August 25th, 2010
Today, Stephen and I have been married for 3 years.
We didn't intentionally plan our wedding two days after my birthday, but, a convergence of events beyond our control lead to our wedding happening two days after my birthday.
Those events: Stephen's sister, Mary Ann, and her husband, Roman, along with Meredyth, were all going to be in the vicinity of the East coast. It seemed like an opportune time to get married.
Nothing about our being together has been conventional. He was a 42 year old bachelor, living in a nice two bedroom apartment, neat and clean, knowing where everything was all the time.
I was a single parent of three children, living in a four bedroom house, not neat and clean, where we often didn't know where things were.
And we had dogs and cats.
Somehow, in spite of being complete opposites, we manage to make it work. I think it's because of our winning combindation of therapy, love, patience and lots of melatonin.
Its hard being married. I knew this before I married Stephen, having been married before. But until you are married, you don't really know how much work it really is.
I didn't need to marry Stephen, to be with him. I love him, and would have been content to be with him without any sort of official ceremony linking us together.
Stephen, however, had never been married, and it was important for him, so we got married.
Again, not a conventional wedding ceremony. Being Quakers, we didn't have a minister, nor were we married in a church. The ceremony included everyone we invited, and when we were lead to, we got stood in front of our family and friends and exchanged the vows we had written. We then had more silence. Eventually, people who felt led to speak about me and Stephen, or just one of us, did so.
And that was it.
There was a pot luck reception, with wonderful food, apparently. Stephen and I were "doing pictures" (perhaps the only traditional part of our wedding) so we only heard about the food.
Stephen has had much to adjust to since we got together. There are lots of times when I question how come he has stayed. Life with me and the kids isn't easy, anyone with teenagers will tell you that. He definitely wasn't prepared for the drama that accompanies teenage girls, nor the was he ready for their understanding, or lack thereof, of "cause and effect." In Stephen's world, when you ask someone to do something, it is done shortly after you ask.
And you never have to ask more than once.
In the kid's worlds, you can ask, and eventually whatever you have asked to be done will be done.
But maybe not as quickly as you would have wanted it done.
So with the kids its more like "cause, and eventually, at some point, when there is enough time and energy to do so, there will be an effect."
This makes Stephen crazy.
One of the unforseen happenings of our getting together has been the developement of a game called "Mum-Dawne in the middle."
This is a well loved and often played game among Stephen and the kids.
The sole objective of this game is for Stephen to communicate with the kids, and vice versa, through me.
This makes me crazy.
And they know this.
I cannot seem to make them communicate with one another. And this has really been the source of more than one family discussion. In fairness, as the kids get older, they have become somewhat more willing to talk with Stephen about things, without involving me.
But there is still room for A LOT of improvement.
I also know that this is not a phenomenon that exists solely within blended families or step-families.
When I was growing up, my brother and I often "talked" to our father through our mother.
My dad wasn't easy to talk to, and while he is easier to talk with now than he was when I was younger, I'm not comfortable talking with him. Everything is compared. Contrasted. A contest to see who is the worse off.
Most of the time he wants to compare his living situation, at home, alone, looking only after himself, with my mother's: living in a nursing home, not at home. He doesn't want to be in a nursing home, but he resents that my mother is, and that she is being looked after.
And he resents that he "has" to come into town to see her every second day. He is also very vocal about this.
Unfortunately, I have no sympathy for his tale of woe. I remind him that this woman is his wife of almost 50 years, and she is in a place she doesn't want to be, and he is in the place where she wants to be. He can come and go as he pleases, has a new car to get around in, takes the odd vacation to visit family in Nova Scotia.
My fear is that Stephen and I will become more and more like our parents as we get older.
God, I hope not.
I am happy, every day, that Stephen thought marrying me would be a good idea.
Title Lyric: Grow Old with Me by John Lennon
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