“Six years is a lot of years for a second marriage,” I tell my husband playfully at midnight, as we lay with all our clothes still on, stretched out on top of the unmade bed. It’s the middle of the week and we’ve spent our anniversary at our children’s swim meet. Hot and humid, we are exhausted from four hours sweating, dripping, standing in dark clothes on the cement, in July.
"Yes, it is." His voice trails away in sleep, words gravely. Within a minute, he is snoring.
Six years ago today, I was somebody’s bride. Now I wear ill fitting knit skorts, salty from the heat, too tired to kiss him on the mouth.
Ten minutes pass before my husband opens his eyes again suddenly. “Was I snoring?” His voice sounds contrite and confused, like a child. The corners of his face are rumpled.
“No, love. Not at all. Go back to sleep.”
The Day After
We leave the teenagers in charge and drive to the park. A short heavy rain has lifted the humidity, so we sit at a splintered wooden table, passing a Big Can of Milwaukee’s Best back and forth. We talk about work, about our children, about the weather. The monotony, the minutiae of second chances: six years of marriage, with six kids between us and no kids together. So old, so old, we moan as our bones creak on the picnic bench.
Still there is freedom in our marrow. A beginning, again—and this time we pretend less and love more.
"This would be a great place to people watch,” my husband says, as together we peer at a trail leading into a woody thicket.
Strangers pass. The sips of beer have gone to my head. I make up a story about a woman speed-walking right past us. "I shall call it ’the curious incident of the girl in the bright pink shirt,’" I declare grandly with a wave of my hand and we laugh, even though it isn’t my best material at all. When I next pass the beer can back over the table, my husband suddenly grabs my hand and grips firmly.
“These last six years with you have been everything. I want to multiply them by big numbers.”
Tears burn the corners of my eyes. I say nothing, because I can not find the words to sing the forever of my heart. We sit and sit, holding hands until the mosquitos bite and the parking lot clears and we run out of thoughts.
“It’s all a mystery,” I say randomly, as my mind swells big. I’m so tired I can barely keep my eyes open. “This life.”
“Yes, it is.” He says. His voice is unexpectedly bright.
Is monotony the rhythm of despair? Does it reign us in? Does it keep us back? Or without it, would we flail about, would we go mad?
I have things that I wished for six years ago, things I did not have then. And still, I can list all the things I want on a full two hands. I do not want to waste my whole life wishing. I want to multiply my time by big numbers
Six is not a very big number. It’s a child barely steady on a two wheeler: still throwing fits in the parking lot and not quite responsible enough to be given chewing gum yet. It’s small against the crush of life and responsibility, the children who need to be tended, the house that sags and settles. Half a dozen, almost nothing, so much work.
And yet at six years I sit holding hands with a man who ignites a longing in me, who reminds me of how simply and complicatedly I am made. Sustaining and captivating me—-a love that is a constant thrum, like the chorus of nameless birds in the trees at dusk.
I was never very good at math. But I think six might be everything.
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