Today (although by the time you read this, a couple of weeks will have elapsed), my husband was out walking the dog. He slipped and fell on some ice and ended up with a 2” laceration in his forehead and a hairline fracture in his scapula. While I am grateful the damage wasn’t worse, still he will be out of commission for at least the next month. Means more on my plate. For example, I just got back from the transfer station. There is very little home trash pick up in Mammoth Lakes, so the municipal district charges us for the priviledge of dropping our trash at the regional transfer station about five miles from here.
Since the cans are pretty heavy, I had to be creative. Meant fishing out the plastic trash bags and loading them into my car, and then consolidating what was left into one can that I could manage to heft into the back of my Jeep. As they say, all’s well that ends well. And now I have a plan for the next dump run.
More pertinently, we have had a relatively dry winter for living in the mountains at 8K feet. The operative term being “have had.” All the moisture that’s bypassed us is due to start hitting tomorrow. By my count, over two feet of snow will fall between tomorrow and next Thursday. Of course, the days farther out are mere estimates. So far this year, we’ve generally ended up with less, but that’s tough to count on. Anyway, Bob will be out of commission for shoveling snow for the foreseeable future.
I met him when I was sixteen, and he was twenty-three. We dated sort of surreptitiously for a year until my parents found out, had nine kinds of fits, and broke us up. In the intervening years, I finished first high school, then an undergraduate degree and a masters. One summer, I was home for a while in Seattle taking a short break from my doctoral program. I’ve always loved the University District, and I was settled in at a small café having a cup of coffee when I saw Bob walk by. I raced out of the café (with the proprietor hot on my heels, certain I was doing a dine and dash). In any event, we’ve been together ever since. Bob had married and divorced and had an eight-year-old son. A couple of years later I was done with my doctorate, and we produced two more kids.
Over the span of forty-something years together, our relationship has gone through many iterations. He is (or was) a world-class mountaineer, having climbed over 800 peaks all over the world. There were plenty of times when he was off on expeditions, and I held down the fort. I was always so grateful when he came home. So many of his companions didn’t.
He’s held me up when I was in bad shape. He’s saved me more than once in the backcountry. And I’ve learned so much about myself and how to survive with only the stuff in my backpack. All solid life lessons.
Least I can do is step up to the plate now that he can’t do much until he heals. One of the secrets to long-term marriages is not dwelling on what’s going wrong in the moment. Bob and I have so many amazing memories to draw on. Eventually, we all grow old. I’m not the woman I was at thirty or even forty. And he’s sure as hell not the stud who climbed 8000 meter peaks without oxygen. But he is still here. And so am I. Those words “till death us do part” actually mean something.
Many years ago, I spent six weeks training at the Gottman Institute to hone my couples counseling skills. I still use their techniques and recommend their books to couples who come to me for therapy.
Are there secrets to long-term partnerships? What do you think they are?
P.S. Most of the pictures that goes along with my posts are photos I have taken in some of the more remote spots on the globe. The penguins were on South Georgia Island, a sub-Antarctic island that was once an important whaling station.