Ups and Downs

Anyone in a long term marriage, or what ever form of commitment you practice, knows that relationships ride the waves. There are crests and valleys, some looming and treacherous, some a slow steady roll. My marriage that I treasure has had a particularly undulation filled few months. The sea we are navigating together has felt tumultuous, in part because our life is more full and more complicated than ever, and in part because we just keep becoming more complex people as time goes by. 

Our Italian adventure is such a positive thing for me right now. I wanted to write a post just about that, but when I sat down to get started I realized that it didn’t feel honest to just write about how wonderful and growth filled that experience has been and leave out the the rest. A huge part of my focus for the last couple of months has been on how to nurture my non-thriving marriage back into good health. It’s not who I am to pretend everything is perfect when we all know better. I want to share with you, my friends, the duality that makes my life rich and hard and precious.

Robert and I flew over to our new Italian village a couple weeks ago for a very quick trip to sign the papers an officially take possession of our apartment. He got to see it for the first time, along with the town and surrounding area. I was pretty sure he would love it there and I wasn’t wrong. It’s hard not to love. With the help of our new friends we met a builder who can do some work on the bathroom, talked with a guy who does kitchen cabinets, and made plans for some other improvements that will make it a livable (and beautiful) space.

 

We had two real crest-of-the-wave days, swimming in the river, lunching on homemade pesto in tiny, family run restaurants, and making fruitful trips to the local hardware store for supplies. Traveling with Robert is one of my very favorite things. I love sharing the feeling of everything being new and different. We laugh a lot and enjoy the being out of our element. But the tricky parts of our relationship reared their ugly heads on our last day. I think we were both hoping that a break from our normal, every day world would give us renewed energy and fresh perspective that would make everything feel better, but our real life issues aren’t fucking around. They don’t want to be ignored, they want to be addressed. Even in Italy. They are demanding attention, and we have to do our best to give it to them, as nausea inducing as it can sometimes be. One life lesson that I’m finally learning is that if you fight change you will never win.

I’m not shy about getting into personal stuff on this blog, obviously, but I realize that not everyone wants to air their dirty laundry where all can see it, or process their life troubles on the internet. My family and friends need to be able to choose who knows what about them. That to say, I’m not going to get specific about my relationship struggles here [audible sigh of relief from everyone reading, especially my husband]. But I will say this, marriage isn’t easy. Jobs aren’t easy. Kids aren’t easy. Mental health isn’t easy. Some days you get lucky and find yourself eating tagliatelle and drinking rosato on a vine covered terrace in the sun and some days you are sobbing in the lobby of an airport hotel at midnight. It’s a super crappy reality that we have to live both the highs and lows in order to be whole. 

The need for change has become obvious because we are spending too much time weathering the storm and not enough time enjoying each other. The balance is off and a new course is being required of us. Sometimes change takes some kicking and screaming and fit throwing to come to fruition. Sometimes it takes more empathy than you thought you could ever muster. Sometimes it takes patience, more patience, and yet again more. Robert and I are paddling hard to stay out of the dangerous current, but at least we are paddling in the same direction. (Look how I’m beating this ocean analogy like dead horse. Let’s see if I can keep it up!)

I have these dream of a lifetime, can’t-believe-I-could-be-this-lucky, Italian memories to buoy me while I flounder around in other areas of my life. Even on my bad days, I can think about the magic of our new corner of the world. There is an olive farmer named Remo who invited us in for watermelon and wine when we stopped to buy oil on a hot afternoon. There is a store called Gandolpho which is a perfectly fitting name, not because they sell wizarding equipment, but because they magically had the exact doorknob replacement part we needed and the right sized table and chairs for our terrace. There is lemon gelato and a moss covered stone foot bridge. The town next door to ours, really just a group of houses, has had a garlic festival every year for centuries. There are people who play Italian songs on accordions without irony. I even got a cappuccino from a vending machine for a euro that was way better than the one I get at my fancy local bakery in the US. If experiences are the currency by which we value our lives, then these are going a long ways to keeping me in the black. I’m holding on tight to these beautiful thoughts like a raft while the life does its wild and wavy thing around me. It’s an exhilarating ride.