One of the perils of living in Canada is that every April I get confused. April 15 is tax day in the US, and for some reason that date is burned in my brain. (And on my digital calendars, because they won’t let me delete dates, even if they don’t apply to me.) But the deadline in Canada? I can never remember if it’s the beginning of April or the end. I’m going to go out on a limb and guess hope it’s the end, because otherwise I’m hooped.
(Okay, I checked. It’s April 30. Whew.) [Read more…]
My nephew Michael was born a little while after my Nana passed away in the early 90s. I remember at the time thinking it was an odd minus-one, plus-one situation. Some sort of weird cosmic math where one is taken away to make room for another.
When I was pregnant with Connor, my cousin took her own life. It was shocking. Horrifying. But, maybe because of the overlap (I was already pregnant), that time I didn’t think about the math.
Yesterday, Michael was in a serious car accident and he’s now in a coma. He and his family—my sister—live in Australia and they feel so very far away. They are so very, very far away. And I sit here, three months pregnant, feeling helpless and wondering why the universe seems to require things to be just so perfectly balanced.
Michael is young, having just finished high school. He’s smart, athletic, and cute. He’s also a really, really nice kid. Why does he have to have his life threatened when others are allowed to live on and contribute nothing to the world except pain and anguish? Why does that perfectly balanced math have to come from within my own family?
It just makes me think. Connor climbed into bed with me early this morning, curving his small body into mine. He was restless, though, as was I after a night of lying awake and wondering about things bigger than I that I don’t understand. My small boy pressed his cool cheek against mine and rubbed my wrist. I felt his soft hair and his little fingers and the in-and-out of his quiet breathing.
I kept him with me there in the quiet darkness of a day not yet begun and wondered how I can keep him safe. But I can’t. Ultimately—ironically, unfairly—none of us can do that for our children.
We just have to hope the universe isn’t quite so picky with the math.
Two very lovely bloggers are celebrating their first blogging anniversaries with a blog bash and I’m joining in to help them celebrate.
I find it hard to believe Alison has only been blogging for a year, partly because her blog has taken off and partly because it feels like I’ve known her for much longer. I’m a more recent follower of Ado’s blog, but I really, really like it (and the stuff she shares on Facebook is awesome too).
To celebrate, they’ve asked us to share a favourite post. The one I’m choosing to share is relatively recent – I just wrote it in January. The idea bounced around in my head for days and when I started writing it came out as something totally different than what I intended. I decided it said exactly what I needed to say, and that alone would have made it a favourite, but the comments and responses I got made that particular soul-pouring-out post feel extra special.
So whether you saw it at the time or are just coming across it now, I’d love for you to read Becoming Real.
Happy blogoversary, Alison and Ado!
I’ve read a couple of non-fiction books about marriage recently. One was Elizabeth Gilbert’s Committed: A Love Story
In any case, the thing that struck me about Gilbert’s book is that she seems determined to believe that, in marriage, a person expects—in fact needs—her spouse to make her happy. Despite being a strong, educated, fairly independent woman, her very identity is wrapped up in her relationship. I’m sure it won’t be a surprise to you that this is a perspective I find hard to choke down.
A while back*, another blogger I know (who works in PR) was looking for people to review a book about marriage. Laura offered up a copy of The Secret Lives of Wives: Women Share What It Really Takes to Stay Married
It was, in fact, a very good read, but not in the sense I expected. The author, bestselling journalist Iris Krasnow, interviewed more than 200 wives whose marriages have survived for 15 to 70 years to find out what they do to make their marriages last. Yes, there are the expected affairs and illicit liaisons. There are women who keep some sort of their lives secret and would never even dream of sharing that side of themselves with their husbands. Contrary to the author’s argument, however, I suspect those women aren’t as happy—or happily married—as they’re portrayed to be.
The thing that fascinated me, though, was that the book’s essential assertion is that you have to be someone separate from your husband in order to stay happily married. This, of course, is no surprise. It’s the exact opposite of Gilbert’s belief and the exact message that made me like Krasnow’s book so much more than Gilbert’s evolving narcissistic memoir. (In case you haven’t heard, I’m not a fan of Elizabeth Gilbert. Though, to be fair, in that post I did acknowledge one part of her perspective that really spoke to me.)
It’s also no surprise that in The Secret Lives of Wives Krasnow concludes that the secret to a happy marriage is as individual as the women she spoke to but that, ultimately, “marital bliss is possible if each partner is blissful apart from the other.”
So, wanna read it? Enter below.
