This post was written before our actual anniversary which turned out to be several really wonderful, romantic days in Granada. It was the first hotel room we have had in almost 5 months and I was long overdue for some real privacy and downtime. I've done my time sleeping in tents, on floors or sidewalks, in the car...and while I am not a princess (by most accounts) sometimes a girl wants to sit in a tub and lay around naked. I wasn't going to post this at first because I had the blues when I wrote it, but such is life. The rollercoaster ride continues.
9/23/2011
Monday I our 2nd wedding anniversary. Which means that today is the 2nd anniversary of when we all first learned of Vicki's grim diagnosis. I don't know if its true but on a spiritual level I wonder if anniversaries are locked into our psyche or even our muscles with the associated emotions. I'm trying to think back to this time and recall my feelings, but truly it seems like a whole other universe. And perhaps it was, one where my husband still had his mother a phone call, email, or flight away. I remember despair and a morbid disbelief at the circumstances, so much sadness, and anger slowly beginning to simmer. All of this paired with the excitement and anticipation of our upcoming celebration of commitment and union, the shear joy of partying down with a ton of people that we love Hill Country Style.
I still harbor some resentment, at a universe cruel enough to give so freely and take so substantially. And even now I fear that it will be many years from now before I can disassociate these emotions from this particular time of year. After 5 months on the road (2 in the U.S. And 3 in Europe) I am tired of telling this sad story to people we meet along the way. It is the precursor to how and why we are on this journey, or an answer to how we can afford to travel like this...”Well 3 days before our wedding....” This trip is a profound opportunity to redefine ourselves, our partnership, but we still cling to our old ways of being.
For Hamilton, he keeps his machinery in working order by pouring himself into logistics, our next stops, whether we should buy dinner while we're grabbing breakfast, locating an internet connection, updating this blog, and more recently checking his Fantasy Football scores. I understand that this is how he is, if he doesn't have some task or purpose to devote himself to he'd go crazy. All in all this is not a bad quality to possess in a partner. However, despite his insistence, I don't accept it as his manifestation of his love for me. I has been a big challenge to spend this much time together. As social as I am I relish my private time. If we were in Nola I'd go to a movie, out for a drive, or just clean my house and lay across my couch afterwards. On this trip the only physical alone time has arisen after arguments where he goes his way and I go mine. We have yet to successfully figure out how to do this civilly and in a coordinated manner, its more spontaneous if you will. Thus my preferred method is to be alone in my head. It doesn't take long to send me there, usually its an argument over navigation.
It has bee impossible for us to enter a new city by car without an argument. At first I wanted to help out by reading the map while he drives. In the states he always criticized me because of my dependence on my Iphone GPS. I am not nearly as comfortable reading maps but I figured that this trip is an opportunity to develop those skills. It has been a process that has shown me just how impatient my husband is! He has no tolerance for my lack of orientation. Usually within a couple of minutes of sorting through the map he is raising his voice. I decided a while back that once it reaches that point you are on you own buddy, in reality he would love to drive and read the map at the same time everywhere we go.
I have no patience for his impatience either. I am easily angered when he strikes ahead without so much as consulting me, this can be as simple as his rhetorical questions about what I want to do next. The truth is he has already decided how its going to go, and is prepared to reject my responses or preferences regardless. My fixed response, “If that's what you'd like to do Ham that's fine.” He has a huge problem with that one, he then claims to want some enthusiasm or to hear my thoughts, but these are always met the same way, with a counter.
Now I'm being really ridiculous with these final gripes...He constantly has his fingers lodged up his nose as if he's digging for gold or something! Despite my offers (demands) that he use a napkin he prefers to roll the buggers around between his thumb and pointer finger until he can wipe it on the bottom of the car seat, his pants, or flick them on the ground. I on the other had pick at scabs and inflammations in my skin. He stares, smacks my hand, tells me to stop which only works temporarily. We are quite the picking pair!
Anyways, many have advised that we write about our relationship throughout this trip and how things change. Hamilton has stayed away from this all together because whenever he does write about me I come off sounding like a bitch. I have flirted with this idea but every time I start to write about my husband I do sound rather bitchy and it never captures all of the complexities of our relationship. The reality (as I see it) is that we are both perfectly human with all of our irrationalities, the clinging to our opinions as if they define who we are, the many failed communications and finger pointing. However, there have been magical moments where he is able to snap me out of a bad mood with his goofy smile, or those split seconds where it seems that we really are speaking the same language and sharing the same thought.
We are still learning to trust each other. Traveling has required a lot of deferment and relying on the judgment of the other. This is an everyday struggle, and sometimes I wonder how long it will take before my husband respects my decisions and judgments as his wife (who is loving, well educated, well traveled, open-minded, intuitive, a great listener), rather than trumping them with that of his family, friends, his own opinions. I can only suspect that this will always flair up as new phases of our lives arise, the birth of our children, relocating etc. For now, I will wait to see what unfolds, and occasionally will try a little harder to get outside of my head, where nothing worthwhile is occurring, and to live out in the world with the one I was put here to explore the earth with.
