Interview On Manifest-Station For Atmospheric Disturbances: Scenes From A Marriage

Alice Anderson: There are two layers of “history” that feel like myth in this story. There is the history of childhood, in which you paint yourself as a solitary, lonely soul. And there is the history of the beginning of your relationship with Mr. Curry. Both have a kind of mythology – the way our histories can come to be a metaphor for our lives – and the “moral of the story” of the history with Mr. Curry seems to be the answer to the mystery to the childhood struggles. The cure, as it were. When he was diagnosed, did his illness feel like a slap in the face to the healing his presence in your life had so clearly provided? 

Maggie May Ethridge: Absolutely it did. The slap in the face that I render Mr. Curry in the memoir was a direct reflection of the internal experience I was having a shocking pain, unexpected and heartbreaking. Our marriage before he became sick was so life affirming, so healthy, and so beautiful that I had felt I was over one part of my life – the part where I felt alone in the world, cut off from kindred spirits – and on to the other, and I expected that whatever challenges came our way (which they did! poverty, disease, yes we have done both) we would meet them together, with this relationship as our backbone. When Mr. Curry became ill I was left alone to deal with it, because the person I know retreats when he is sick. Sometimes when he is really ill, I imagine his brain, inflamed and irritable, swollen up around the real person he is, trapping him. Bipolar is an absolutely ugly, brutal disease and the way it can destroy a person’s life breaks my heart over and over. Witnessing other people with this disease who do not have family support is tragic; they become completely lost. Bipolar is like cancer in that there are many treatments but no one can tell you if they will work or if they do, how long they will keep the thing at bay.

Interview with Alice Anderson on Jennifer Pastiloff's site Manifest-Station

My Video Interview about 'Scenes From A Marriage' on Pixleydust

My book comes out tomorrow on Shebooks.net and I am so happy and nervous and overall, grateful that I can experience this. 

I interviewed with Taymar on Pixleydust about the book and writing and marriage, come watch!

 This is T. and I just before our talk. We are really cool, aren't we? I like our knowing expressions.

A Priority { Scenes From A Marriage }

When anxiety comes and winds around me like a python, an old and powerful fix is to draw my children close. The most potent antidote, having all four of them under the same roof, here at home with me, where for a moment in time I can pretend that nothing can hurt us, that life is safe, that we are all safe; the python unwinds, I can breathe, I can press their chests close to me and kiss their cheeks and call them the nicknames and pry the phones from their hands after they've fallen asleep and I am fortified. And now Dakota is moved out and is hours away, and Lola is down the roads at my mothers, and Ian is at his other home, and the only child I can claim and hold is Ever, asleep in my bed, her mouth still red and blossomed from nursing.

I bought a children's book years ago by Maya Angelou called Life Doesn't Frighten Me and hoped that by osmosis my children could absorb more of that courage, that hutzpah, that gorgeous vitality. Today I am drained and old as only fear can age. Ever fell on her head and the image of her lifeless body flashed through my mind. I slipped a half step on our stairs and saw myself dead at the bottom, like a Dallas cast-off from the 80's. I replayed a message from Mr. Curry and the sound of his voice triggered a deep and violent bell, warning of our mortality and the cruel and unfathomable nature of death. I watched women moving on television, their eyes flashing with purpose and energy, their hairlines pulled to a glossy seal, their eye makeup sharp and black as ink, their clothing simple and fitted, and I wondered if I would ever face the world again so composed, so energized, so sure of my place and purpose and worth. As the mother of a two year old nursling, I feel important and simultaneously invisible: a stand in- Maggie as ' The Breast ', Maggie as ' The Wife Making Mr. Curry's Lunch ' Maggie as ' The Supportive Mother Over the Phone ', Maggie as ' The Back Scratcher ' Maggie as ' The Smile and Head Nod ' Maggie as ' The Tired One In the Kitchen ' -- 

-----

My husband works an exhausting job that he rises before light to attend to, showering in half darkness and steam lit by florescence. He comes home and plays with the baby, swings our older daughter around a few times, sometimes he makes dinner, takes out the trash, watches the kids while I write. He hugs me, tells me I'm beautiful now and again. And every now and again we have a night of pure and complete crazy ass passion, the last in the darkness of our hallway when all the children but the smallest were gone, and the intimacy was as pure and honest and real as the fingers on my hand. We have a friendship that is the best of my life, an unreliable but exceptional sex life, a deep love. And -- I want more. I want to be adored and held when I am sad. I want to be understood when I can't explain. I want to be heard when I can't find the words. I want to be a priority- THE priority- sometime. Not when it's convenient, but when it's necessary, for me.

Myself as the stand in wants my real self to be unzipped from the bag, taken out and seen, as a woman with needs beyond children, house, schedule, my husband's moods or work problems, my family, my job- even sex. 

So tonite we had the night alone with Ever and my mood was blue and my heart was sore and Mr. Curry, recovering from being ill all weekend, exhausted from his job, was just a regular guy who wanted to eat dinner, and that wasn't enough for me. I wanted to be the priority. So the night ended with sore feelings and frustration, and we went to bed separately. 

As the years go by in our marriage, fighting has become more difficult. Not the mode of fighting- we actually fight more cleanly now- but the real problem can be obscured, the stories conflict, the memories are two and not the same, the argument is less linear and wants to wind like that python around our necks until we are both confused and angry, neither feeling heard. Keeping the argument about what the argument is actually about is harder every year, as more history builds and inevitably there is more detritus left in the road.  That almost unbearably sweet adoration of falling in love isn't present every moment anymore, definitely not when we argue, and the empathy that must take its place is hard to find when we are both feeling distracted, which is almost all the time. It's exhausting work when the long road of it lands on your shoulders, as it is prone to do occasionally. At times the work of marriage is infuriating. I want to move the mountain of everything and just be loved.

You aren't supposed to weigh the categories of a marriage: who says I'm sorry more often? First? Who does more chores? Who gives more back rubs and head scratches? Who puts aside their frustrations more to be there for the other? Who sacrifices sleep or work or other people more for their wife or husband? But I do. I do. And sometimes, when the scales feel weighted, I get a horrible, horrible feeling that the world MARTYR might be starting to glow from my forehead, like a scar from He Who Cannot Be Named. And that makes me feel angry, and being angry makes me feel desperate, and feeling desperate makes me sad, and feeling sad makes me cry, and crying makes me feel alone and frustrated and cold. This is how women freeze. My kind, we do it slowly, with blue steel inside. So to thaw, I force myself to remember three great things my husband has done, three loving things, and if I can't think of any recent ones, I get a stomach ache. 

Signing off One Glass of Champagne at 11:37pm, 

your dutiful reporter of honesty and marriage, 

in good times and bad,
maggie may ethridge

ps
if i can't think of one, a standby is always that he accepts that i write these kinds of posts with the utmost grace and unselfishness. 

10 Reasons It's You And No One Else { Scenes From A Marriage }

1. When you come home from work, text me or call me you say ' Hey beautiful... '

2. Your working man hands. Cigar like fingers, callused palms, hands that can take of things, of people.

3. Your sudden and usually unexpected moments of pure insight into the human condition. 

4. Your routine with Ever after the bath. Plopped in towel on the bed, starting at her feet, patting each part dry until you get all done, except... ' What are we forgetting? ' you ask in a confused voice. Ever giggles. Holds up her arm and says in her teensy voice ' Armpit? ' and then you attack it and she cracks up. You ask ' What ELSE are we forgetting? ' and she holds up the other arm and says ' This one armpit? ' Then you do the car wash, head to toe. 

5. Your arms. Your shoulders. Your back. Your tattoos. Never, ever gets old.

6. The way you kiss me. Like you mean it.

7. You can still change your mind about people. The older we get, the more I see people getting petrified in their view on individuals and groups. You have strong opinions on people. but the minute you see something that makes you realize you were wrong, you change your mind. 

8. Sometimes you smile at me, like when I am running out of the grocery store to where you and the kids are waiting in the big white truck,  the sun just setting and the headlights of cars flashing around me, and you look like you did at 19 crazy in love with me, and I feel like I'm going to love you like this forever. That is one moment, and most moments don't feel like that. This feeling goes with us, however tucked away, everywhere we go.

9. We have a secret together. A secret, adult life that is you and I. A secret I take with me and carry and whisper to myself while I wipe crap off baby butts, clean the kids bathrooms, drive to Girl Scouts, make dinner, brush my hair, feed the dogs....

10. You work harder than any man I know.

Past Top Ten Reasons It's You...

Here     Here     & Here

Wabi Sabi { Scenes From A Marriage }

I wake and move downstairs without my body's approval. Ever still nurses at night. Ever loves nursing more than any human child has ever loved nursing, and without my intervention could easily become the adolescent King boy in Game of Thrones who hangs off his mother's nipple as she perches on the throne. Mr. Curry's black and yellow zipper shoes ( as I have come to think of them for no apparent reason ) are on the table. This is new. Usually he irritates me by leaving them out, instead of shoved inside the four shoe shelves in the dresser feet away, but this day, he places them on top of the table, proudly. Look wife. I have left my shoes where our children eat. This is good, yes? 

As Mr. Curry comes out of the fog of bipolar, I am lifted. The long struggle has ended for now. He is back inside of those large hazel eyes that I adore, of which our baby has one. One of his, one of mine. If I was a cartoonist, I'd like to draw you two line illustrations, one of Mr. Curry during bipolar, and one when he is himself without the disease. The bipolar illustration would have downturned mouth lines, sloped and hollowed cheeks, rounded shoulders, clenched jaw, eyes that are full of terrible clouds so dense and so chaotic that were they the clouds of smoke from a fire, no one could reach through them to save anyone else. 

Nothing is as simple as a diary entry, a blog, an article, a summary, a log book, a psychologist's notes. Not my relationship with my husband, not our marriage. Records are for black and white, not shades of grey. Records state high and low, density, clarity, weight, power. Records do not state the dance of sunshine on the leaves when he pulled you through them laughing, the winking of sun on water at the lake as he kissed your forehead, the thundering of your heart as you lay alone in bed together and the entire world was distilled into that one dark and beautiful moment. Perhaps an index comes closer. A dictionary. A thesaurus. 

I don't lie when I write, as far as I can control. If I lie to myself, I pass it onto you; forgive me in advance for this contagion. How does one tell a story and always tell the truth? By leaving out whatever parts you choose. This makes it bearable when life is unbearable. This makes it safe when the truth would be dangerous. This also leaves an incomplete story. As I write about my marriage here, I am always thinking of all I am leaving out, and sometimes, I am sure that I have never properly conveyed how much I love my husband. I get those fears about people I love, that they don't know, so that I have to find them wherever they are and hold them and tell them. The truth Mr. Curry and I have to face and face again is that our marriage comes with an unwanted, uninvited guest: bipolar. A disease that sounds so common, easy to say, heard more frequently now. To my ears, ears that know, the word is thick with exhaustion, pain, confusion, desperation and heartbreak. Nothing that I understood- which was more than the average person- about mental illness prepared me for watching the love of my life being taken away and replaced by a stranger, one thinner, more volatile, irrational, hurtful and ten times less thoughtful than my actual husband. If I could capture in time shots the change of his face as he becomes ill, then, I believe, you would begin to understand. This might be the worst part, but it is not. The worst part is not knowing when he is coming home, or if. 

Before, if I could lie with him alone for long enough, and press my face to his close enough, and look hard enough, he could come back. Things change over time, this is marriage: what is hard will only become harder. You've solved a problem, found a solution: but is it a solution you can repeat and endure and carry for the rest of your life?  So perhaps when I say 'things change' it was a cowardly way of saying 'I've changed'. 

I've changed, and perhaps more the truth is that our circumstances have changed greatly, and this is also marriage: what shape your marriage takes in one set of circumstances is not a lifetime form. You keep shaping it, or it shapes itself to meet the moment, and this can be shocking. Our circumstances are now more absolutely engulfing as far as mental, physical and emotional space than they ever were before. Or perhaps I would have needed to find other ways of handing this on my end, regardless. Either way, we are left with the ways time changes us that are unexpected and at times, frightening. Yet despite all that is painful and terrifying about bipolar, every time my husband gets better, I am- even when I am so angry and hurt I fight it- as in love with him as ever, and he I. I still love his face, his smile, his laugh, his smell, his touch, I still feel ridiculously happy when it's his voice on the end of the line, when he comes home early. 

I fight hard for this while he is sick. I work to understand this challenge put into our life, and how we are meant to deal with it. I work to resist the temptation to turn away and steer myself to ask the hardest questions of my marriage: What do we owe each other? What do I owe myself? What do I want to do for my husband? What would I want done for myself? What do I want for our children? What do I believe is the nature of suffering and what purpose can it bring to my life? How can I transform fear and pain into transcendence? How can I act in love? How can I see this story differently? 

In Japanese culture there is a an aesthetic called Wabi Sabi. Wabi Sabi is the adoration and enjoyment of all things imperfect, old, beaten down. Arielle Ford wrote a book on marriage that centers around this idea: that in marriage it is the art of Wabi Sabi that must be practiced. Here is what Ariel says about this in an interview:

Well that’s really the essence of Wabi Sabi love, is finding a way to laugh, to take the significance out. Stop making everything such a big deal. Because that’s where we’re getting tripped up all the time. And, you know what, it’s not all going to matter. So let’s make up a new story about it. And since we’re making it all up anyway, let’s make up stories that empower us and support us and inspire us.

I come downstairs and see those zipper shoes and I think of 5:30 am and day after day after day after day of Mr. Curry coming downstairs. He is tired, with a long day ahead of him, often stressful, always hard work. He works six, sometimes seven days a week, and he does this because I am at home with Ever. He does this with an open heart. He does this with love. Those shoes are an emblem of his devotion and love to his family, on the floor or on the table, and that's how I chose to see it. Wabi Sabi.

With All The Love We Can Do It With

Mr. Curry gets home and I am a soaking wet washcloth dripping over the side of the counter. I am the washer's white cottony teeth thumping in steel and paint against the dryer. I am the tipped dog bowl. I am the dripping faucet. I am the half opened microwave, the damnit toe, the i'm sorry i cursed again burning of fingers like pink fat sausys through the holes of the over gloves: each glove has one hole. Ever runs to him shrieking Daddddy as if she read the book on the best things about having children and will follow, point by point, beginning with her fat little booty and so far ending with her fat little arms wrapped round our necks, her sweet baby breath against our cheek as she whispers I love you soooo much. Lola sprawls on the couch like a colt. I see her only in mustang metaphors lately: she is long legged, gangly, a bit unsure on her feet but picking up speed, glorious in youth, vitality, radiant with the beauty of young wild things. Her enormous blue eyes, the color of denim tucked just underneath. 

Days were confusing and short and long this week. Since Michelle died I think of her constantly. I was not close with her and yet I think of her constantly. How could I not? She was sweetness, she was good, she was a young mother, she was put through hell and then taken. I am the person who quit my job because I could not be five feet away in a different room from my Ever. To leave, forever... all week I have made mistakes with my children borne of human reason- on the whole, sleep deprivation due to two sick girls, myself being sick, Ever regressing with the amount of nursing. Just tired, tired, tired. The feeling of a circus. The voices of Ever and Lola asking, asking, asking, the dogs guilting me with their not walked eyes, the messy rooms, the burnt dinner, my side, back ribs hurting, normal things that lack of sleep stirs with crazy fingers and makes inscrutable: what is anyone saying? when do i get to sleep? The spirit wants to be good, free of suffering.  and calm. The body wants what it wants: sleep, sex, food, air, touch. Michelle has died. I walked into Target with Lola, Ever and Dakota early this week and the big bright T A R G E T filled me with consumer dread and horror: we do die, despite trips to Target, despite pretzels with cheese, good movies, laughing until we drool, orgasms, drunken nights, weeping, ice water, foot rubs, the perfect shoe, manicures, the grocery aisles. I felt the assumed burden of the living: live better because you are alive and they are not. As a theory we hear this our whole lives. In reality, when we care for when we love someone and they die, we feel a deep sense of carrying their particular loss into our living. Michelle cannot go to Target with her children and buy bread and a yellow wind up duck from the dollar aisle. Ever again. Maybe she hated Target. Maybe she was phobic about ducks. But surely, she would trade anything to have more moments with her family. I sat in my closet tonight before her viewing, crying. I was a little afraid. I've never been to a viewing alone. Mr. Curry had to stay with the kids. I imagined Michelle hovering over me and wondered what she would think. You are pathetic. Get up! You're alive. That's what I came up with, and I got up and got dressed and went to the viewing. 

I keep seeing her face in my mind as she was before she was sick, and I never even knew her then, only pictures of her, big bright smile, bright light blue eyes, big eighties hair, a truly American face. You'd know she was an American girl from a mile away. 

She's a good girl, loves her mama
Loves Jesus and America too
She's a good girl, crazy 'bout Elvis
Loves horses and her boyfriend too

Mr. Curry gets home and I curl into his arm and neck and the smoky, warm scent of hard work comforts me. The house takes a step back and the oven mitts fold their hands. For one moment, I am alive and I am in the arms of someone who loves me more than anything. For one moment, the voices of our children do not need to be understood or responded to. They simply sing behind us as we hold each other, and prepare for another evening of doing what is in front of us to do, with all the love we can do it with.

at night i listen for the wind outside my window

A great and terrible silence has fallen on a part of my life that has been, for all these years...all of our years... a noisy, joyful, painful, pleasurable, messy and jubilant space, full of... full. Just full. And now it is so quiet. I feel Winter as a comfort for it speaks to my bones. White, silent, still, waiting, yet held aloft, arms upright, lifted in anticipation of some small movement, some wintering storm that will snarl through and snap the branches and break open the ice on the river. Of all things, myself a Scorpio, this kind of suspended animation is the least bearable. I can run in the river of fire but I die on top of the frozen tundra. Agitation begins to burden me until I am forced into either a massive, childish breakdown that artists are- used to be- famous for, or a retreat. For now, for the love of my family and my loyalty to them, I retreat. So my words lose their force and their heat and their life and fall like dead leaves... Jack White, Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground. I go to write and want to hold my keyboard close and weep over the words that will. not. come. I cling to music. I reside there and the books I read and the vanilla necks and closer than close eyes of my children. I pray and cry like women have done for centuries, in the middle of the night when everyone is asleep. I pray for guidance to do the right thing. I pray for strength beyond my expectations of myself. I pray for clarity. Most of all, I pray for patience, this the least of all my graces. I hear the echoes of priests I've never spoken to telling me to wait. Have faith. The answers will come. I hate waiting. I feel the days slipping by and want to break open the sky with a mighty Thor like swing of axe, I want to scream the birds out of the trees, I want to force life. I want to make, and do, and create, and this is my nature. Please help me, please help me, my prayers just say thank you and please help me.

“Certain thoughts are prayers. There are moments when, whatever be the attitude of the body, the soul is on its knees.” 
― Victor Hugo

Happy Anniversary Darling, I'm A Mess

Dakota and Ever

Mr. Curry and I celebrated our ten year anniversary this weekend quietly, subdued by the pounding of bipolar the past year, but still together, still loving each other. We are so broke that it felt romantic. We ate steaks that my mom had brought over earlier in the week and bought a very, very cheap bottle of dry champagne. We ate on a blanket spread out on the living room floor, by candlelight. It was very sweet; it was hard for me not to cry. I love him so much. I hate bipolar so much. Lola spent the night with my mom, Ian and Dakota were gone for the night, and so it was Ever and us two. I nursed her to sleep next to Mr. Curry and we watched Homeland. We cuddled and laughed and talked and nursed our wounds. I thought of our four children. I'm not a cheerful person right now. Going through one of my Scorpio, neurotic periods of morbid dwelling on suffering. That is true, but it is also true that most truly good and compassionate people go through these times. The world and it's suffering is at my doorstep and as I work to find a balance to help all I can and still find joy in my life, I fall into the cracks sometimes. Hurricanes and dead children and shootings and cries unheard keep me awake at night. I'm in pain from my right side off and on, still. These things come together uncomfortably and knead at me. And still when I am walking into the 99cent store and an old man runs into me and growls at my children, I want to scream at him like a lunatic. I love humanity and I don't want suffering, but the individual asshole really chaps my hide.

xo
Maggie

life IS like a box of chocolates, mr. gump

Mr. Curry is feeling better

and better

I really like you I told him 15 years ago

I want to sleep with you, I said one night

I love you, I told him because I could not stop the words

Yes I'll marry you, I cried 9 years ago

Me: Honey?

Mr. Curry: Yeah?

Me: Ummm......................

Mr. Curry:  ?

Me: Nothing.

Nothing, honey.  Just wanted to hear your voice.

Scenes From A Marriage: valentine

today my sweetheart was awash in pain

and i his long loved bride,

today he quietly loved me

and i he, in stride.

today nothing magical was said or done,

no deep longing made voice to one another.

we washed the hair of our babies fine,

each sister and each brother.

today no great lovesong poured alongside

our exhausted bodies as we made for bed

but a simple pause in movement -

his hands, my head.

today his eyes were dim forest groves

and his back a clearing wide.

and i was not the lustful girl

but the witness of a wife.

today we were not clever,

we did not dance or laugh or sing.

but flew each other parallel:

wing, to wing.

today i remember our hard learned treasure

that love is not always a loud, lusty song

but an ever steady abiding,

that rights life's crooked wrongs.

today he did not know i watched

as he stroked the baby's face

and i marveled at the endurance of love

and the sanctuary of grace.

today i wish for my valentine,

peace, and a healing heart

for his burden to be lightened

and his hand in mine in the dark.

image via The Smithsonian The Art Of Love

Blue Collar Christmas Love Letter

Dear Mr. Curry,

I am driving. I stop at a red light, and to my right is a Christmas tree lot, surrounded with white twinkling lights and populated with a few straggling couples and families, making shapes and measuring with their hands, cold in the December evening air. I watch their breath go in and out. The wind blows in gusts across the tops of the palms and the firs, and Christmas music plays from our local radio station " Christmas Music Around the Clock ", the tagline. The sky is silver and blue and white, and a small flock of common birds move up and down in formation over cars. We have to move, and we have little money. You lost your business years ago, and it still hurts you. It hurts you that you lost something you fought and worked so hard for, because you wanted to give it to your family, like a gift in hand. You wanted to take care of us, like all good men want to do. You want to protect our children, and I want to protect our children. We want them to have dental work, and tutors so that they can catch up in subjects that are difficult, so that they can get good grades, so that they can get scholarships and go to colleges and grow up to be able to pay for good dental work. We want them to have health insurance that doesn't break the bones of our family budget, we want them to thrive. The Kaiser ads: THRIVE. We count the four beautiful heads of our children, and each Kaiser ad that demands they thrive but omits the cost, $200. each head.  We want to protect ourselves, too, from the weight and stress and fears that keep us awake at night; but we will not move our children from here, from this town, where they have the best schools and the safest neighborhoods and most importantly and significantly, Grandma and Grandpa and Grandma. Those older and kinder and doting faces of the family that loves them, that watches them in hourly timed increments from the time they are in size 2 diapers and cut their first teeth.  We will, at almost any cost, find a way to stay here. Your business, my faulty hormones and three surgeries, medical debt, and choices we made and didn't make, long ago- here we are, with so little.  We might argue about the cost of Christmas presents, or who will make dinner, or the lights left on, we are moving in less than a month and don't know where we are going or what will happen, we might be dancing around each other, or screaming silently, or holding our breath in separate rooms. Lola chips a tooth. As I hold her and look at your face over her sobbing, I know we are both thinking about that dental bill. We might fight about it all until each of us has torn down everything best in the other. We could, but we don't.

The sky darkens while I wait for the light to change and in the back of my mind, behind the music and the bells, and inside the shadows that fall across my swollen hands on the cold steering wheel, I hear Ever's cry. She is with my mom, but I can hear her, miles away. I'm coming, I think. 

And that's it. That's all, I just think this one thought, and I am filled with joy. It hits me with a force as palpable as your hands raising Lola higher, higher, higher to see Santa walking the line last night, that I am blessed beyond all measure, that I am in fact, filled with abundance.  You and I, honey, are always there for our children, and they know in their filament and molecule, that they are safe, and loved inside our family. Abudance. Our children are with us. they are safe, they are healthy, they believe in our eventual ability to solve all problems, even the older ones!-  and the more we rise to the occasion, every time we find a way, every time we love gracefully, every apology, every moment that could have been lost but is instead embraced, we become stronger, and more of a pack. Our pack is together. This is the meaning of the holidays. We say words that are gold emellishments on greeting cards we send other people and we forget their absolute integrity, power and truth. Peace and love are not a greeting card, or a present, or a diamond ring, or even, my sweetheart, a big house in the suburbs. 

Peace and love are our two daughters watching Christmas carolers last night, in the park of our town, surrounded by other families, cold faces and hands, coffee, hot chocolate, lights, lights, and music. Peace and love are the two, three, no four times we ran into people we know and care for who care for us, and greeted with smiles and hugs. Peace and love are Ever's face watching Santa for the very first time. Peace and love is our family all together Friday night, stuffed onto couches, watching a movie and laughing and then crying and then laughing because we are all crying. Peace and love is the tickle war between our kids that ended with a chipped tooth. Peace and love is your body on mine our couch late last night, next to the Christmas tree, after rum and eggnog, while our girls slept. It is Lola's faith You and Daddy always make everything good, it Dakota's choice to be with us, at 17, on a Saturday night instead of with friends, it is our family bed, it is our inside jokes about poop ( Lola calls them butt guts! ) and the tender words we all write on cards for birthdays. It is our family chore day, it is our constant refrain to be kind, to be honest even- especially- when it's hard, to think of the group and not just yourself, to give, to pray even if maybe faith is short or prayers feel silly, it is the small- Lola's love notes for us- and the large- Ian's special birthday present to you. It is you working Saturdays for extra money, and me giving up new clothes so Lola can have a Girl Scout trip. Nothing can ever, ever duplicate, replicate or equal the importance and meaning of our family and how we choose to live our life. We can go anywhere, we can live anywhere, but we cannot love like this with anyone. It is us, it is you, and your strength over the years, your steady work, work- you work harder than any man I've ever known- your dedication to us, you pushing yourself beyond personal limitations and making new of yourself.

We have everything we need or could want to be joyful this Christmas. We will stress, we will worry, we will fret, but we will not feel lack. So darling, for Christmas, I want to give you the safe and sheltered feeling you have given to me, when I had surgery, when I was afraid of flying, when I struggled to sleep, when I mourned my Grandmother, when I feared for our eldest, when I doubted myself. I give it all back to you now, when you need it. Everything irreplacable is here. Christmas is you picking up our daughter's from my Mom, and Ever's jubilant jump into my arms to nurse, and Lola's long scarf tangled around you as you hug. Christmas is Dakota's long lanky arms hugging us, Ian's tucked head grin while we laugh, it is our stupid dogs, barking. I love you. I love you.

Merry Christmas, Baby,

Mrs. Curry 

xo

Undercurrents

Suddenly it's been 11 months since I had this baby girl and I treasure every moment with her at the exact same time as I'm barely here, barely in this body, just floating around doing my job, dressing children, making dinner, cleaning, laughing, showering, whatever I'm doing has a vague sense of unreality about it. This is dissociation, by the books, and it's unpleasant and slightly terrifying, like hanging off the edge of the rope one minute longer, looking down, gauging if it really is safe to jump. This is the crux of daydreaming about sex with my husband. It's the only time I feel real. Here is a hand, on my ribs. Here is his mouth. Here is his breath. I look at him and I see simultaneously the face of my youth at nineteen, the face of adulthood, the face of my future in the glint of greying hair in his beard, along the hairline.

I feel incredibly blessed to have this line down the rabbit hole; to have this safety net, at the same time I know there is something dangerous about it, something unhealthy. When I was alone I found my own strengths cleaner, closer to the surface. It's harder to discipline myself when I can put my head against his chest and find the centre.

I am weak for months and months, years really, after the birth of a baby. I have never been able to do a momentous life transition without completely gutting myself, inside out, examined, shaken in the wind, refitted. I lose myself. Around the second year after, I begin to resurface. Everything stirring so deeply in my subconscious comes to the surface shining, clean, silver and blue sterling, strong as oxen steel, and it's like I was standing in the room surrounded by you all and dying of lack of air and suddenly my hand finds the window and slams it open and with a great gasp I am Breathing Again.

Meanwhile my husband has never been so strong, so sexy, so manly, so loving, so in his skin. The prime of his life has begun, and the strength of his arms as he swings our children or a piece of furniture is a mirror of the strength inside of him: the patience with Lola, the endless inventive intuitiveness with Ever, the sober steadiness with the boys. He is thick and healthy with manual labor, at ease with anyone he meets, the calm and assured look on his face and in his body language draws perfect strangers to strike up conversations with him. I stand next to him, ill at ease, nothing to say, sleep deprived and wonky, but safe, and knowing he will wait for me, to come back.

So much is unsure, so much is not the way we want it, so much is scary and yet so much is full, abundant. With Ever our family was completed, and that feeling is incredible, for Mr. Curry and myself, as we are both painfully aware of how precious and random it is to have this, how we did nothing to deserve or not deserve this, however here it is, what we wanted, and we are never unaware. Our family, the six of us- it is the undercurrent that carries our life.

Body Heat

The day is overhauled in heat. Humidity 87*- in San Diego. Temp. hovering @ 95. It is Friday. It is Saturday. It is all day and then when the sun begins to set, it lowers it's head and breaths like a giant, placid bull and : it is all night. The kids scatter. L. is mucking about, complaining. My shirt tag pricks the back of my neck over and over. Sweat trembles down around it. The baby slaps my breast while nursing and sweat flies. smack!smack! Beads of sweat form around her little lips and her forehead. Her reddish brown hair is wet against her forehead. Fans nod their heads in every room, back and forth and back and forth and back and forth like ballet lessons, back and forth and forth and the sound of their dance is a humming in the entire house. The dogs lay pressed against the tile and the walls, unmoving but the pant. Boys on skateboards outside scrape the ground. My husband moves around the house, holding the baby, leaning in toward me, and I am stoned on him and heat. I want to place the baby in her crib and tear his clothes off and spend an hour cleaning him of sweat and spend an hour bathing him in more. All day long we swing the children back and forth between us like workers over water and we keep our eyes on each other. At night, I slide the baby seal away from me, stuffed on breastmilk still milking from her mouth, and find my husband in the thick hot darkness. This is my marriage, I think to myself, his hand on my rib. I hear an echo of a woman who lost her husband after 35 years of marriage: ..and then, when he died... and I shudder. I move my face into my husband and restrain my mind. Across the stilled nighttime backyard a woman's voice rings out, high and trembling. The sky slinks into our room through the open window. We move together with the fans. Everything is completely normal and dramatically surreal and I am a lit match in the lighter fluid of his sweat. We are alone together and nothing else could compare.

all along the western front

grab me with summersummersummer electricity i'm bound and gagged with hormones as clear and true and painful as if i were thrown into the basement corner, hands tied, mouth bruised with cotton, left to silent spider dark while the rest of the world screams, fights, works, drinks, feels. here i am. in here somewhere, wiping baby shit, flipping clean white cotton sheets over mattresses, brushing back fine blonde hair, hungry for the grazing unshaven cheek of my husband against my belly and thighs. here i am. amongst the smell of chlorine baby bodies, sunblocked back of necks, loads of dirty tee shirts and the tight skinned square hands that scrub scrub scrub sinks, cabinets, tables, floors, hands, children. here i am. dreaming womanly dreams, incubating. here i am. the place that finds me true is next to my husband, beyond the world, taken into a small space that becomes unfolding and unfolding unto the universe and until there is the baby's questioning squall rising toward us, there is nothing but the electric feel of that. space.

i dream the strangest dreams, saturated with hormones. i can see in my dreams, the skyline lit neon and midnight blue, where the waking world lies beyond that lip, my life, behind the shadows of mind, my dreams, where i am speaking in a southern accent and my Nana is there in her small heels and powder and there is a town where hours are houses and houses are stories and streets are movie screens.

in my dream i am naked but i am not afraid or embarrassed. i am powerful. this is saying to me you am going in the right direction

dinner is chicken and squash, baby needs bathing bubbles, along the wall there are webs of bugs and hair of the dog that my hands will smooth away, inside behind the quiet stillness of my eyes and mouth and stern set of my features inside i am still here

here i am

Love Is A Battlefield

If we worked as determinedly and persistently at anything else as we do getting laid we'd be 1 rich or 2 broke or 3 in jail. Depending on what we were working at.  

Sex won't be a casualty of our fourth child! I won't lay that burden on her downy soft head. We're doing it for the children! 

Or a blow job. Sometimes that's perfect. If you ask Bill Clinton, it doesn't count as sex, but who is asking that guy?  

Meet me in the bathroom in ten minutes.

Affirmative.

Twenty minutes later...

I forgot about the clothes in the dryer that have been there so long they're mildewing, and your mom called and wouldn't get off the phone, and now the baby is crying.

S'ok.

Twenty minutes in the bedroom? Lola's gone and the baby should be asleep.

Half Hour later...

The baby scratched my nipple! EWAHROHOIGH!!!!

Ten Minutes later....

Seriously? You can't wait-

No.

No?

No!

Well take a shower!

K.

SIgh.

Twenty Minutes later...

Honey? Honey where are you? 

I'm in the garage! The pipe is leaking! I have to go put gas in the car, it's on empty. I'll be right back and meet you in the bedroom!

Half Hour later...

-doorbell rings- Lola's home.  Shit! We forgot to pack lunches!  You make lunches and then-

I have to go to bed. I have to be up at five.

-silence-

I love you.

I love you too.

Blue Collar Love Letter { scenes from a marriage }

My Husband,

I know it weighs heavy on you that we don't have 'enough'. I know you want more for your family( of course you do ). I know sometimes you can't sleep just because of how badly you want more for us.

We may not have enough through the years, but we always have plenty.

It's just true. I know you know it, really, if you look hard enough, deep enough. You see the faces of our kids. You see how I look at you.

If I ever make it through The Middle, to the financial place I'm trying to get to with my writing,
then I'd like you to know that some of the things I cherish most about you would be corrupted with change- I am requesting that the following remain the same:

I love that you walk out of 7-11 with a styrofoam coffee cup in your hand, black coffee, and that the jacket across your broad, thick shoulders is a bit worn, ragged on the edges. It makes me want to tear the jacket right off of you and eat your face, kiss you silly, do you on the hood of the car. Your effortless authenticity and grounded ways are the anchor of my life. I love the darkened lines of your workman's hands. I love the paperbacks, wet with bath and coffee, that you read and leave all over the house. I love your thin boxers, hanging over the round tight apple of your beautiful ass. I love your muscled long legs, hard from labor. I love that you think deeply about your political viewpoints from the position of a blue collar worker. I love that you voted Obama. I love that your cell phone doesn't have a 'leather binder' or 'application options' but instead folds open and snaps shut, antenna and all. I love that when you take out your wallet, it's small and wrinkled leather with bills stuffed inside. You don't wear accessories. Your shoes are tennis or Chuck. Your face shows the compassion, exhaustion and resilience of a man working hard for a living. I love that when you take our sons or daughters out, it's for ice cream or nickel arcades or tiny earrings from Claire's. I love that you take our sons to lay concrete for twenty bucks on a Saturday. I love that your first car was a broken down Nova you still miss. Most of all, my darling... I love that when you touch me, kiss me, and lay me down in our bed, you make me feel like a diamond in a coal mine.

Always,

Your Wife

#3 Top Ten Reasons It's You and No One Else

Because you say the wrong thing quite often, but almost never to me. I'm always beautiful, never stupid, never fat, never less than any other woman, always trying to do the right thing- in your eyes I am the best version of myself and because you see me this way I am a better person than I would have been, and much better looking, too.

You learned how to put aside your fears and comfort me when I am afraid. I learned how to put aside my sadness and comfort you when you are sad. We learned together that the simplest rule is crucial for marriage: take turns.

Then we learned if you absolutely can't take turns, don't tear each other to shreds when you're trapped in the same cage. We're all in this together.

Your ass is awesome. It's fresh.

Once you made your way to an underpass and gave a man and a woman all the money in your wallet.

You take baths all the time. I knock on the door and you laugh and me and ask why I'm knocking on the door. I reply you could be masturbating! pooping! and you laugh again, the pages of your book wet, your face kind and attentive. You say What's up, sweetie. I love the way you say What's up, sweetie. I love that you never make me feel like I'm interrupting you. Even though when I'm on the computer, I can't say the same.

When I'm dying I hope I get to hear you talking to me. I hope I hear your voice.

You made Ever Elizabeth with me.

I want to take Lola to Disneyland, you told me, just the two of us.

We've been married 8 years and haven't run out of things to talk about. You're my person,
you tell me. And you are mine.

zac efron and contraception

- Exhaustion finally caught up with me. Ever wakes anywhere from 2 to 6 times a night to nurse. The two times nights are good. The six, not so. So. Tired. The laundry is epic, spilling over in the hallways like an orphanage. Ever's toys, swings, bouncy chair, play mat, etc have taken over the house. Mr. Curry was woken up twice the other night by unidentified toys turning themselves on. In other news, I was woken up twice the other night by turning myself on. I had a long epic dream about my husband and zac efron. Is that wrong? I sat behind zac and drew a heart on his neck with lipstick, then told him I feel like Tom Cruise and Kelly McGillis in Top Gun, except I am way hotter than Kelly McGillis! And everyone watching us ( don't ask ) stood up and applauded. ? ? ?....
- When I'm worrying about something small, something completely insignificant in the scheme of things, 90% of the time I will get a flash of something horrible, something like illness and premature death and I will think What an idiot you are! Then I will wonder what life would be like if we existed, all of us, in perfect non-worry and only mused on significant matters. What would happen if no one worried about anything that wasn't really, really important? What would the world look like? Would we all look like bankers?
-Mr. Curry and I had sex last night. This in itself is worthy of a bulletin point on my list. It was the first time we have gone in a room ALONE and closed the door and had sex since Ever was born. Angels wept, clouds parted, Woody Allen blew his nose and said that life couldn't be all neurosis and tragedy, could it? And then, the condom broke. The entire tip of the condom fell off and we had no idea until we had a really GOOD idea. And by then, it was too late.
-So today, Mr. Curry, Ever Elizabeth and I headed to the Kaiser pharmacy for a morning after pill. The pharmacist, who looked amazingly like the old farmer in Babe, explained to me that this pill was not for the use of birth control, but for emergency only. I adjusted my hips. Well, I explained, just as carefully, my husband and I have a brand new baby and last night we had sex and the entire tip of the condom broke off. So it was an emergency. He turned beet red and snorfled his nose and stared at the rectangular package as he put it in the bag and agreed that, yes, that counted as a contraceptive emergency. Mr. Curry said afterward that all the Babe pharmacist was probably thinking was you recently had sex! you recently had sex! vagina, vagina vagina! I think that's generous, and he was probably thinking All I wanted was a bagel for lunch and instead I have to hear about this girl's broken condom. I hate my job.

*another* Top Ten Reasons It's You and No One Else

1 When it rains, he dashes through the rain, maybe with a newspaper over his head. No umbrella.

2 He drinks his coffee black, in a styrofoam cup, like Spenser, or Johnny Cash.

3 He reads while cooking. Wearing a pink apron. With a heart on it.

4 He carries Ever in a Bjorn.

5 He reads in the bath and I find piles of wet paged books next to the tub because he couldn't
decide on a book.

6 He calls me from work every day.

7 When my Grandpa M.D. was in his seventies, he wasn't supposed to be walking far. Of course, he did anyway, and one sunny afternoon he fell walking down the big hill on the main road. Mr. Curry happened to be driving by. We weren't married yet, but he recognized my Grandpa and pulled over and gently helped him up. When the ambulance drivers arrived, he was the one who could talk my contentious, arguing Grandpa into calming down.

8 He believes it's unnatural to let a baby or a child cry it out. He doesn't believe in spanking.
He thinks the right place for a baby to sleep is with or very near the parents, not in a crib
in another room.

9 He watches the news every morning.

10 His hands are large and callused.

Would you believe me baby when I tell you, that you're the Queen of my Heart

Happy Birthday!
I never write on my wife's blog because... well come on. Who wants to see me fumble around with words on this blog. I'm not a writer, but I could damn near write you a novel on how amazing my wife is and all of the reasons I love her. But I'm Irish Catholic and enough of a hard case to not put you through that. Anybody who has read this blog for any amount of time knows that I "married up". I know, I can't figure out my luck either. But I wanted to share when I fell in love with Maggie. (It was the first time I saw her)
When I was seventeen I went with a group of friends on Halloween to a mutual friends house. (The mutual friend was Maggie's boyfriend and my eventual best friend). I walked into the house with the tile foyer, high ceiling and huge family room on the right side. As we walked in I heard a piano playing from the family room. Drawing my attention that way I saw a slim blonde girl in a black witches dress with the triangle cut at the hem sitting up right and playing the piano. I vividly remember everything slowing down and... and words can't describe it. She was everything incredible and unattainable and beyond me. The most any of us got from her that night was a polite nod and a brilliant smile. And then she kept playing the piano until we left.

What I thought love was is so much less than what it is. Happy Birthday. You are occasionally ridiculous, but you are my world.

Mr. Curry