Sometimes I worry that I am too easily persuaded, that I am too porous. If I spend too much time with someone I like, I start to pick up her hand gestures, I start to mimic his philosophical cant. Some days I feel anxious about this, but on others, I think: This is just what humans do. In good company, we’re always bleeding into each other, picking up one another’s stories and making them our own. Over time, we become more and more like our spouses and close friends and neighbors. It is alarming sometimes, for sure, because we cherish this notion of ourselves as peerless individuals, untainted by external influence, but as I age, I am finding it comforting. I am OK being a sponge. I happily soak up other people.
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A small side-step from porousness: I been married for eight years, and every year seems different from the last.
Recently, I have delighted in this simple duality: familiarity and surprise. There is this pleasant sense of comfort and ease that comes from living with someone for so long. We finish each other’s sentences (sandwiches); he can typically predict what I am about to do or say or which gesture or joke I’m going to deploy, and vice versa. And then, at the same time, amid all of this charming predictability, marriage is still full of surprises. We uncover a previously hidden aspect of personality (or one that is just developing). We find a fresh angle in a perennial disagreement. Who knows what could happen next? We certainly don’t.
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Yesterday, we were enduring a trip to Giant, and I was, I thought, helpfully putting ears of corn into a plastic bag Guion was holding. I was apparently being too forceful, however. The bag split and the corn tumbled onto his sandaled feet, bruising his toes. He cursed a little under his breath as I picked up the corn. Later that night, I reminded him of how angry he’d been about that corn. “It’s because you were throwing it in the bag like Zeus throwing lightning bolts!” he protested immediately, and I started crying from laughter. And then it was hard to fall asleep.
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I continue to move faithfully away from the news and Twitter, and with each day that passes, my happiness increases. Twitter has been a particular cesspool lately.
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Things I harbor strong opinions about despite knowing very little about
- The evil of college sports, especially football
- The dangers of motorcycles
- The origins of poodle mixes
- Philip Roth and John Updike
- Almond milk
Little Stories 