Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Love and Marriage

Anyone who's been married a few years knows that affection for your spouse runs along some behavioral scale that has to do with moods, children, money, sex, aging, the weather, voice tone, humor or lack of it, punning, food, the wrong movie, interruptions, exhaustion and its opposite, exhilaration. I could go on and on.

Sometimes we tire of each other. I can say that, because this is not one of those times. We seem to have come to grips with aging, money, pain, although not the volume of the TV or the temperature of our apartment. He likes hot air blowing through the vents. I don't like it when the furnace turns on. Period. I tell him to put on more clothes. He tells me to go naked.

We like ourselves and each other in the city despite these small differences. We like the city. This city. Salt Lake City. When I was growing up, I couldn't wait to escape it. It was parochial and socially hierarchal. Remember the society page of the newspaper?

I felt hemmed in and suffocated by the mountains. It took some living in Boston, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Berlin, Vienna, New York to realize that Salt Lake City was the right balance of culture and nature, sophistication and bourgeois. Notice how slickly I fit in that word "bourgeois," which is an annoying word, really.

Anyway, Tom and I bump into each other, laugh, and plan and are glad for company and glad when they leave and glad we share the same room-sized bed.

When you are happy, you should say so.



4 comments:

  1. Great stuff. And if Madonna can use 'bourgeois' in a sentence... surely you, with one or seventy more IQ points... very slick indeed.

    I'm glad you're happy and loving SLC. I plan to move there at the end of the year, at least for a while. It's time for a change. I'm very nervous about it, to put it mildly. I don't know how I'll survive without my city, but NY has started to feel like the mountains did to you as a child. And I'm feeling disconnected from my family.

    I'm happy this afternoon. I had a great morning in writing class. Anya, our instructor, and some of the other gals in class gave me some brilliant ideas. And I'm enjoying a short story by Stephen King.

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  2. That you have found happiness in SLC impresses me. Being from Canada and the "mission field" SLC just had way too many mountains that obstructed broader views. But Nielson's Custard, Cafe Rio, those wonderful hikes into the canyons, the temperature and now two of our children living there all make it a wonderful place to visit.

    After 30 years of marriage, B and I finally had a conversation about waiting. When he waits he does cross word puzzles or reads newspapers on line in his office. When I wait, I put in laundry, read a few emails, paint my nails. So each is thinking virutous thoughts about being the one ready and waiting and that the other is holding up the departure. Who knew this could become so contentious and complicated?

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  3. I loved this. That first paragraph--perfection. Well done, Louise.

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  4. Lovely. And true.
    And, by the way, I am the girl who stopped the two of you in the Orem Costco (with the 5 kids attached to the cart).
    Thanks for taking the time to say hi. And Louise, you have a fantastic laugh.

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