For Better or for Worse, But Not for Lunch
Fern: It occurred to me this week, on the day of our anniversary …
Joe: Wait, you know when our anniversary is? The actual date?
Fern: I do. It was last Sunday. We went to the Waterfront restaurant and had martinis and raw oysters. It was very brave of you. The raw oysters, not the martinis.
Joe: I asked about the date because you are the least sentimental person I know. A few years ago, we both forgot that it was the day of our anniversary until late that evening.
Fern: And you’re relieved from the obligation to buy gifts in celebration of . . . well, anything. Anniversary. Birthday. Valentine’s Day.
But the issue I want to discuss here is a realization that I recently had after these many years into our marriage.
Joe: How many years?
Fern: Thirty-five?
Joe: Close enough. It’s thirty-four. What’s your revelation?
Fern: I realized that since we’ve been married, you have been retired for more years than you’ve worked at a job. Really. Do the math.
Joe: I’m presuming that you already have. Let’s see: I retired at 57. I’ll be 80 in November.
Fern: 80!!! OMG!
Joe: And lucky to be here. Every day’s a gift. But yes, that’s a lot of years for a retired guy.
Fern: I didn’t disagree when you made the decision to take early retirement. The kids were grown. We had enough money. And you always do your share. Maybe more than your share. Cooking and shopping. And also complicated stuff like figuring out how to turn on the television. The other day we discovered that one of our toilets needed a new flapper, and you happened to have the exact replacement downstairs in your work shop. I was amazed.
Joe: Semper paratus. I took four years of Latin in high school.
Fern: But living with a retired husband is not so easy for many women. Even (perhaps especially) when the woman is retired as well.
Joe: Because?
Fern: Because many women still see the house, the home (even if they’ve had significant careers) as more their domain. I know that despite your contributions in the kitchen I see the house as “more mine.”
Joe: Which is why I’m neater upstairs than I might ordinarily be. And I’m grateful that there’s a part of our house –the basement—that’s primarily my domain. Even in marriage, I need my own place. I’m sitting there now, writing this. I hear your footsteps busily going back and forth upstairs. (Did you know you are particularly heavy-footed for a small person?)
My basement is decorated just the way I like. My desk has papers strewn across it, as does the poker table. The basement is spacious for a man-cave. A few feet behind me is the kitchenette I’ve made into my painting studio.
I use an exercise bike in front of the television and watch war movies.
Out in the hall is where I target shoot arrows.
(An actual shot—my witness took the photo.)
Fern: That’s why whenever I bring the laundry downstairs I call out for an all clear!
Joe: Still, in relationships, propinquity is everything.
Fern: More high school Latin? Propinquity? You mean that nearness is everything?
Joe: Well, for one, people don’t marry people they don’t meet. What are the chances that you and I would have gotten together? You were popular, out-going, Jewish, growing up in the Long Island suburbs. Me, shy, speaking Arabic at home, Catholic and fairly introverted. Living above my father’s grocery store in Toledo, Ohio.
Enter propinquity. When you and I met we worked together in the same English department, went to the same meetings and social events. Propinquity. Then we were part of a writers group. Even more propinquity.
Fern: I thought we were talking about retirement.
Joe: Well, retirement ups the propinquity level. And for some that can start to chafe.
So in retirement it’s probably more important to have outside friends and interests. To have a morning coffee group, a hobby, book groups, volunteering. Keeping busy might be healthy for its own sake. But it’s also important for retired couples not to spend every single minute with each other.
Fern: And then when we come back together we have something to say!
Joe: I would suggest that’s never been a problem for you.
Fern: Covid inflicted propinquity on the whole country. My women’s group met in public parks, sitting in wintertime practically yelling across the required six feet just to maintain human contact. For those of us who lived with partners, other human contact.
Joe: I remember during Covid thinking how lucky I was to be isolating with you.
Fern: I used to call a friend whose husband had died a year before the pandemic. The truth was she had been in an awful marriage. Her husband was mean and he drank. Once, during Covid, when I asked how she was doing, she said, “Well it could be a lot worse. He could still be alive.”
Joe: Nothing is lonelier than being in a bad marriage. Without love, nearness can be torture. With love, it’s a joy. Sharing beckons us out of our essential loneliness.
Fern: Sharing. But not becoming one. Wasn’t that the theme in Wuthering Heights (all English majors read it in college) when Katherine says to Heathcliff something like: “I don’t know where you leave off and I begin?” Or that their very souls were actually one? I was nineteen when I read that and still thought it was bullshit.
Joe: I think the quote has to do with her belief that her lover is “more myself than I am.”
Fern: He’s “more myself than I am?” I don’t even know what that means.
Even spending so much time together, we’re able to still learn something new about each other. Like the other day, you told me you were surprised that I knew the words to most of the songs we to listened in the Sixties.
Joe: Sixties? I’d add the Fifties, Forties and most of the Thirties, as well. And how you enjoy singing them again when one comes on during a movie we’re watching.
Fern: And I learned you have a collection of flappers in the basement.
You two are a hoot in these columns! Thanks for sharing them. Were you writing them before the Iowa Writers Collaborative started? You've developed so many fans now that I think you could start selling "Conversations with Fern & Joe." If you do, sign me up, please.
Happy Anniversary! You two make me smile!