoken aloud.  Instead, there was three months of silence and avoidance.  And one particularly regretful afternoon when I told my mom I sometimes wondered what my life would be like without him.  Dissapointment is hard to mask, especially when you're crying.  We want to protect the ones we love.  To keep them from feeling inadequate.  And what man is not going to feel inadequate when the doctors tell him he's got nothing going on? So we avoided the issues and pulled into ourselves.   But low points never last with us and we did manage to talk to out.  One work weekend in Upstate NY, I was stacking wood with my father and he asked me how things were going, how we were dealing.  I told him we were mostly avoiding the subject.  Just saying those words aloud I realized how true they were.  And I knew that if I didn't start speaking about the hard stuff, we might spend our lives in the quiet place.  The place where avoidance is the only defense.  So we talked. We talked about adoption.  We talked about hormone treatment.  We talked about living alone.  We talked about all the possibilities and in the talking there was a bridge forged between us.  The kind that's strengthed by hands that link together.  And we went from being silent to being strong.  So when the specialist confirmed everything we didn't want to hear, our marriage was still strong because we were already holding onto each other, rather than the idea of something that couldn't exist. 

We may not be pregnant, but this year we have put down roots.  Rich and I have always been a wandering couple.  We've crossed the country twice in the same Chevy Pick Up Truck.  Always searching for a community where we belonged, Rich and I have found it, not only in each other, but in the Southern Coast of Maine. And in our work.  These kind faces that have come to be our family.  They're our kind of people, these Mainiacs, and it feels good to know that this will be our home. 

So the state of our marriage is strong.  It's Day 68 and I'm thankful that we're here; in this country, on this coast, past the point of silence.  We're here and we're going to be just fine.  Better than fine, we're going to be incredible.