Written By: Jordannah Elizabeth Graham-Mayer

We have become very good at being between houses.  The Colorado house has become my mother’s house, at least for the moment, which is one of those sentences that sounds temporary until you start counting the boxes. Some of the children are further south, and that arrangement has its own logic, including the small but necessary reminder that children eventually become people with houses, one mine and John’s  who can kick us out when they want to “redesign”, (and not keep the house “dry” of mini-kegs when their father is over a decade sober). Another one is in Cape Cod, where independence has become less of an abstract virtue and more of a practical requirement, particularly where John is concerned. Our daughter can’t quite sleep without him, so she’s got a cottage, and an old Silverado to drive until she forgets about him. 

So here we are, two married people with several homes between us and nowhere to sleep. I have to admit there is something almost comic about it, although I am not laughing at all.

Money has a way of making philosophy less interesting. John’s accounts are blocked, my part-time teaching work has dried up, and suddenly the difference between having bills and having money feels like a distinction invented by someone who has never paid a bill. The bills themselves are managed, which is important, but there is no mysterious person waiting behind a curtain with a checkbook when something unexpected happens. We have reached that peculiar adult territory where everything is technically handled and everything still feels precarious. I have always thought of security as something you build slowly, but lately it feels more like something you carry carefully from room to room. You put it down for a second and discover that the floor has moved.

Marriage is interesting under these conditions because romance becomes very difficult to perform. Nobody looks particularly cinematic while trying to solve logistics. John can be funny in the middle of it, which is one of the reasons I married him, although sometimes his humor arrives at precisely the moment I am trying to remain serious. I can become organizationally tedious to the point of irritation, which is another way of saying that I sometimes confuse his anxiety within his organization.

Between the two of us, we have developed a small economy of glances that usually means, Are you seeing this? followed by, Yes, unfortunately. There’s also, “You’re good looking” and “No divorce”.

Then, because life has a sense of humor, I received one of John’s rare texts. It was not about money or houses or children or anything that could be entered into a spreadsheet. It was a message about avoiding boring conversation, about confidence and quick wit, about being playful and keeping him curious, about a little tension and perhaps a little trouble. The funny thing about receiving something like that from your husband when your life is already full of trouble is that you suddenly have to consider the distinction between the kind you chose and the kind you did not. I read it and thought, “The person I married still knows how to interrupt my thinking.”

Continue reading →