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| Sideways flames courtesy of full force fans. Serious expressions courtesy of trying hard to pretend melted wax doesn't burn skin. |
Now, twenty years on, we are asked often by friends just married, soon to marry, or never married, "What's the secret?" Anyone who has "made it work" for a number of years with another person (married or not) knows there's no secret. You just make choices along the way and hope they're the right choices. But when asked, Rick and I generally answer with our best guess at a couple of things that we think have made it work for us. Rick always says "Remember it's a marathon, not a sprint! Grand romantic gestures are nice in the moment, but you can't keep it up. Don't set yourself up for high expectations." (ah, the romance...) And I answer "kindness." And though my answer is meant seriously and Rick's answer is meant to be funny (mostly) -- really, our answers are kind of the same.
It's true that there haven't been many grand romantic gestures between us. We're not a flowers-and-love-poems couple. We roll our eyes at flowers-and-love-poems couples. But Rick is right that it's a marathon, and he's been running it like an Olympian, as evidenced by the following completely incomplete list:
- When we go to rock shows - from the time we started dating in college to now - Rick finds the best place to stand so short Nadia can see the band. He places himself between me and obnoxiously drunk hipsters. He lets me lean back against him when it's a long show and there's no wall space to lean on.
- When babies needed midnight feedings, he got out of bed, went to the nursery and brought the wee one to me in bed so I could have a few more moments to wake up.
- When toddlers woke up way too early on Saturdays, he volunteered for "watch Blues Clues in the living room" duty while I slept.
- When small kiddos needed stitches for various injuries (thank you, Vinogradov genes), he knew to steer me to a chair in the ER room before our tinies noticed their mama was losing it and about to pass out. He checked to make sure all of us, me included, were steady on our feet before leaving for home.
- When my car tires are low on air, he notices and fills them without mentioning it. When he drives my car, it comes back with a full tank of gas. When it makes weird noises or leaks something from somewhere, he'll give up a weekend to make it right. He acknowledges my slightly unreasonable emotional attachment to my aging, dented, cranky car without judgement. I know he'll be sympathetic when it rolls its last mile and I weep buckets over it.
- There is always coffee made by the time I wake up. When we're out of coffee, there's a Dunkin Donuts run before I wake up.
- My Valentine's Day gift this year was crackers and cheese. Because again, no flowers-and-love-poems, and I like brie better than chocolate.
- When I feel like I need a running partner, I have one. Even though for him it's just kind of a slow jog/fast walk. He never mentions the fact that even at my fastest run pace, he doesn't break a sweat. When I mention it, he very sweetly lies and says "I'm totally enjoying this run, it's exactly what I needed today."
- He has watched more Gilmore Girls than anyone who doesn't care about Gilmore Girls should. The same is true for Downtown Abbey, Battlestar Galactica, The Tudors, all LOTR/Hobbit movies, and cooking shows. (full disclosure: on this point, we're basically even-steven. I know every line of Pitch Perfect by heart, and not because it's my favorite movie. I also know that "this bit with Jason Jones and Har Mar Superstar is the best part!" because I've heard that sentence approximately one thousand times.)
- He has always said he likes my cooking, even though for at least the first decade of our marriage it was mostly mediocre and occasionally awful.
- He knows the freezer should always have vodka.
- He is my on-call tech support. He knows to give advice/direction/instruction that a two-year-old could follow, but doesn't speak to me like I'm a two-year-old when delivering said advice/direction/instruction.
- I have rarely changed the cat litter in almost 18 years, but the cats I insisted we adopt have clean litter boxes every Sunday.
- Despite my pathetic cat-litter changing track record, two cats joined our family after the first two cats went on to the catnip garden in the sky, and he welcomed them with only a little grumbling.
- He knows what zakuski is all about, and that it's not just about the vodka shots.
- He goes to church in Labelle, despite deep commitment to being non-religious. Other reluctant church goers in our family know what this means, and why it's included in this list.
- I have never had to learn to operate our riding mower. It's possible this is because he tends the lawn rather artfully and I would probably just "mow" the lawn (really, what's wrong with the overgrown-wild-english-garden look?), but still...
- My house is spider free. When it isn't spider free, I know that's a very temporary circumstance. I generally don't have to do the un-spidering.
- He sleeps half-blanketed when I've stolen the blankets in my sleep rather than wake me by tugging the blankets back.
And the list goes on, but you get the idea... a marathon of kindness. I do my best to reciprocate (see above note re: Pitch Perfect), and of course - being human - we both mess up. Sometimes we mess up in spectacular and idiotic ways. But with kindness as our guidepost, and a commitment to do the work, we make our way back to center. Not the stuff of sonnets, I guess - but you get it, right? This is better than sonnets, because this is real life, this is actually love. It's as much about the unseen, boring, tiny details as it is about the deep connection that inspires poetry. It's about knowing that sometimes you hold hands while you run the marathon and sometimes you let go to be the road crew and to cheer each other on.
Readers, raise a glass in spirit with us today, to marathons and to another many decades.
Wish us happiness, wish us luck. Be good to each other.
Love,
N.
