Tag Archives: trust

The Swinging Bridge

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I saw my baby do something today that threw me right back to a tense conversation I had with Fartbuster a dozen years ago.  Then I saw my other baby do something that catapulted me right back to this life and the joys that I have found.

The kids and I went out in the backyard to play today.  I know, I know, we should do it more often, but there is dog poo and mosquitoes and a river and some nails in that thing that rotted and all.  Carlos is too young for me to cut him loose out there without supervision, so he is still unfamiliar with the massive playscape that we have in the corner of the backyard (courtesy of my brother, Joe, who built it for his children a decade ago then passed it along to us when time rolled on).  Chanting “Climb!” in his chirpy little voice, Carlos scaled the ramp up to the first platform, which Vivi had accessed via the climbing wall.  He looked out over his kingdom with delight.  There were leaves to crunch, a ship’s wheel to spin, sticks for poking stuff–everything a boy could wish for was up there on that platform.  But there was more.

On the other platform, his sister was sliding down a fire pole and slinging pine cones down the yellow slide.  Huh.  The only thing standing between him and the pleasures of the second platform was a swinging bridge.

swinging bridge

Awfully wobbly, it is.

He hooched down as low as he could and stuck one foot out onto the bridge.  I was standing on the ground beside the bridge, cheering him on, reassuring him that it was safe.  But his foot told him otherwise.  He tried a couple of tentative forays, but the bridge kept wiggling.

That’s when I thought of Fartbuster, and a conversation that we had in a marriage counselor’s office during that year when we were trying to put things back together.  Fartbuster said, “I think our problem is that you don’t trust me.”  Well, duh, dipshit.  You had an affair.  You lost your job.  You lied to me over and over and over again.  Some crying woman calls my house at night.  Why should I trust you?  But what I said in that room that day was, “Trust between us is like a bridge.  I want to walk across it, but every time I’ve stepped on it, it’s lurched and swayed and dropped me on my head, so why would I step out on it again?  I think it’s up to you to rebuild the bridge.”

We all know how that one turned out.

Back to today.  I recognized that look on Carlos’ face–that concern that he was placing his faith in something wobbly.  And even though his mother told him it was OK, and his sister had proved that it was sturdy…all he felt was the wobble.   Then this happened:

carlos gets a pep talk

A pep talk

Vivi put down her pirate cutlass and spyglass long enough to give Carlos a pep talk.  That look on his face.  You can’t hear their laughter through these words, but you can probably imagine it if you look at his face.  I told him it was OK, but she took the time to show him.  She used herself to demonstrate that it was perfectly safe to trust the bridge.

So he did this:

Steady as she goes, mate.

Steady as she goes, mate.

Look at the concentration, the daring, on that tiny face.  Trust.  One foot in front of the other.  

I hope all of his bridges lead to greater adventures.  And that even if they sway, they are held up by steel cables his family built, way before he was born.  

Love, Honor and Cherish

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via Creative Commons, by Leo Gruebler

via Creative Commons, by Leo Gruebler

Traditional marriage vows include the promise to “love, honor and cherish.”  With all my thinking about divorce this week, I’m seeing these three words in a new light.  

LOVE is an intense feeling of deep affection.  

HONOR means to treat someone with great respect.  

To CHERISH your partner means to protect and care for them in a loving fashion.  

Love is the only one of these three vows that is a reaction.  Love happens to you, whereas honoring and cherishing are acts that you decide to do.  

So many relationships linger on through mistreatment because the parties still love each other.  I know Fartbuster loved me, and it took me a year after our separation to understand that love wasn’t enough to make a marriage.  His actions didn’t honor me or cherish me.  A marriage requires equal parts of all three.  Having a surplus in one area doesn’t make up for a lack in another.  

Books, movies, music, plays give us a wealth of experience and examples of love…but where do we learn to honor and cherish?

In your experience, which vow is the hardest to keep?

Be Nice to Your Wife

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Jamie Calkin's

“The Globe” by Jamie Calkin

I’m not sure what I think about clairvoyance, but here’s a story that points towards yes.

Our coffee date went so well that we decided to go out for dinner a few days later.  The plan was that we would meet at The Globe, a downtown Athens bar for grownups, then come up with a plan from there.  I love The Globe because they have rocking chairs inside, lots of Scotch, dark leather couches and Irish music, but not too loud.  My kind of place.

I got there first.  I ordered a drink and claimed one of the rocking chairs in the front window.  I was nervous, even though we had already spent hours talking to each other.  Richard came down the sidewalk a few minutes later and I remember how he took a deep breath and blew it out just before he reached for the door handle.  It made me think that he might be a little nervous, too.

We talked for two hours in those rocking chairs.  It was getting towards 7:30 and we still didn’t have a plan for dinner.  He had been looking at his watch on and off for the last fifteen minutes.  I asked him if he was in a rush to get somewhere.  He said, “Well, I need to ask a favor.  I’m got to go call my grandmother–my parents usually call her every day, but they’re in Italy and I promised that I would check in on her.  She’s 90 and goes to bed early so it will be too late to call her after dinner. I should call her before we go eat.”

This was before we all had phones with us all the time, children.  Try to imagine!

I understood perfectly (and he got points for being a kind and conscientious grandson).  He told me that he lived in the apartment building right around the corner (I could see it from the window), so we could go one of two ways:  he would get me another drink and leave me there at the bar while he went to make the call, or I could come with him and we could go straight to the restaurant after he called his grandmother.  Then he said the words every woman loves to hear:  “I promise I’m not an ax murderer.”  Who can argue with that logic?

It’s a good thing that man was so honorable and trustworthy because I sure as hell made stupid decisions around him.  OF COURSE I agreed to go to his apartment.  Good grief.  Idiot, party of one.

I occupied myself on the couch with his cat, whose name happened to be “Richard Nixon.”  He had never given the cat a name, just called it Cat, but one of his liberal friends was cat sitting one time and insisted that the cat have a name so she could love on it and coo to it, so he dubbed her (yes, Nixon was a girl) “Richard Nixon.”

Richard (the fellow, not the cat) called Sadie from the other room.  A few minutes later, he came back looking really perplexed.  I asked if everything was OK.  He shook his head as if he were clearing a cloud and replied, “Huh.  She must have had me confused with my cousin because right before we said goodbye, she said, ‘Be nice to your wife.'”

I never got to meet Sadie, but four years later, Richard gave me her ring when he proposed.  It was the diamond Jack had given her in 1927.  She had worn it for 75 years.  It turned out she was right–he was nice to his wife, that day and so many others.