Mondays at the marriage

I woke this morning to a cool and cloudy day. The cats had a quiet walk in the garden, and I picked a few raspberries. There are a half dozen peas ready to be picked and I will need to plant some new ones to replace those that have been eaten by the critter(s).  But as I sat at the desk(s) finding my way through old emails that had been deposited back in my inbox when I backed up my computer at work, it seems oddly familiar and oddly disconcerting. This is a familiar routine, though I am building back into my days,  the reading and writing that has been so missing from my life in Boston. I will shortly walk to the post office with a few thank you notes and an envelope of others that I have written and signed, but that Herb will want to add his "2 cents" to... and that is the disconcerting part. I am sending our thank you notes to him in Boston, so he can add what he wants and send them out to our friends. I have stamped them and put a return address in Vermont on all of them. But he is in Boston.

After a month of 'together' and a week apart and another weekend together, we are apart. It's just better together than apart.So it's disconcerting to be writing thank you notes and our blog from different places.

Yesterday, we wrote a joint blog entry from the desk in the office. I wrote in the morning; he wrote in the afternoon. Today, he will read this on-line with everyone else who is lurking out there.

When we married, I wrote something about our differences: Herb is systematic and careful about framing his work; I am always working with a kit of parts spilled on the floor. We both get "it" done, but in very different ways. When I write, I NEVER know what I am writing about when I start. I think Herb always does. But we get to the end of the paragraph or the essay with something we admire in each other, even if the route is different. E.L. Doctorow is often quoted for saying: "“Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way."  Herb and I are taking different routes, but we expect to end up in the same place. En route, it can be disconcerting to have this shift from being together to living apart. 


We decided to continue this blog after the wedding, in part because it was fun, but also because we haven't found much that chronicles the character of a married life. This is what that looks like -- for us anyway. And we are looking ahead as far as the headlights illuminate.