Hey friends, how are you? We are pretty good, all things considered.
We have been spending our days with slightly more effort lately. Pursuing an easy task here and there. Keeping up with absolutely must be done. Taking extra walks. Soaking up the sunshine when it is offered. But we still assure each other, “We’re not optimizing yet. We’re not playing Tetris.”
This season of temporary early retirement is interesting. Beyond the obvious unknowns and adjustmenets, so far our weeks “off” together have been dictated by extreme winter weather and sick animals (not related to the weather, thank goodness). Dusty is still in the hospital recovering from his second sugery, and Klaus still needs 24/7 attention because of the side effects of some medication he needed recently. I’m not complaining; these animals and this farm have my whole heart. I’m explaining why, when well meaning people ask, we haven’t taken advanatage of the free time to go on a little trip. We will eventually. For now, we are waking up slowly and pouring our limited energy into the animals who rely on us.
This is something else simmering…
A few weeks ago we were watching a movie, just your typical good-guys-bad-guys-shoot-em-up violent drama. Scene after scene, Handsome and I contributed our casual viewer commentary. Silly stuff like, “Oh man she didn’t even clear the room first!” Or, “That’s not jiu jitsu, that’s krav maga. Nice choice.” This is one of my favorites: “Why are they using multi-shot instead of single shot? They’re wasting ammo!” I feel weirdly proud when I say this before my husband does.
I blanked out for a minute between blood baths. Handsome and I were in an especially blurry mental space that week, really keeping the storms at bay by sheer will, and I remember thinking, We have seen these gunfights and martial arts movies so much we know exactly how the characters should navigate their fight scenes. We are almost convinced we would know how to navigate them ourselves, should we ever find ourselves facing down a ransom note or Russian mobster or, you know, Kate Beckinsale and her expert bad guys with hearts of gold.
Then I got so mad. Or sad. It’s been such a mix lately. I thought, still briefly spaced out, I do not need this kind of well rehearsed niche knowledge in my brain. I am hystericlly unlikely to ever be in a kick fight with literally anyone, and the only gun I expect to need to operate would be to protect our animals, and it will not be automitic. And actually, that is my husband’s department, and I’m not ashamed of that.
What I do actually need in my brain is a bigger library of examples of how husbands and wives navigate these very real situations like we are navigating. How people who love each other face hard, destructive chapters in life and thrive. I don’t want a brain that can predict who the killer is; I want a heart that can quickly summon examples of loving recovery. How good, wise people speak to each other when they are scared. How they express their truest emotions, safely, even the ugly ones. I want to learn from other people’s examples how to see each other through to a better outcome. Which phone calls to make and which prayers to pray. How to make decisions you have never had to make before. What’s normal? How did other people find their way through this wildnerness, you know?
There is a maxim by which I have operated for most of my adulthood, which is that parents’ problems belong strictly to the parents and that their kids, no matter the age, should never have to carry those burdens. I stand by that and could give you thousands of examples of why I believe this so strongly But in this current chapter, I keep thinking that some of our behind the scenes workings could be useful to our adult kids and other younger couples. Just people, I guess, anyone who might find themselves in a similar situation in the future. Roadmaps, you know? Just breadcrumbs, at least, for how to find your way out of the dark. I’m still thinking through how to share this wthout sharing the weight of it all.
And to be clear, it’s not been all stumbling blindly. We do know after twenty five years and myriad other life events how to count our blessings and focus on what’s good and true. We do know how to boil things down to the basics, which is a large part of why we are conserving our energy right now. We also know to look backwards and extract strength and self confidence from all the things we have endured and accomplished already. The essence of survivial and thriving is always there and available; it just doesn’t feel as cut and dry as, “when it’s a brown bear, you play dead but of it’s a balck bear you fight for your life!”
There’s a whole lot more nuance and a whole lot more delicate surprises every day. I just want a little more training on the survival tactics we are more likely to need. No offense to Kate Beckinsale. And thank you for praying for Dusty. We love him so much!
“Tis but a part we see, and not a whole.”
~Alexander Pope
XOXOXO