Seize the celebration whenever it comes

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dancing, Jane Butler, marriage

Yesterday in the early morning hours we danced in a pine grove down by the sea. We were out walking the dog and saw the opportunity to turn a wild space into our dance floor, not that we’re good but we do have fun. A background soundtrack and maybe something smoother under foot were the only things missing that might have made this moment with my husband any sweeter. That’s why all the planning for celebrating our thirtieth anniversary together just doesn’t matter.

This whole I-wish-I-could-dance-with-my-husband thing has gotten great. First he wouldn’t even consider it, and now, suddenly, we are dancing out in the wild. Celebrations happen when you least expect them!

Here’s a former posting about the miracle of my husband’s transformation from a sit-on-the-sidelines-and-watch kind of guy to a real live dancer.

Thank You, Cardboard Cutout Dance Partner
Finally, I get to dance with my husband after years of him refusing, all because of some unintentional reverse-psychology. Early in our marriage I announced my desire for us to learn to dance and he likewise announced his contrary desire. Instead, I flitted around the house whenever I heard music. After we had children I took a few classes but it was frustrating waiting on the sidelines to share the lone male student without a partner on every fourth dance. I took ballet for adults, later salsa by the pool on a Mexican vacation.
Twenty-five years into our marriage I realized my regret and contacted an instructor. As I saw it, if my husband had said, yes, after that first invitation I would have been cutting the rug for a quarter century already, but instead my yearning to dance had been undernourished long enough. The teacher promised to call back if any gentlemen without partners called. A week later I met Sam on the dance floor for the first night of a twelve-week session.
Any fears my family may have had of me being swept off my feet were assuaged by my dinner table stories of the gentleman who was no more interested in dance than a cardboard cutout partner I might drag around the dance floor. Sam was not a threat. Even he was not sure what he was doing there, yet everyone witnessed my disgust when he regularly canceled our dance dates. For me, apparently, a reluctant partner was better than none.
That Christmas I put my wish list on the refrigerator and below ‘new garlic press’ I wrote ‘dance lessons with you‘. My instructors must have been smirking every time I showed up to meet Sam, because unbelievably my cardboard partner had helped set the bar so low, now even
my husband could envision himself dancing. As it turned out he had already placed an envelope from the studio under the tree.
My man generously did it for me but when the time came, although he was game, he was secretly afraid it would be too hard. Now he grabs the dish towel from my hand and suddenly, laughingly, transforms me into a dancing queen.
My explanation for all this is that I respectfully left my husband out of it each time he declined to join me. Likewise he respectfully honored my desire to go on without him. In this way I showed my true love for him and he showed his true love for me. Here in the end the fantastic power of these two forces, love and respect has won out, and is the true reason I get to dance with my husband.

My marriage must be really boring

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change, control, fear, Hershey Park, Jane Butler, Jane Paffenbarger Butler, roller coasters

Sometimes when we’re out together with our daughter like we were today at Hershey Park, my husband and I pretend we’re cast members on the The Bachelor, a junk TV show we indulge in as a family. It can be a little instructive, and, it gives us the added benefit of being able to say silly things like, “I hope you can tell I am trying to open up and be vulnerable so you can get to know me”.

So, while killing time in the long lines at the park, I imagine impressing my ‘date’ with my bravery, facing my fear of roller coasters which I feel sure I would do if we hadn’t already been married thirty years and I wanted him to think I was a real catch, just like the ladies on The Bachelor seem to do. On The Bachelor women are repelling down the sides of buildings with no more than five minutes notice for such outrageous dates, hauling out all their bravery to impress the potential life mate the producers have picked out for them. Why shouldn’t I do the same, here at Hershey Park, even though technically my husband and I are already committed to another fifty years regardless of whether we scream bloody murder together with our daughter for 90 seconds on The Great Bear today or not? Oh, it’s all rather complicated isn’t it? Just trying to distract myself since I was about to get on a scary roller coaster, something I had only done once before and that was when I was nineteen.

By the end of the day we’d forgotten all about The Bachelor, after we spilled the beans to our daughter on the outcome of the alleged ‘Rose Ceremony’ (I got a rose!), and we’d happily ridden on four roller coasters. In the end, despite my fears, I even kind of liked them. A little. Maybe.

More than that though, we’d all had a really fun day.

Dance-arama

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being yourself, dancing, dreams coming true, Jane Butler, Jane Paffenbarger Butler, joy, Longwood Gardens

Once, as in last month, my husband and I were standing on a long slow line at Philadelphia’s 30th Street Station waiting to get on a train, staring at a gorgeous expanse of polished marble flooring. But, my guy declined my invitation to practice our dance steps there for the chacha and the foxtrot.

“Come on,” I said, “Who cares. This is the perfect dance floor. How can we pass this up? Please. Please.”

“Nope,” he told me.

Not too long after that, because our moves are so complicated now (only for us, everyone else seems clear on what to do) he agreed to use the driveway as a dance floor. I mean, where else can we go? You need room. It was glorious right under the beautiful blue sky! And no one said anything, as in no neighbors remarked later when we said hello on the street during the dog walk.

This past Sunday we actually did the tango among the tulips at Longwood Gardens. Well, wait a second, maybe I should say we tried to remember our tango steps among the tulips at Longwood Gardens, but you get the idea.

So, I guess, since no one complained, all this means that the world loved it. Out there with a wide open sky with a clear view of God.

Now that’s for me.

When your spouse isn’t who you want anymore

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change, control, dreams coming true, express feelings, forgiveness, goals, inspire, joy, love, marriage, relationship

So here’s the thing: if you love your spouse you do not tell other people, even in jest, how awful they are or how miserable they make you or what lazy SOBs they are. If you love your spouse you save that kind of idea to discuss directly with him in a constructive kind of way. And then when that doesn’t yield the desired results of turning your spouse into the person you were dreaming of it is time to consider the possibility that you yourself may need to change you. I am not saying there are no creepy spouses out there, but giving you the benefit of the doubt, you probably married a great person.

If you change you you might find you have an inordinate amount of power in getting what you want. There are limits of course, but expecting your spouse to magically be who you thought they were going to be isn’t realistic or rational or fair. Your spouse is who he is because in part he’s just spent years hanging around you!

So next time you hear yourself saying out loud that your better half is a creep consider turning YOURSELF into the fantastically thoughtful, loving, generous, you name it, spouse you yourself would like, as a model for the other guy, and then just sit back and see what wonderful things happen.

My lack of common sense has rubbed off on my dog

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hound, marriage, pup, salt water taffy

My pup ate half a box of salt water taffy, wrappers and all, tonight. She waddled around being large and ill, unable to get comfortable since her tummy was distended. My husband and I are pros at getting her to throw up since she regularly ingests things like bars of soap, lemon-scented steel wool pads, chocolate bars, and anything else that’s laying around and smells good. She’s a hound so her nose is fantastic but as you can see she is handicapped in the common sense department.

We forced a couple of teaspoons of hydrogen peroxide down her throat and so then she obliged to show us just what she’d swallowed. She felt better and wanted her dinner after all. Now she’s tired and is sacked out on the couch next to my husband who is also sacked out on the couch.

Some days are like that. Just kind of hard.

In sorrow and in gladness

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being yourself, change, dreams coming true, express feelings, friendship, homemade muffins, husband, listening, love, marriage, mother-in-law, relationship, sad news, take for granted, trust

I woke up last Friday knowing my mother-in-law was likely to die that day, wishing I could go back under the covers and sleep through it all. My first inclination was to try to be the best wife I could be, at least for one day. A friend called and encouraged me in the perfect kind of way, then, I made my guy a special breakfast of homemade muffins, bacon and fruit. It took all morning to accomplish since my foot’s not really up for all that, but in the end I was so glad I’d made the effort. It set the tone for a day of me showing my love for him any way I could. The phone rang just after we finished eating and while we were making plans to catch a flight up to Buffalo to be with family at his mom’s bedside, one last time.

That’s when I renewed my resolve to be there for my husband since now we’d be home with the sad news of her passing, unsure what the future held. Being the best wife I can be has a lot to do with listening and waiting for my husband to tell me what is on his mind. He’s not one to just shout that out. It is not about me asking him how he is, or telling him what I think, or expressing my own emotions or ideas. It is about me being available to him for whatever he needs at a time when, I know from experience, it is hard to get your bearings. I am a talker and a thinker and a doer. Quietly waiting for my attention to be required is challenging for me.

I am not sure how I did by him but at the end of the day I was proud of myself. Making extra space for him, someone I dare to take for granted at times, felt good, and right, and helpful, and loving, and all the things I want for him to be able to count on in me. And for my part, it has been a reminder of what I might strive to be more often.

The animal in my bed

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animals, being yourself, cat, dog, marriage

I got up around midnight and wandered the upstairs, landing in my son’s empty bed because there were fewer animals there. Since I don’t use a pillow, one of my cats has claimed mine, and only at the concession of my dog who often takes a queenly posture on my Posturpedic that later degenerates into a most unfeminine spread eagle sack-out. The other cat, if I am sufficiently unconscious, plants himself literally as close to my face and neck as is possible without allowing his hair up my nose so much as to suffocate me. Round about morning when my breathing is so labored due to animal dander and there is a crushing sensation on my chest, I might wake up just in time to save myself. And when I do I see that my husband, the preferred animal in my bed, is gone.

You might wonder why I don’t shove all these creatures out and reclaim my space. Maybe it’s their tenacity, but maybe it’s just that right now it is pretty sweet to snuggle up in the sheets of my little boy who is a big guy now, and soon won’t be here much at all. I guess it’s all because I’d ruined my well-established sleep rhythm by sleeping-in for fourth of July, and then likely a failure to exercise enough on the third of July, despite two trips to the pool to do laps.

This all had me roaming the halls thinking up silly pieces to post, like this one.

Clearly my own good common sense is broken

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being yourself, common sense, express feelings, pain, parents, physical therapy, stonewall, swelling, torn tendon

The longer I do physical therapy on my foot, post-surgery this time, the more I have to explain to people what happened, and therefore the more I hear myself tell the absurd story of self-neglect. If any of my kids had rolled their ankle on the stonewall out back, saw stars, had significant pain, and then swelling for 18 months (yikes!) I would certainly have taken them to the doctor. Not only did I not take myself to the doctor I thought it a fine idea to start dance lessons with my husband. Now, for that I have good reason in that he’d denied this great opportunity the first 27 years of our marriage, so why would I let a torn tendon I barely acknowledged stop me at last?

So, I need the physical therapist to remind me to take care of my healing foot and ankle today as I head into Philadelphia for a movie and dinner with a friend, because my own good sense is clearly broken. The obvious measures one would take to care for herself apparently do not function well in me, and so I ask my guy to remind me of when to slow it down.

Maybe we are all born with some basic common sense about protecting ourselves from further harm once we are injured, but I am pretty sure this normal process was forced out of me when I was young, by claims that my ailments would heal themselves, or go away, or not matter, or something else equally non-action oriented. But now I am a fully grown adult in charge of my own well-being, and I need answer only to myself. When all else fails I purchase my good common sense from professionals.

My fancy thing-finding business

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being yourself, dreams coming true, express feelings, listening, lost glasses, love, marriage, relationship, trust, words

It happens from time to time that someone mentions off-handedly that they have lost something. I often feel inspired to help them find it using my not-exactly-patented thing-finding process. In no time our discussion has led to a eureka moment and the person heads off to check a quite likely location. And lots of times it turns out that they find whatever it is.

So it has become a personal challenge. When my husband lost his glasses in the back yard a few days ago I used my usual means to help him locate them. But it was difficult because he frequently jumped ahead in the conversation to dismiss my supposed idea of where the glasses might be. But the truth is, I have no agenda. I do not suppose to know where or even suppose to figure out where the lost item is. I always expect the person, slowed down to a conscious awareness of where the lost item was last seen and the events just after, to tell me where it is. How would I know?

But with my guy it didn’t work. He wouldn’t slow down and let me lead the conversation. He wanted to try to guess what I was doing. He was not being cooperative. So I was pondering this difficulty between us, and staring at the shelves in the garage wondering if the glasses had somehow landed there, a guess based on the conversation we did have about the sequence of events, when he came out and I confessed to my thoughts. Frustration with him.

This led to another conversation, mostly me complaining that he is a difficult customer for my lost-thing-finding-business. This led to another series of words that ended with us together, surprisingly, locating the three-days-lost glasses behind the garbage can.

Eureka!

Tarzan and Jane tell the truth

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being yourself, friends, marriage, relationship, security, Survivor, Tarzan, telling the truth, trust

I asked my husband the other day if he thought we’d ever lied to each other. We learned on the “Survivor” finale Sunday night that the long-lasting marriage of one competitor, Tarzan, and his wife, was supposedly due to not ever having lied to one another. It has never occurred to me that lying to my husband could be a means to something. It just never did, because it never could be.
And anyway, with me being Jane, my husband has sometimes suffered being called Tarzan.

Telling the truth is second nature to me when it comes to my husband because if I don’t tell him the truth I don’t have a lot of other options for being honest. If I lied right in my own home I’d be shutting down some opportunities I just can’t get anywhere else. I really need Tarzan to be my ally and life partner, so being honest about everything that matters is all I’ve got. I have not lied to him about anything that matters.

And according to my guy, he didn’t think we’d lied to each other, either.