On 20 Years Of Marriage

June 17, 2019.Reading time 10 minutes.

Yesterday Lee and I celebrated 20 years of marriage.

The day we got married, there was no

fanfare – there was just us – Lee in his best shirt and tie and me in my $20 dress from Marshalls that I’d bought the year before because it was beautiful and I hoped I would get a chance to wear it somewhere nice.

And of course Ian was with us in nothing fancier than his cleanest T shirt and shorts.

It was perfectly imperfect in every way.

We began yesterday as we have almost every other day for the last two decades – waking up to take care of the needs of a 7year old. Ian was 8 when we were married so Lee and I have never been “just a couple”. There have always been high energy, high need little people in our lives who distract us from our “oneness”.

If you begin as you mean to go on, then we celebrated 20 years in much the same way as we began that first day – simply, with zero fuss, with no one the wiser. In a change to our routine, I brought Lee tea (on the weekends he always brings it to me). Then we did some laundry (with 4 kids still to manage, there is always laundry), went to a soccer tournament, and finally ditched the younger kids with the teenagers (another running theme in our marriage). Then we rode our bikes into town for a few hours of time to ourselves.

The story of how we began is simple and sweet. We met at Camp Cayuga in the summer of 1998. Lee was a returning staffer and I was there for the first time with a 7 year old in tow. The first time I remember seeing Lee was on the back of a banged up old work truck. Lee first saw me standing in the staff cabin next to another new staffer and naturally Lee thought we were a couple.

He quickly learned we weren’t and thus began our first summer together. We spent 4 more summers the same way except for the summer William was born, two years later.

Nyree came along three summers after that and her first summer at camp was our last, but, as the tag line for camp says, the memories will last a lifetime.

There were other adventures to be had.

We moved too many times to count, welcomed two more children into our clan, and said goodbye to my sister and Lee’s grandfathers before we were ready.

This is the hard stuff of life and it is a blessing to have someone by your side through it all. Babies are adorable, yes, but they will also break you if you aren’t careful (no one ever wants to admit that, but everyone who has ever had a squalling newborn or endured a difficult childhood diagnosis or other child related crisis knows exactly what I mean).

The grief you experience from burying the people you love most in the world is somehow softer, the edges less jagged, when you can cry in the arms of someone who has no other place to be than right by your side.

My marriage to Lee is the single most defining characteristic of my life, right there with being a mother to these 5 kids. When everything else has been stripped away – and it has all, at one time or another, been painfully taken from me – I always have this as my anchor: I am mother to these children and I am Lee White’s wife.

If there was competition between these identities, motherhood has, perhaps, had the edge. Raising young kids is like that – they demand undivided attention. This is why it is important to marry someone who shares your values: Lee never resented my focus on the kids – in fact, I think he loves me all the more for it.

That focus is slowly shifting and we can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Over the next few years, as the kids need us less and less, Lee and I will have more and more time to spend on us.

Sometimes we get a small taste of it and it leaves me wanting more. I think this bodes well for our future.

One of the things I’ve learned after 20 years of marriage is that nothing stays the same. Our location has changed – often, lol! Our family composition has changed almost as frequently. And we have changed as people.

I love the person Lee has become. Lee has always had a tremendous sense of responsibility – it’s why he never once shied away from becoming a husband and a step dad. It’s one of the things I love most about him.

He will move mountains to help friends in need. “Friendship” is defined very loosely in this regard. An example: he’s invited many people without homes to come stay a while with us. Some were known to us, others were panhandling the day he met them. Nor does he care about money or what others will say – he will always show up for people.

Lee also finds a way to forgive. Don’t get me wrong, he has a temper and he has a well developed sense of the way things should be and how you should treat folks. But he cannot hold a grudge.

Together, no matter the egregiousness of the offense, we always manage to offer grace and forgiveness. At the beginning, we loved each other because of our best qualities. It is so much more satisfying to know someone so intimately that you can still love them in spite of their flaws. This is the gift of 20 years of marriage – to love when there are no more illusions.

I loved the man he was 20 years ago, I love the man he is now, and I cannot wait to see who he will become over the next 20 years.

We married 20 years ago for a green card. We married so we could live on the same continent. We married without a long term plan and without any money – some things haven’t changed!

But maybe that’s why we’re still together. The vows we made on that day mattered and even though we weren’t in a church and had no thoughts beyond that summer, we stayed true to them. For better or worse. In sickness and in health, for richer for poorer.

I didn’t really understand at the time what I was promising. I do now.

I have no idea where we will be in another 20 years. Probably not where either of us expect – for us, the best laid plans are always useless.

But I’m looking forward to seeing how it all plays out, not with the best man in the world (because I don’t think he exists), but with the man who has devoted himself to me (and I am under no illusions about how much work that takes!)

We will go on just as we started – with a cup

of tea in bed in the morning or a few peaceful hours by a river or up a mountain. There won’t be any fuss and no one will be the wiser.

If we’re lucky, it will be simple and sweet and absolutely perfectly imperfect.

Just like us 💙

Raising Chaos

May 1, 2016.Reading time 10 minutes.

My husband and I are house hunting. We are not in complete agreement about what we want to buy, or even where, and the search is in its early stages which means we often find ourselves in rather unexpected places, all in the name of “checking things out.”

Today we found ourselves in a new eco co-housing community, mostly because, like all good progressives, we like the idea of a strong sense of community combined with sustainability. So we traveled a mile out of town to see what was cooking at the proposed eco village.

It took me about 30 seconds to realize this was never going to be a welcoming place for our youngest sons. This place was crawling with senior citizens in Birkenstocks and hemp clothing. These folks are slow and steady, calm to the point of inertia, unless they are gardening or composting their healthy and pesticide free leftovers, or forming singing groups called “The Green Grannies” who sing about saving the earth and dress in wildly flamboyant green clothing.

Everything moved at a relaxed and deliberate pace, and inside voices were used outside because, like all worthy people, shouting, along with picking one’s nose, is seen as vulgar in the extreme. There is plenty of energy, but it is for things like potlucks and community gardens, not games of capture the flag or sword fights (always plastic or wood swords, just in case you were worried).

My boys ran at top speed from the parking lot to the play area barely missing the perambulating seniors and toddlers who had arrived earlier in the day, made heart-shaped mud pies with the sand toys, and climbed everything not surrounded by an electric fence. They whacked low hanging tree branches with the aforementioned plastic sword, as well as probed ground holes with its tip, and ran and tripped and leaped across the uneven ground, skidding in the mud, all with voices in a decibel range only a NASCAR enthusiast could appreciate.

They stood out like a couple of hyper, dirty and noisy sore thumbs.

Outside the community building where a lecture on the proposed design plans for the community was being held, signs were posted asking latecomers to remove all shoes, not just the muddy ones. That strategy would hardly last through breakfast in our house. Mud is our middle name. So the boys, who have an inherent knack for slamming doors and filling a studious quiet with shouts of, “I need to poo, RIGHT NOW!” were invited to stay outside.

We missed the lecture, but I didn’t really need it to know we didn’t fit in at this place.

In fact, we don’t fit in many places any more. Even in places where there are other children. Our boys are notorious for their high energy and imaginative games. These games often revolve around nature exploration, but they could equally involve super heroes and Power Rangers. They always involve climbing, running, water, mud, and a high degree of unintended destruction. If it can be thrown, jumped on, pounded, pulled apart, flung, stacked, soaked, dug up, pulverized, or propped up, it will be.

We deal in a constant whirl of negative impulse control and bad outcomes. I have had to teach my boys about mens rea – the legal concept that a crime requires intent – and that having a reckless disregard for the outcome of one’s actions makes one just as guilty as if one had intended the outcome right from the start.

Raising boys is a study in living life on the edge with a reckless disregard for the consequences.

And the more boys you have, and the closer they are in age, the more accute this experience becomes. Mothers of twins and “annuals” (my word for those of us whose kids will be just one year apart in school) know exactly what I mean. The phrase “partners in crime” was developed to describe our kids. Together, they are far greater at causing chaos than a simple sum of their individual parts would indicate.

My Aunt Carol had 6 boys. The first 5, thanks to a set of twins, were very close in age. At one point, she had 5 under five. I shudder at the very thought. Like imaging the death of a loved one, I just can’t go there.

Some say I am following in her footsteps, but the truth is, she is a bloody miracle of Motherhood because she SURVIVED. And I admire her for how she did it – with grace, humor, and a move to a ranch where her boys could run wild and free and indulge in all things boy, in a way that suburban living will never tolerate.

And this is where I will follow my Aunt’s lead. If I have learned one thing during my initial house search it is that my boys need space, with mud that isn’t in a flower bed or covering the squash and bean crop, trees that aren’t the fragile but attractive Crepe Myrtle at the front of the drive, space to fling rocks and hurl sticks, and enough distance between them and everyone else so that their imaginations can run wild and free without causing property damage or personal injury.

The truth is, society today no longer appreciates boys or boy-like behavior. We like to see kids playing imagination games so long as those games don’t involve competition, or God forbid, fighting, wrestling, or any other physical, risky challenge. Earlier in the day, in fact, we were hounded out of the outdoor restaurant where we were enjoying lunch because our youngest, Jacob, was open carrying his plastic sword, and was running with two other boys. The other dads took offense and hollered at Jacob, then told my husband about the transgression. All Jacob was doing was running with a sword. It kept falling out of its “sheath” (his belt loop on his trousers), so in order to keep up with the kids, he had to hold it. And that was enough to condemn him in the eyes of the other parents.

As we drove away I noted that the other boys were now armed with larger, rapier-like sticks. My boys are leaders of future men, if nothing else.

Boys need time to be boys. They need space, and patience, love, and lots of understanding laughter. It is a hard, messy, job to parent a boy. And in those moments when I am not tired, trying to clean, or it is early in the day and the list of transgressions is still short, I can appreciate them in all their filthy, fun and physical glory.

For the other times?

Wine. And a Bible. And a padded cell. But hopefully the wine and Bible are enough.

I sometimes see my boys in the future. They are strong, fearless, and full of adventure and high spirits. They make me laugh and keep me young.

All will be well, I tell myself, if only I can survive these Wild Years. And of course I will. For who wouldn’t want to see what becomes of all this energy and what order will be brought to this chaos?

I used to think I was supposed to be a mother of many daughters. I have a degree in Women’s Studies, after all. But now I see the wisdom in God’s mysterious ways. She knew what She was doing when She sent me these last two boys, my change-of-life sons, Brothers in Arms, worst of enemies, and fiercest of friends.

And I am grateful.