The Mending Ground of Marriage

The Mending Ground of Marriage

As I write this my husband, Randy, is hunched in a New Holland skid loader, grinding gears, scooping rich clay dirt into the bucket, jostling the machine back up the earthen ramp, and depositing said dirt into an ever-growing pile. You see, we are breaking ground for our first home, and although I know “breaking ground” is a term derived from the fact that you have to break open the earth to build on it a solid foundation, I think it should be called “mending ground” instead.

For, from the tattered, rag-bag remains this fallen world has provided, my husband and I are stitching together a life, and although he and I are a juxtaposition personified — tall, short; dark, fair; flannel, sparkles; introvert, extrovert; pragmatic, idealistic; fiscal risk taker, fiscal nester; early bird, night owl; woods, ocean; nonfiction reader, fiction writer, ect. — I know I have found in him the perfect match.

Take the other weekend, for example, when I borrowed our neighbors’ vacuum and within five minutes of my rip-snorting use had its belt torn in two. My husband did not say: “Look here, woman, this is the third vacuum you’ve broken in a year! I think you and I need to have a little what you-can-suck-up-with-a-vacuum-and-what-you-can’t chat.” No, my dear husband simply said, “It’s okay, honey. This thing’s as ancient as it comes.” Then, he promptly overturned the vacuum, popped off the belt, and that evening we drove to Lowe’s and found one for $2-something to replace it. I returned the vacuum the next day, no worse for my wear.

And just this week, when I dropped my phone down a plumbing facility (aka la toileta), and the finicky thing stopped letting me dial from the 7 down to the hash tag, my husband got online and ordered a different one–albeit, used. When it came in the mail, his only admonishment was to say, “Puh-leeze, honey, don’t wash this one, pour juice on it, drop it on the cement, in the toilet, the bathtub, dishwater…” Raising one brow, he gave me that wide, white grin. “Really. It’d probably be best if you don’t even look at it.”

There are also the moments when we are supposed to be on the way to or at somewhere, and he’s impatiently waiting by the door, twirling his keys. Hearing this tell-tale jangle, I holler from the bathroom, “Almost ready, dear!” After a year and 10 months of marriage, Randy has learned my language and effortlessly decodes my “Almost ready, dear!” into “I still have to put on my shoes and earrings, fluff the pillows on the couch, wipe down the counters, sweep the floor, grab my cell phone, purse, water bottle and…oh, wait! and go to the bathroom.” Bless him, sometimes it gets so bad by the time we are both sitting in the Jeep, Randy turns to me and says with somewhat baffled relief, “We made it.”

In my idiosyncratic defense, my husband is certainly not without his. Here’s proof right here: He thinks Gorilla Glue, Duct Tape, PVC pipe, and screwdrivers are medicinal staples. He’s such an aggressive driver, on interstates I clutch the door handle as if a life-line to escape. He eats eggs like all the chickens have just crossed the road and didn’t survive to answer why they did. He pours applesauce on top of soup, cottage cheese on anything the FDA deems slightly edible. He dusts my culinary creations with cayenne before they have even been tasted. He changes his socks two (sometimes three!) times a day because he doesn’t like the feel of sweaty feet. Whenever he washes his hands, he splashes so much water on the sink, mirror, walls, and ceiling (okay, that last one might be stretching it) it seems the bathroom’s been bathed in the Niagara.

But, you know what? Just writing my husband’s quirks down makes me want to toss this laptop to the side, run out to that New Holland skid loader, climb into its cage-thing, and throw my arms right around my man. I know from having watched my parents’ 31-year union (and counting) that a long-standing marital structure will only come through loving the other person for their quirks, not in spite of them. And if we do this, then the little things that could drive us batty if we let them won’t keep piling into something huge that has to be scraped out of our foundation and dumped to the side. Instead, the quirks will just bring layers of relieving humor, so that when we are faced with stress or sorrow, they will not break up our marriage’s foundational ground but mend it.