The Hardest Work of Marriage

Last week, when we were buying our Christmas tree, I said some very wise words to an amazed Christmas tree salesman: "Sometimes," I reminded him, "the hardest work of marriage is keeping your mouth shut."

I say I had "reminded" him, not "told" him, because he readily agreed.  So he must have discovered this, somewhere along the way, as we all do, for himself.

I frequently need the reminder too.

My husband, Paul, had brought the inside part of our Christmas tree stand with him to the tree shopping, and the salesman and I had waited more or less patiently while Paul had screwed the three screws in tighter and tighter onto the skinny tree trunk.

I knew why Paul had brought it.  Last year, when we had brought home the tree we had picked out, the trunk had been too thick to fit into our tree stand, and Paul had had to whittle it down all around.  He didn't want to get stuck doing that again, and I couldn't blame him.

This year, having given everything we owned to a nice used car salesman the week before, we opted for a bargain tree with a skinny trunk.  There was no problem of it fitting into the stand.  The question was whether the long screws would reach the tree in order to help it stand up.

They finally did, and Paul set the tree aside while we went in to pay for it. 

"Well, it won't be hard to tell which tree is yours!" the salesman had quipped.

Twice.

Then, we'd waited in the snow while Paul went back to the new used van and figured out how he wanted to put the tree in and how the seats of the strange-to-us vehicle folded down.

That's when the stroke of wisdom had struck, and I had shared.

So, a couple of hours ago, I was cozily asleep in bed.  My warm bedclothes were in the washer, so I was lying on a heating pad, which had made the bed so toasty that I was really quite sound asleep when Paul got home from work.  That was good, I thought, because I really had planned to do a full ten miles tomorrow morning.  I am no fast runner, so, for me, that takes time.  Over two hours.

And, I'm not at my studly best, having skipped last week's run altogether because I'd been sick.  So, I'd planned to run even slower.  And the full ten miles seemed completely necessary, given the amount of sugar I have been wading through all this week.

But!  I'd gotten to bed nice and early, so everything was humming along magnificently for my plans.

Until, that is, Paul ran out of gas.

It seems that our new used van has an unreliable gas meter.  Two vans ago, we'd had a similar problem, and we'd learned to use our trip odometer to tell us when to gas up.

This is the second time this week that Paul has run out of gas in our "new" van.  The first time, the bad luck had struck right as he was pulling into the driveway.

Which seems lucky, actually.  Except that the vehicle couldn't get up over the dip at the far end of the driveway and was hanging out into the street.  And that it was snowing hard.

A friend came to help us push the van to safety, and also gave Paul a ride to fill his gas can.  But that only gave the van enough gas to turn on and not to move, because of the slope.  So Paul had had to go fill up two more gas cans that night.

He'd calculated that gave us 7.5 gallons to use this week until pay day.  Which would have been fine, except that the nifty "gas used" calculator in the new van is apparently not in such nifty shape.  At five point four gallons used, he ran out again.  On the freeway.

So, tonight when Paul came into the bedroom, an apology already on his lips for waking me, I dreamily thought he was just saying goodnight.  But it was more than that.  He wanted me to get up.  He wanted me to go with him on a ride.  He wanted me to re-ride a significant portion of the freeway with him, then drive the car home.  Getting dressed, he said, was optional.

As I was sure that one of us could lose life out there on that dark freeway shoulder, it wasn't optional to me.  I got dressed.

And I worked very, very hard to keep my mouth shut.

All my groggy, not-at-my-best self could think about was how I had NOT wakened him two days ago when my car door had been frozen and would not shut after I had managed to yank it open.  It had been too dark in the driveway to see what to do.  I had had mercy on his sleep and had driven to the gym, holding the door shut with my left arm while driving with my right.  Which made signaling for turns--and even more so for actually turning--very interesting.  But I had not wakened Paul, and had gotten a nice man at the gym named Luis to help me.

In my stupor as I fumbled to get dressed when certain important items of my wardrobe were sitting in the washer, I wondered--where was Luis now?

I knew I was not at my best.  I knew that it wasn't really Paul's fault that this had happened.  I knew that somewhere deep, deep inside me, past the overwhelming fatigue I battled, I like that he considers me the friend to turn to.  So, I decided I would NOT mention that I had not wakened him when it had been my turn to battle a car.  It seemed no good would come of it.

And I remembered my words to the tree salesman.  And I wondered how they could have been so simple to say then and so hard to live by now.

So, when Paul came back in and said something to me, I struggled.  But I did not tell him that I had not wakened HIM.  What I said was, "You do realize that I'm under the influence of a sleeping pill."

Which was really not quite as bad, I think.

He said he did, but, clearly, he still expected me to drive.

On the freeway.

In the dark.

From the shoulder into traffic.

Things that trigger my anxiety.

I zipped up my jeans.

I knew that he would fill all three gas cans again.  I knew he would do that to make sure the new van would work and that he knew he probably needed to do it from experience.  I knew that I should not be annoyed by that.  But, sitting there in the car with my ankles freezing between my jeans and loafers, waiting for him to fill three cans, I did feel annoyed.

But I knew that I was not at my best and that no good would come of being childish, so I kept my mouth shut.

I was annoyed that, while I had felt fine when I was going to bed, I had woken up with a raging sore throat.

I was annoyed when he pulled out of the gas station in front of someone and we heard a gas can turn over.  I said, "It might leak.  Pull over."

"I'm in front of a car," he said.

"When you can," I said patiently.

I was annoyed when he got out to right the can and sighed heavily getting back in, as though my request had been completely ridiculous and incredibly bothersome.  I thought of asking if I had put him to more work hopping out of the car and checking the can in the trunk than he had put me to getting me out of my slumber to rescue the van on the freeway.

But I kept quiet.

That was good.

Because a moment later, I asked, "Did it leak?"

And he said, "A little."

And I realized that my interpretation of his sighing had been wrong.

"How will we clean that up?" I asked, trying not to picture my car going up in flames any time in the, say, next ten years.

"I'm thinking about that," he said.

That's when I realized that he was working at doing his best, too, and doing pretty well.

Neither of us wanted this to be happening.  In the stress of the moment, I could easily imagine petty words igniting a horrible fight. In the dark, in speeding traffic, on the freeway.

So I kept quiet.  And so did he.

He parked on the shoulder behind the blinking van.  I waited, fastened into the passenger seat, as though being on that side of the car would keep me a lot safer in the event of a crash than being on the other side of the car.

I waited while he screwed the funnel onto one, two, then three gas cans and poured them into the gas tank of the van in front of me.  I counted six semi-trucks that barreled past us during those minutes, along with a lot of other traffic.  I told myself not to have bad thoughts, because we were in trouble and might possibly need divine intervention.  But bad thoughts come more naturally to me than does divine intervention, so I struggled.

That's when my car made a beep.  I looked at the display.  "Low fuel," it read.  On my car.  I started to imagine that I would run out of gas while we were still on the freeway.  Paul had left my car running.  I thought of turning it off, but then I imagined it bursting into flame from the gas leak in the trunk when I started the ignition again.

I reached over and removed the van key from his set of keys dangling in the ignition.  I unbuckled and slid over into the driver's seat.  I quickly buckled back up again, and slid the seat forward into its rightful position.  (My legs are shorter than his are.)  I waited until he passed me, taking all the cans back to the trunk, then handed him the key.  I told him why, but the roar of traffic made me have to say, then scream it, repeatedly.

I prayed that we could get out of there safely. I was sure that the traffic would come on too quickly, that there wouldn't be enough room to safely see what all was coming around the bend.  But, very soon, the traffic cleared completely, and Paul moved out onto the road.  I did, too.

And then, everything suddenly seemed so much easier.  We drove home and I thought about how often we know the right answers--can even articulate them to other people, but don't trust them enough to use them in our own lives.

And I was glad that, in my compromised state, I had been able to use them, this time.