Conversations

Daniel: One thing

I just heard a bit of wisdom

sounds like A---'s wife just hit a deer

NIKKI: oooh

oh no

Daniel: the advice B--- gave is

don't wash the blood off the car

that way you can prove to the insurance co. that it was a deer

NIKKI: lol

okay

Daniel: Apparently the deer hit the windshield, and now there's glass in the backseat

NIKKI: I would be most upset about the deer

Daniel: bizarre. She hit the deer in mid-leap

she was in an SUV, and the deer hit the windshield and roof

NIKKI: yikes

I love you.

Please don't hit any deer, dear.

Daniel: fine then.

you always take away all my fun.

NIKKI: I try.

:P

Daniel: such is your wifely duty.

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Daniel and I have a long tradition, stretching back to the first week of our acquaintance -- when I was in Los Angeles and he was almost two hours away -- of communicating during the days or evenings apart via instant messaging programs. I have now-vague memories of joking about tambourines with ribbons and spirited praise songs in the online time spent together between our first meeting and our first date. It's how we got to know each other when the distance and our responsibilities kept us apart. I mean, this was, after all, the relationship that commenced with "May I email you?"

Of course, we know each other pretty well by now, but it still seems perfectly normal to us to exchange laughter, information and even endearments via text on a screen. It gives us no pause. It's just something we do, like reading a book together in the evenings, watching CSI or The Simpsons from the love-seat during dinner, going to lunch together when we worked in the same office, and talking about the big and small wrinkles in our lives before we drift off to sleep.

On Sunday the two of us stood chatting with a bunch of mostly young mothers as their children threw branches at each other on the lawn. Somehow the topic of communicating with spouses during the day came up. Most of these women are stay-at-home moms who use phones to make the occasional call to their office-working husbands. One mentioned the sometimes "I can't talk now" response that greets her spoken "I love you" as one of the hazards of work-day calls. There was some debate whether a typed "I love you", greeted by the same, was inferior when there are phones that can convey the voice in all of its intimacy and reality.

I'm not sure it matters to Dan or to me what is "better." I think what we value is all of the ways we can carry on the constant, though admittedly intermittent, conversation of our lives.

I just finished Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking -- the memoir she wrote in reflection on the year of her life that followed the sudden death of her husband, John Gregory Dunne. As is our custom, I would read passages from the book to Daniel that struck me as I read. In this book, there were quite a lot of things that had that effect. I read the first three chapters while soaking in the bath, and by the time Dan wandered in to check on me or tell me something, my toes were raisins, my eyes were glowing red orbs and my face was damp, ruddy and tear-streaked. He took one look at me, asked what was wrong, and plopped down on the toilet seat to listen.

Such is his husbandly duty.

Perhaps the book resonated with me because, as Dan put it, "Her magical thinking is much like yours. I can see you doing and thinking the same things."

"Read, learn, work it up, go to the literature.
Information is control."

I think he's right, as much I can imagine what I might be like without him. The truth is that neither of us knows what we might be like facing an empty house, clothes without anyone to wear them, half-finished projects and reminders everywhere that we were once not so desperately empty and alone.

I think another reason for that reaction is how much of our own marriage I saw in their relationship as described by Joan. I recognized that constant conversation, which, for them, both writers working at home, happened most often in person:

"I could not count the times during the average day when something would come up that I needed to tell him. This impulse didn't end with his death. What ended was the possibility of response. I read something in the paper I would normally have read to him. I notice some change in the neighborhood that would interest him [...] I recall coming in from Central Park one morning in mid-August with urgent news to report: the deep summer green is already changing. We need to make a plan for the fall, I remember thinking. We need to decide where we want to be at Thanksgiving, Christmas, the end of the year.
I am dropping my keys on the table inside the door before I fully remember. There is no one to hear this news, nowhere to go with the unmade plan, the uncompleted thought. There is no one to agree, disagree, talk back."

By the grace of God, our conversation continues. Sometimes it is rather mundane and irrelevant.

Daniel: I see the Britney saga never ends... now a celeb-watch website has posted video of her running a red light with the kids in the car

it's like watching a train wreck, I tell ya

NIKKI: only less entertaining

Daniel: too true

Sometimes it is deep, serious and life-changing.

NIKKI: your vino arrived

all red

2005 Wine Club #4 (34% Cab Franc, 33% Malbec, 33% Pt. Verdot)

2005 Tre Vini (50% Sangiovese, 27% Cab, Sauv., 23% Malbec)

2004 "Reserve" Merlot

Daniel: awesome!

Sometimes it is humorous, and sometimes it simply displays our insanity - the special sort of insanity that we share.

NIKKI: Mr. Orange-cat just came calling at the front porch

Daniel: fun

NIKKI: except Monkey growled at orange cat

which made Moomoo mad

because Moomoo didn't see orange cat

so Moomoo got riled and took it out on Monkey

hissing and swatting at him

Daniel: she's so high strung

NIKKI: yes

well, it was upsetting

he howled

Daniel: did she eventually see Mr. Orange?

NIKKI: nope

I tried to explain, though

lol

Daniel: Now is when you need an electronically-controlled squirtgun on the porch

NIKKI: lol

Daniel: it'd be like playing Unreal Tournament against a cat

NIKKI: haha

What matters is that the conversation keeps going as long as we are given to carry it on. So, I just keep talking, chatting, calling and loving... whenever I have a moment to do so.

Such is my wifely privilege.