Honoring Life’s Milestones

By: Victoria Smith

 

I am happily writing this month’s column from Venice! To celebrate our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, my husband and I are on an almost month-long tour of the great cities of Italy—something we’d long dreamed of, but had held off doing as we raised our family and life got in the way.

Funny, this expression about life getting in the way of living. The ideal would be to live a full life every moment we’re alive, right? But the reality is that in order to reach any measure of fulfillment, we all struggle through many challenges and obstacles in addition to the tediousness of life’s daily grind. The latter is an especially weary aspect of living, so much so I was inspired to write the following as part of my poem “Memory of Water” (that appears in my poetry collection, “Warrior Heart, Pilgrim Soul: An Immigrant’s Journey”) that I wrote during those Sisyphean years of raising our young children, before then helping them through adolescent angsts:

“…. One hour before day closes shop: the twilight hour before half a life is gone, before the second half begins. Where has the first half strayed? We are worn down, rock-bare—our rough edges eroded like river stones, leveled smooth to our finest shape by the slow, sure, sculpting grind of the river of life. How then shall we face the second half of our lives? Naked and disarmed, we’ve been reduced to helpless newborns, yet deprived of luxury of time, strength of youth. With what sharp and fearsome weapons shall we fend off the enemies still to come? Even our horns have been ground down to our skulls— not even the stubs remain. Too tired to fight anymore….”

As this year opened, I was acutely aware of two things: First, that it would mark twenty-five years of marriage for my husband and me. Second, that our conjugal plate would yet again be full of chaos and challenge—what with the then anticipated sale of our home in Iowa, the big, complex move that would follow, and the complicated renovations on our new Washington State home we’d already begun. We told ourselves these were necessary changes to simplify our lives and get us to the part where we could finally stay put and grow roots. Yes—at middle age! It seems our marital life’s trajectory has never followed the norm, and thus has had its special tribulations. With all that was happening, it would have been easy for us to decide not to do anything special for our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, and no one would blame us for it. Except that I knew I would blame us for it! I knew it would be a grave mistake we would regret forever, one of those where we’d constantly wonder about “what might have been”, something that our whole love story and marriage were dedicated to avoid.

But timing and resources didn’t appear to be on my side. As the cost estimates for our remodeling came in, and I saw my retired husband scratch his head almost into semi-baldness trying to figure out a realistic budget, I wondered whether I should even bring up with him the question of how we planned on celebrating our silver anniversary. I hemmed and hawed for weeks. Should I; shouldn’t I? To ask or not to ask. I felt anxious and frankly too tired to have to wrestle with my husband on the issue. Like my poem said, “too tired to fight anymore”. I feared that my husband—who is always the big fiscal conservative in our marriage—was going to put up a fight.

But then again I also knew another thing about life: To allow one’s self to be driven by fear and pessimism was no way to live. And I also learned something about men in twenty-five years of marriage: If you don’t ask, you will not receive! Yes, ladies—this is another secret to being happily married. Many women still expect their partners to be mind readers of what they want in their relationships, or equating true love with their men’s ability to anticipate their desires. And what happens? They fall into the despair of disappointment. Because truth is, no matter how much a husband loves his wife, life also gets in his way and muddles his foresight of his wife’s expectations. And if most men are like my husband—a simple and modest man, loving by nature but not always imaginative in expressing it into romantic gestures—they all need some help some of the time from their women. Especially in honoring twenty-five years of marriage! I’ve always been a proactive person. And thus, I raised the kraken.

But guess what happened? After I’d dramatically if not a bit defensively declared to my husband— during a pause in one of our discussions of how we should move forward in our renovations—that I thought we should celebrate our silver anniversary in a very special way despite all the crazy things happening in our lives this year, he surprised me by calmly replying, “I agree. Now, how would you like to do that, my love?” And when I answered that this was the time to fulfill our dream of going to Italy (for what more romantic way to celebrate such milestone in our marriage than to visit this ultimate romantic destination, I added by way of rejoinder), my husband—my ever practical and pragmatic, numbers- and-results-driven man—did not respond by kissing nor holding me. He immediately pulled out his laptop and started investigating the costs of such getaway. Yes, he’s romantic that way. And I don’t mean that in a sarcastic manner. This is his method of showing his love: making things happen by making the numbers work. Knowing this, I was prepared. I had already done my own research on the various tours available and presented him with a recommendation. I told him of a highly-rated albeit relatively new group that specialized in true small group tours—no more than twenty (when most tour groups pack themselves up with forty participants at the least)—which additionally boasted of authentic, local farm-to-table gourmet dining and centrally-located, quality hotels in their packages. It didn’t take long for my husband to agree—again! But then came his turn to ask the hard questions. What was I willing to give up in our remodeling to enable us to fulfill our dream of Italy?

And guess what happened then? I also surprised myself by compromising readily on things I had previously thought were absolute must-haves for our next home. I chose to give up the extra bathroom and other upgrades. I realized that when I was forced to decide on priorities, I chose to be the dreamer I knew myself at heart to be, instead of simply being practical—knowing full well that being “true to thine own self” is one of the most practical things anyone can do for herself. I understood that marking life’s important moments did not always require building material monuments but creating beautiful albeit ethereal moments, nourishing more of spirit than body—which is sometimes what the body needs to heal, especially aging bodies like my husband’s and mine. In the process of making choices and compromises, we learn that life is truly what we make it.

I am keenly aware of my extreme privilege in being able to make this luxurious choice. I know countless wives would love to be able to celebrate milestones in their marriages like me, and yet, for one reason or another, cannot. I respect that. But whatever those reasons are, I hope they aren’t due to fear, or lack of will, or, the root cause of all failures: lack of imagination. And I also hope my fellow women aren’t too tired to fight for what they want—for some things are indeed worth fighting for. We just need to decide and be aware of what those are to each of us, and be willing to make the necessary sacrifices.

In preparation for our trip, the first leg of which is to begin here in Venice, this ageless queen of romantic cities, I’d read Marlena De Blasi’s “A Thousand Days in Venice”. In her chapter 7, “That Lush Moment Just Before Ripeness”, De Blasi seems to have preternaturally foretold my marriage to my own “foreigner and stranger” of a husband and my curious mixed feelings of celebratory sentiment and introspective doubt on this eve of our silver wedding anniversary:

“…. Sometimes, I step out-of-scene for a moment, checking to see if I find some shabby sense of farce about us. Are we used people pretending to be new? No. The most stringent pulse-taking always reads negative. We are not old. We are at that lush moment just before ripeness, the moment that love suspends in a soft, sustained note of rhapsody. In the cinnamon candlelight and a lengthening tenderness, we strangers live well together…. As a couple, there is some sense about us that feels like risk, like adventure, like the tight bubbles of a good Prosecco. Even when we bewilder each other, make each other screaming crazy, there’s a bright metal to us like the resonance of something gold and something silver tumbling fast across wet stones. It feels as if we’re living on the edge of a rapture.” (p.78, De Blasi, Marlena, A Thousand Days In Venice: An Unexpected Romance, 2002, Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, a Division of Workman Publishing)

I wish you, dear readers, many milestones in life worth celebrating— and fighting for.

(All rights reserved. Copyright ©2019 by Victoria G. Smith. For updates on her author events & publications, go to VictoriaGSmith. com. “Like” her on Facebook at Author Victoria G. Smith. “Follow” her on Twitter @AuthorVGSmith)