Chaos and Carpet Cleaner

My mother is a cleaner. She is a straightener, a tidier, and a mess remover. I call it more than slightly neurotic. My mother is a dull woman. I know this because she keeps an immaculate house. Our bookshelves are always dusted, the magazines on the coffee table are current and artfully arranged, and there are fresh lines on the carpet from the vacumn cleaner.

In fact, if it wasn't for the fact that I live here, there would be virtually no sign of life in my house.
Ever.

I am the exact opposite of my mother. I am chaotic. I am the mess maker. I take my shoes off at the door and I ::gasp:: leave them there. I look at it as saving the white carpet from mud and coffee.

My mother says it is actually laziness.

And after having had the battle of laziness versus efficiency (I'm just going to put the shoes on again when I leave), I realize neither of us are going to win. Besides, my mother also says my version of efficiency is actually chaos. She isn't wrong but I don't want to tell her that.

It amazes me that two people who are so fundamentally different can live under the same roof for so long without actually killing each other. Although we have tried.

I tell my mother that she has become dull in her old age, that reading a bit more wouldn't hurt her, and that the Oprah magazine does not count as a book. I tell her that she does diservices to her clients by fighting for herion addicts to keep their babies. I tell her that she's lost her personality outside of my father in the last ten years and that if she keeps alienating her friends, she'll have no one left. I tell her that she enables my grandmother to manipulate and control our family and that at this point, everyone in our household needs a psych exam.

I don't think I'm wrong in any of it.

This is not one sided. My mother tells me that I will be a horrible mother because I can't keep a clean house. My mother tells me that she doesn't think I'll find a man that loves me until much later in life. My mother tells me that I am wasting my mind by working at Starbucks. My mother tells me that my artistic endeavors are a waste of money. My mother tells me that because I don't remember to leave my work schedule on the fridge, I am inconsiderate.

We're both going for blood, but in such different ways.

The funny part of all of this is that I don't leave. I stay put. She doesn't kick me out. And I know she won't. She tells her friends how much she loves having me home. I think I keep her real and honest. She thinks I give her more gray. I told her it was the "it" color for the season. She still reached for the box of Preference.

At times it seems like the only thing we have in common are genetics. But I think maybe, just maybe, my mother sees pieces of what she wanted to be in me. Despite her conservative exterior, she tells me to dress however I want now before gravity kicks in.

I have also recently realized that my mother and I both love deeply. We love honestly but on our own terms. We are not afraid of commitment. We are liberated by it. We both hide our dumb decisions from each other. And when we inevitably discover said dumb decision, we are both harshly critical of each other. We both think my Gampy loves us more than the other one.
Mostly importantly, I loudly fear turning into my mother and she quietly fears that she is actually me. Funny how that works out.

We have these periodic moments of honesty and trust. They are few and far between but they have appear a bit more frequently during the last few months. I don't know how to keep them coming but I'm not too worried about them stopping.

Originally post on Diaryland on April 24, 2006.

The Hard Part of Marriage

The most difficult aspect of marriage is realized around the same time that you realize you want to shed some aspect of your life. You can’t. You are now unable to shed the skin you are in when it becomes itchy and uncomfortable. You can no longer escape your bad decisions when they no longer suite you. Your bad decisions now belong to someone else and in turn, their bad decisions now belong to you as well.

In my pre-marriage life, I used to take solace in the fact that I did not choose my family. The egg and sperm that I grew from did not choose each other, they just happened to both be lurking in the same uterus at the time of my conception. I did not pick my parents but they were still my family. And by not picking my family, it became so much easier to distance myself from them or discount them as people. I may be sharing genetic material with them but they chose me.

As a married woman, my family now is my husband. And I did choose him. I decided to marry Brian just as Brian decided to marry me. I decided to love him and build a life with him. I decided he would be my family. And for that reason, I am not able to discount him or distance myself from him for the simple reason that it was all my choice. I am married to both Brian and his decisions.

Sometimes this scares the crap out of me.

When we first completed our walk down the aisle, I suspected that the most difficult aspect to relate to the fact that I would be having the same sex every night with the same man for the rest of my life. And as the play-ette I was in my single days, this was a bit concerning. There would be no more bad day sex with an ex-boyfriend. No more mid-week booty calls. I would be having sex with Brian until we were either too old to have sex or until one of us died. Surprisingly though, thus far, it hasn’t been that bad. In fact, I find that I like it and the lack of a chase for sex means I have more time at night to moisturize, therefore maintaining my youthful appearance for as long as possible.

But along with the consistent sex comes the consistent marriage. When Brian does something dumb, I can’t just walk away. I can’t through the towel in because I’m pissed off that Brian didn’t get my car fixed in a timely manner. When he comes out with a statement involving a bad idea being “really great”, I will still have to deal with the aftermath of that idea in the morning. And when I do dumb things, which I do constantly, I can’t just walk away from it. Suddenly, I have discovered that I must deal with the consequences of my actions.

My life choices for the first time have truly become life choices.

Life as a single person is transitional. Your friends, your job, your hobbies – these all can be replaced and no one needs remember but yourself. After marriage, someone will remember all of these things and more. My life story has now become so entwined with Brian that now he is my life story and I am his.

It seems the binding of marriage has hit me in ways I did not know how to prepare for.

A Year Ago Yesterday

A year ago yesterday, my mother-in-law passed away. I didn't know at the time that someday I would refer to her as my mother-in-law but I had a very strong feeling at the time that something wonderful was about to happen between her son and I. I believe that in many ways, Beth's passing was a catalyst, bringing Brian and I together and setting many wheels in motion.

So much has changed since she left this Earth. We are all a year older. We all look different. Most of us have new haircuts. Brian and I were married. Kelly and Jason (Brian's middle sister and his best friend) were married. Beth's grandchildren were homeschooled. I found a new job. Kelly moved out. I moved in. Kelly was promoted at work. Don met new people. I went camping for the first time. There was good and there was bad.

Yesterday was still a Morgan Day of Mourning. It marked the beginning and the end of many things. I remembered Beth by trying to do something nice for other people. I baked desserts for the PBU back to school bbq my church had. I did not attend as I don't think I could have maintained the niceness. I also read the section on mourning in Muddhouse Sabbath. I thought about the ways we mourn as Christians fail the families of the loved ones who passed. I remembered a promise I once made to Beth and took some first steps to maintain it. I held my husband and I told him how loved he is. I made dinner for my family and enjoyed spending time with them.

I'm still sad my babies will never know their Grandmother and that the stories that will be told will be largely inadequate.

Babies

Our pastor and his wife announced yesterday in church that they are expecting a baby in February. They are currently in the process of adopting a little boy from Guatemala so they will suddenly jump from 1 child to 3 in just six month.

I'm jealous.

I know Brian and I promised each other that we would wait four years before we started trying. We want to be sure that we are ready for babies but we also want to be sure that we have time to be a couple. A baby would change everything in ways that we are not prepared for. A baby is more than we can handle.

Still. I am jealous. I want to experience the world through the eyes of a child. I want to watch in amazement as a little person grows and changes in front of me. I want to fuss over bonnets and little shoes. I want to laugh with a little face.

I know I am not ready.

I know that my priority at the moment is to be a good wife to Brian and to be a good person to myself. I know it is not realistic, practical or ideal. I know at the moment I have a strong preference to be Crazy Aunt Dorie instead of "MOM".

May 16 aka 31 days

Last night I watched my almost husband sleep on the floor in green pasley boxers that I bought for him at Christmas as I half read Anne Lamott and I half listened to a thunderstorm roll into the Levittown skies.

I call Brian my "almost husband" because any other term available to describe his roll in my life seems horribly inaccurate. "Fiance" reminds me too much of Seinfeld and "maybe the dingo ate your baby" and I really don't want to be thinking about Julia Louis Dreyfuss when I think about my mate. The term "boyfriend" seems to downplay Brian's roll in my life as if he was a leftover relic from my college days with no actual commitment on the horizon. Which he is not. Thank you very much. I cannot yet call Brian my husband because the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and my mother object on the grounds that our legally binding promise has yet to be signed. They apparently do not agree with my belief that engagement is just as binding as marriage.

Almost Husband it is.

Another accurate way to describe Brian is to refer to him as my better half. I do not say that to degrade or berate myself but as our premarital counselor so nicely put it, I have "tendencies" towards "agressive, dominant" behavior and intolerance, and Brian, well, he does not.

She also tried to tell us that the personality test which supplied the information was only a snapshot in time but I would be lying to myself if I did not admit that the statement is accurate on a daily basis.

Clearly, my almost husband is better than your almost husband. Mainly because he puts up with me.

Brian continues to amaze me each day. He has a wonderful ability to see through my, ahem, shit in a way that no one else can. And I have a lot of shit that needs to be seen through. I don't like to think of myself as someone who fronts, but I do know that I tend to only show one aspect of myself at a time to people in the outside world. All of it is accurate, but I'm still not showing everything. Okay, so maybe I front. My front is so good that even I forget that I'm fronting. At times, my front is like a creeping ivy that has overtaken a house and only a certain almost husband seems to be able to see through that ivy to the potential that lies beneath it.

Brian keeps me nice. I don't mean that in a way that implies that he pays for everything (although he does pay for quite a bit more than I do). Brian is my personal editor through life. He edits my post it note directions for our family with "please" and "thank you" and "have a nice day" and ":)". He stops me from leaving post it notes that say "take out the g-ddamn trash" for the wonderful family members who live with us. He let me buy a big soft comfortable mattress even though he would rather sleep on a plank. Why? Because it made me happy. He humors me. He willingly goes to my alma mater to visit my college friends even though he thinks the college I went to was weird and the people I knew were even weirder. He looks for ways to make my life better.

I tend to freak out on him because the dinner table isn't set, I have at least three more load of laundry to do, and he's been home for three hours longer than I have and all I wanted to do was paint my nails.

Thank god he lets me.