Rather on the last minute, the kid got invited to a slumber over the weekend. Great for the kid as she is getting to the age where she’s not so keen on spending every minute with us. So, her getting a night away from her folks was a huge victory!
And it wasn’t too shabby for us either. With the kid gone on a Saturday night meant that we could have a fully guilt free date night! And you know what, we looked up and found a new place to go. A place with cocktails, and an adventurous menu, and it wasn’t too far from us up in Northern Harlem. It was perfect.
Then it rolled around to time to start getting ready, which caused us to admit that we really just wanted to order out and watch a movie on the couch. Yes. We had the opportunity to go out, and we decided not to because we didn’t want to.
This has led to wonder of the rest of the weekend; are we getting too old? We had the opportunity to go out and do something we like doing, which is trying new places to eat, and the restaurant wasn’t far away. Not like we had to go downtown or anything. And this wasn’t cute “Let’s stay in a snuggle on the couch” even. This was ordering food and sitting on the sofa in silence as we watched a movie.
I would hate to think that we, a couple in our late forties, can’t muster the energy to go out and get and get drunk anymore.
Well… like 80% done, as I still have to paint the ceiling, but that’s for next weekend, and that’s easy.
So… We’re done!
It took a little time, as I did start this whole project right before the kid went away to camp. I did that to kill time, and also try to teach her a life skill; how to paint a wall. I mean, at some point she will live someplace that she’ll want to make her own, and though painting isn’t a difficult skill to learn, I would like her to have in her head that this is something she can do.
Anyway… digressing here…
The point is that we took our time, but the wife and I painted the livingroom. Not only that, we cleaned everything out. Really got into all the nooks and crannies of the apartment and cleaned. And then the wife had an idea to sand and paint out TV stand, which turned out great. (She has a little more to go on it, but it looks great. Might share a picture of it when it’s done.) But the best part of all of this is that at the end of Sunday night, we were tired, but not exhausted, and we had the self-satisfied feeling of accomplishing something important.
The last time we painted the livingroom was right before the kid was born. I guess it was called the “Nesting Phase,” but either way, it was fun to get the apartment ready for the kid. Even the wife’s sister came in town to help us get the whole place ready. It’s a fun memory.
This time around, it felt like we were putting the last few years behind us. There are still ghosts of Covid around our home. This we hung on the walls, or furniture we tried to repurposed to make working from home functional, or home school at least viable. Books came off the shelves and were cleaned, and a new sense of order and comfort began to take root. It was renewing our commitment to make this little Harlem apartment our home for the next decade or more.
It was just a little paint. Just a little time. Some sweat and listening to my wife’s playlists.
Sometimes when I read a short story, in my mind I can hear the gears of the story’s mechanics grinding away, snapping into place, moving it all forward, and churning out the work of fiction. Other times, the author’s machinations are as silent as an evening breeze in summer, but still felt and causing an impact. Then Lauren Groff creates the story “Between the Shadow and the Soul” where I can feel the mechanics of the piece, but is written so well, with such character, flavor, and so wonderfully brutally honest in regard to couplehood, that it left me feeling better having gone on this journey with these characters.
What we have is a story about Willie and Eliza, but really about Eliza, a couple that has been together for over twenty-five plus years in upstate New York. They live in an old home they purchased right after they got married, and have spent those years fixing up. Now, with Eliza at fifty, she has reached retirement age from her job at the Post Office, and decided to act upon it. But retirement doesn’t suit her, and with Willie’s encouragement, and occasional participation, Eliza begins to explore life through local arts classes, pilates, and especially a gardening class. (Now, go read the story.)
When I said that I could feel the mechanics of this story, what I meant by that was how the craft and structure of this story was very close to the surface. When the joke about kids was made, I knew that was coming back into play. The couple Eliza discovered having sex at the boathouse; there’s another meaning there. The fact that Willie and Eliza’s relationship started clandestinely; oh, you that this was foreshadowing something to come. Yet, I can also say this story did take a winding path which never felt superfluous. At all times, the story felt purposeful and controlled by a steady hand.
That deft touch was never more on display than Eliza’s growth over the course of the story. She is such a complex and detailed character. There are many authentic pieces to her, but what I connected with most was how “retirement” wasn’t a reward but a prison for Eliza; she is the type of person who works at life, and losing that work from her job, in addition to the loss of working on their home, she found herself lost. Such a clear and easy situation to understand and grasp as to why it would bring about her motivation in the next part of the story. But I would also be remiss not to touch on the relationship between Eliza and Willie, and their level of intimacy. Not just sexual intimacy, but the intimacy of knowing your partner after so many years, and knowing when they are hurting, and when they are hiding. And I loved how they both grew and moved forward in this story, and one of the conflicts was how they had to learn and adjust to loving this new person.
Like all good stories, I am leaving out so much, and I know if I were to read it again, I would discover new depths and details to Eliza and her life with Willie. To have a story about growth and discovering passion, and also to be a story where neither member of the couple is the “bad guy,” left the whole piece feeling refreshing, alive, and honest.
This weekend, the family and I, including the dog, started up hiking again. This is our third year, and I have mentioned it before, I am really looking forward to it. As New Yorkers, getting to the location of our hikes is half the battle. On average, we have to dive about 45 minutes out of the City, before we can hit some more rugged nature trails, and if we want to try our hand at more moderately difficult paths that are less trafficked, then we have to go an hour to an hour and a half away.
Such was the case this weekend. We had decided to hit up Mountain Lakes Park in Westchester County, right on the New York/Connecticut border. This was our first time out there, and Google Maps ended up failing us. The app said we had arrived, but we were in the middle of a country road, surrounded by horse farms and BMW’s. So, I pulled the car over to the first public parking space I could find, which ended up being a cemetery off of June Road and 116.
After I had figured out that we were like five minutes away from our destination, the wife suggested that we stroll through the cemetery; see what we can see. As far as I could tell, people were buried there from the 1780 to the present day. Quite a few Revolutionary War Veterans were there, from the 4th New York Militia. My seven-year-old daughter, who is very curious and inquisitive, had lots of questions for us. Why were so many people with the same name buried together? Do you have to be buried together if you are married? And sadly, she observed that many of the graves were for children, and wanted to know why so many kids died long ago? All good and honest questions that I would expect her to ask.
Because families used to always live near each other, and married people normally want to be with each other forever, and sadly, medicine wasn’t that advanced long ago, and kids who got sick would sometimes die.
But the kid kept asking us if we, me and the wife, wanted to be buried together. “I guess,” was my answer, not because I’m unsure we should spend eternity together, but because we never talked about it.
The wife wants to be eco-buried so she can be plant food for a tree. I can live with that.
I want to be buried someplace quiet and just have a boulder for a headstone. Like Jackson Pollock did. Only my name on it.
We decided that whomever dies first, that their wishes should be honored, and the other one has to do the same.
