InnerTeub

That last post where I spoke about how my husband is basically in charge of the personal administration in our house, so much so that I sometimes wonder what I would do if he went *poof*

This in turn reminded me of my favorite part of The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion’s memoir of the death of her husband and the year that followed. (Note: I did not much care for that book, which I think is more because I dislike memoirs, but regardless, when I say “my favorite moment” I do mean it was my favorite in the book but adjust your scale accordingly for how awesome I thought that moment was, exactly.) Anyway, the night of her husband’s death, Joan comes home from the hospital and finds her self smoothing out some crumpled dollar bills and placing them in her wallet, carefully, in an organized fashion, and she mentioned “I would like to think he would have thought I was handling things.”

Ooooooooof. Yes.  That just struck me as so sad, and so relatable, this idea of the roles we fall into in our relationships and then when that relationship – for whatever reason – isn’t anymore, our discovering that we can fill those other roles, and the pride we’d feel, the wanting that person to see us doing it, see us being ok, but of course, it’s too late. They’re gone. And that’s just the way things go, but man.

Kristen Armstrong -Lance’s ex – wrote an article for Runners World while she was mid-divorce from Lance. The article was about her training for her first marathon, and I have always remembered how she described what it meant for her to achieve this huge thing:

Last December, four days before my divorce from cyclist Lance Armstrong, I did something I never thought I could do. I ran my first marathon…

At mile 22 I could feel the rumblings of a revolution in my legs. By mile 24, I was getting cramps in my calves…I thought about Lance and his ability to withstand pain. And I thought that he might even be proud, and a little surprised, to see me hauling my tired body and toting my invisible pack of sadness over all those miles

Now, I know Mastering the Art Of Opening Mail is not the same as running a marathon, but the idea of what she is saying feels the same to me. It’s funny: I suspect if I were to suddenly become amazingly efficient with getting the mail and opening it right away and filing it and basically handling that one particular administrative aspect that I HATE, I would want my husband to acknowledge it, to be proud of me, to congratulate me. And I suspect he would instead — much like I would if he suddenly started changing the sheets on our bed with regularity — simply be like: “finally.” And be confused as to why something that he just does without thinking is something that I feel is worth being thanked for.  Which is unfair, of course, because should I ever become proficient in those things that he is great at and I am not (and, to be clear: I don’t doubt I could be. I lived for many years opening my own mail and he lived for many years dealing with his own sheets) it would be because of the training I’ve gotten from our life together, and while being on top of the mail is a non-event for him, I would want him to see me handling it, and I would want him to be proud of me for it.

(I say this, of course, with the disclaimer that while of course we would manage just fine without each other, it’s one of the nice treats of life that we don’t have to. And hopefully never will.)