I'm a writer. Two things about writers, we ask a lot of questions and we never conform. I was lucky that my parents understood me. They taught me about life by showing me who they were.
My mother was impossible not to eat up with a spoon. She was dynamic and daring and lived a life that could have been ripped straight from the headlines. Perfect for a Lifetime Special starring Diana Ross when she still made movies. My father was moody, pretentious, and narcissistic though lots of fun - if you weren't married to him. So where am I going with this? The constant in every relationship I witnessed -the pending marital affair, usually his, not hers. It was the climax of every good dramatic film, Tolstoy novel and woman about to get locked up over the weekend.
As a wife, it is exhausting waiting for the day it happens. And through the years, your free, unencumbered spirit becomes saddled with helpful tips from: popular magazines, older women and day time talk show hosts. You find yourself lingering on Dr. Phil's face as he listens to the tearful brunette confess that she got his password and checked his e-mail. Secretly, you want to be certain there's not some new innovation that entered the market while you slept, one able to answer the question you don't want answered. With each new technological advance, you feel yourself losing ground, trapped at the bottom of the mountain, looking up at the snow bank that is balanced precariously overhead. You wait for the thunderous crack and eventual avalanche that will bury the life you've worked so diligently to secure.
Back to my father, I'd already been married for about ten years when I asked him, "Are the affairs worth it? Is it worth losing mom over? You all still seem to have a lot of fun together…why?" He paused inside the mouth of my refrigerator and then turned to look at me as if we hadn't been formally introduced. But what followed that look was something even more shocking, an expression which assured me that the thought had never crossed his mind. "She's not going anywhere, she'll get mad, but she'll get over it. Your husband will cheat on you too." I played with the idea of getting the shells from the top of his closet, loading his shot gun and - well you get the picture. I realized that it was possible that my husband if not that day, then one day would answer this same question posed to him in the same way. It did not matter that we loved each other dearly, that our friendship began when we were pretty much in diapers. Once, the power of speech returned, I tried to reason with my father but I knew he felt this was his birth right, his universal payback for being male, dying earlier and possibly being drafted in some phantom war he was too old to fight in.
Later, to my horror, science concurred studying cells and brain matter while sociologists combed Aboriginal tribes and brothers in Brooklyn to document what they already knew for sure, mens need to spread their sperm throughout their life time. Nature propelled them towards 24" waists and 36"hips, no matter the girl's age or the history they had with current girlfriends or wives. So what's a girl to do?
Personally, I don't have the energy or the interest to check e-mails, hit the re-dial button on cell phones, time my husbands' trips or smell his clothes for unfamiliar wafts of female cologne. I'm sure there's some way to set up GPS to track cars but I won't do that at middle-age, I won't. And before this appears to be a male-bashing rant (hopefully it's not too late) I confess that I adore men. In fact, I want what they have, the ability to be married and single at the same time. They have pockets of time set aside in their day for husbandly duties, the rest of the time is theirs, I say bravo. How can a woman re-train her brain to do that? It's been staring us in the face since Adam and Eve's kids had kids, the affair. Emotional or physical makes no difference.
It has the most beautiful escape hatch ever created. It gives a woman herself back. Life's natural re-set button. I sit before you unapologetically myself again. Things I wouldn't have done for myself because it would have taken me away from my marriage and that ever looming possible affair somewhere in the distance. Wavering, steaming up mirage-like. But once the affair happens, (emotional, physical whatever) poof, the pressure is gone. Personally I could tongue kiss and send flowers to the other women out there, God love them. Because behind the rendezvous, panting breath and late night e-mail promises of eternal love, there was me. The chick I'd deserted to work 24/7 on making my marriage work. I'd left her in the dust, kicked her to the curb, like two day old spaghetti sitting in the back of the refrigerator when everybody has chipped in for a large sausage pizza.
The very act that was supposed to hurt me the most helped me find her again; luckily she wasn't too pissed off to answer my urgent pleas. Here before you stands the woman who no longer compromises every detail of her life, the person that floats down L.A. sidewalks with a grin, the person who is still truly loved by her husband and who she truly loves as well, but now her husband lives over there continuing to live the life he never stopped living and I'm living over here waking up slowly from a very long nap. I dreamed an odd dream that I will call, The 1980's Mid-West idea of a marriage, don't worry, it will grow on you.
So, welcome to the New Old Wife. It can't be a coincidence that the first letter of each word spells now, ain't life a hoot?
