Poetic gesture

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being yourself, express feelings, inspire, Jane Butler, Jane Paffenbarger Butler, joy, listening, love, marriage, mentors, natural talent, parents, passion, relationship, words, writing

My friend was recipient of a most romantic gesture. Her partner built and installed this beautiful poetry post. It is positioned right next to the sidewalk so passersby may read her poetry every time she puts up something new.

This guy taught me how to laugh

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being yourself, dreams coming true, express feelings, friends, Jane Butler, Jane Paffenbarger Butler, joy, love, marriage, relationship, writing

Jane Paffenbarger Butler – author – with the man she captured in her giant blanket

Somehow at the age of nineteen, I spotted a guy who would stay with me for the next 40 years and counting. To be fair, he spotted me and I ran the other way, and it was only because several acquaintances pointed out his obvious interest and implored me to take him seriously, that I finally noticed him as a potential partner for life. He’s been nothing but steadfast, nothing but kind, and nothing but improved with age. Thank you friends who did that.

He knew not how to plumb a bathroom when I met him. He was not a loving parent or sole breadwinner. But since then he has become all these things and more. And in addition he’s propped me up through thick and thin, he’s counseled me on what I have not known and he has encouraged me and been my advocate when I didn’t know I needed it.

His winning attributes in the beginning were that he was funny and he was kind. He made me laugh and then taught me how to do it, and now, all these years later we are still laughing together.

Believe me, I had no idea what I was doing back then, but my gut reaction to this man has served me well through the years. He hasn’t changed much really. The kind, shy, funny, smart, encouraging guy I met at nineteen is still there, it’s just that all of that has morphed and matured and come along in an even better form right up to today.

This month, in Psychology Today online I tell the story of my young husband who takes me to his Aunt Maureen’s at Christmas where I discover that everyone refers to his Uncle Dave as Meathead, thus beginning my education in humor. Take a look at “Introduction to Meathead Therapy” on the Healthy Connections blog post by Maryann Karinch.

Introduction to Meathead Therapy

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being yourself, express feelings, forgiveness, friends, Jane Butler, Jane Paffenbarger Butler, joy, listening, love, marriage, parents, psychotherapy, relationship

This month I am featured in Psychology Today’s Healthy Connections blog by Maryann Karinch where she tells the story of what she calls my introduction to “meathead therapy.”

When my husband and I were young and first married we went to his Aunt Maureen and Uncle Meathead’s on Christmas Eve. Theirs was a modest gathering, but I loved it because the one thing that was not modest was the connection I saw between the people who came and went. Folks arrived at the door and each was welcomed like a king. They were offered a drink, some food, a seat, and all the time in the world, crowding onto the attic stairs when room at the table ran out.

The goal was to entertain, to tell funny stories even at each other’s expense, even as it exposed each other’s bullheadedness, ignorance or misery.

And I was spellbound.

These folks cared for each other. I’d go so far as to say they loved each other. My family didn’t sit around the kitchen table on Christmas Eve welcoming one another in with drinks and smiles and all the time in the world because of our handicap of taking life seriously and rejecting one another for our human foibles.

Since that night with Maureen and Meathead, and with my steadfast husband next to me, I have worked hard in psychotherapy and have learned about the healthy attitudes of accepting one another for who we are and learning to celebrate one another no matter how goofy we get.

I think the healthy connections we make are born of the dedicated showing up at each other’s kitchen tables no matter what the circumstance.

 Check out my story in Psychology Today.

 

 

Is it possible to be more romantic than this?

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being yourself, dreams coming true, express feelings, friends, friendship, higher power, inspire, Jane Butler, Jane Paffenbarger Butler, joy, listening, love, marriage, passion, relationship, words

Paris Opera House Ceiling

Everything about this moment was romantic. It wasn’t enough just to be back in Paris thirty-five years after we’d honeymooned there, but we were also staying at the same hotel and stopping in at Fouquet’s, the same place on the Champs-Elysee we’d stumbled onto late one night when we were newlywed where we had chocolate mousse we hadn’t ever forgotten.

No, all that wasn’t romantic enough.

My husband thought we should have a date out on the town and lined up a trip to the opulent Paris Opera Garnier. We donned our fanciest travel clothes and sat beneath the blessing of Marc Chagall’s colorful celebration of art itself.

And as if that wasn’t enough, the program that night, an homage to Jerome Robbins, harkened back to our early days. As newlyweds we often attended the New York City ballet at their outdoor summer home at Saratoga Performing Arts Center in upstate New York. The staging of “Glass Pieces” in particular was so familiar that it took my breath away to know I was in Paris, France, at the Opera House, with my boyfriend who was still following me around and delighting me with his thoughtfulness and kindness and shared joy of all things artistic, that I could barely watch through the tears in my eyes.

We left that night, awed by the layered gilded building, the rainbow of Chagall’s ceiling, the drama of ballet and the deep thankfulness in our hearts for one another and for the great good fortune to be able to hold each other’s hands still and take it all in.

Wedding Love Altar

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being yourself, dreams coming true, express feelings, friends, Jane Butler, Jane Paffenbarger Butler, joy, love, marriage, parents, relationship

This is the “love altar” I created as a centerpiece for my son’s recent wedding. A number of women special in their lives were invited to make a table decoration that reflected the love they feel in their lives and particularly as it relates to either the bride or the groom. Each table had a different creation but all had a crystal as the centerpiece. After the wedding the bride and groom took home the crystals and now have a centerpiece there, of crystals, to take into their future that are charged with the love of family and friends.

My card reads, “The authentic bird’s nest here represents the happy home that the bride and groom have created that will serve as the foundation for their love going forward. Mom’s love, the groom’s love for his bride, and her love for him, are sometimes expressed through baking, thus the spatula. Worn but faithful, Spot, is present at this wedding as a reminder of the security found among old friends. They joy, laughter and sense of extended family is tied up in one Wise and Otherwise playing card. The wooden photo frame made by and depicting the groom’s great-great-grandfather hints at the groom’s own creativity, a source of solution should trouble arise. And the idea, no matter how lame, of the groom’s parents as Brazilian dancers, suggests you do not have to be great at what you do together, you just have to mean it.”

Stepping out

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being yourself, dreams coming true, Jane Butler, Jane Paffenbarger Butler, joy, love, marriage, mother-in-law

He may look tired and worn but Spot would not miss his old buddy, my son’s, upcoming wedding. He’s all decked out in a custom bow tie I made him for the big day.

 

Too good to be true?

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dreams coming true, Jane Butler, love, marriage

There’s this guy who has been following me around for years. Like forty or so. Everywhere I look he’s there. And he’s friendly still, and funny, and really level-headed, just like he was back in the 1970’s when I first noticed him. I was nineteen then and I thought he was a stalker and probably a bad person for taking such an interest. But that’s just how I thought back then.

Shush….I hear him coming down the steps right now. He’s been following me around, persisting in being my friend forever. Good thing too, because what did I know as a teenager about selecting a husband? It really wasn’t on my mind. I wanted to try to get through each day and he was out there making it easier, so okay let’s get together.

Despite not really thinking the best of him at first, apparently I did know quite a bit about selecting a husband since I eventually, at the urging of a friend, gave this guy an audience. She said, “What’s wrong with you? Can’t you see he likes you?” Sure, I told her, but he seemed too good to be true.

What I’ve learned is that my nineteen year-old self wasn’t too weighed down with other thoughts to risk trusting intuition, or instinct or whatever you want to call it. I didn’t let my head get too involved in convincing me he was too good to be true, trying to analyze whether responding to the guy was a good idea or not. And I am not recommending throwing caution to the wind while dating since the older we get the more complicated our lives get, but trusting our intuition should have an equal weight to trusting our intellect.

Obviously I did eventually go out with the guy and he’s been the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Just look at the wedding pictures. The photo of us exiting the church hand-in-hand shows me at my happiest, absolutely sure in the moment that I had just committed my life to someone who truly loves me.

Free stuff from God

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Jane Butler, marriage, relationship, wedding anniversary

We are married thirty years as of yesterday so I took a look in my journal where I keep notes on my anniversaries of years past. I started this on our honeymoon and now update it every September.

Last year we went to see a movie called “Beasts of the Southern Wild”. It’s a movie about love. And about relationships. And about how those two things are as valid to one individual and how they experience them as they are to another. In other words, everyone gets their own chance to have these treasures. Even the very poor, as depicted in this movie, have the same strong meaningful love for one another as anyone does. Their poverty does not diminish the power of the love they share and the relationships they hold.

That is because these are God-given human emotions that are the same for all regardless of social class. Sometimes having fewer material things makes the things we do have more evident.

Staying married to the same guy thirty years is a little old-fashioned, I know, but of all the relationships I have had in my life, this, and those with my kids, are the ones that feel the most real.

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.

Junk TV accidentally models civility!!

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change, dreams coming true, goals, higher power, inspire, Jane Butler, Jane Paffenbarger Butler, joy, love, marriage, mother, parents, relationship, security, trust

My daughter and I watched the entire season of The Bachelor on television this Spring, and I am so excited about how it ended. It ended with a decent guy finding a decent girl, jilting a decent other girl who was quite classy in her reaction to being dismissed, seeking to learn more about herself and wishing the happy couple well, and thus highlighting the possibility that this junk TV show could serve to inform millions on how decent people behave. I was most impressed by the father of the bachelor who said he welcomed either of the two possible young ladies his son might select, and that he’d be that girl’s biggest advocate once she joined the family. The turmoil of having to pick a bride on national television, on a timeline, when two outstanding choices were at hand, was managed with prayer, the bachelor told us. Now prayer is a loaded term if you ask me, but I see it as a code word for any kind of soul searching, introspective, meditation or reverence that includes rationally considering many options and waiting to sense clarity after doing so. Argue with me if you want to on that, but that is how I am interpreting what the young man said.

I love the idea that possibly many households across America, mine included, will learn by watching what it is to be loving and kind. This family highlighted support for one another, and as one of the young women said, everyone knew what was going on and everyone was trying to help. In an impressive conversation we see the bachelor tell his mother he values her opinion and will weigh it, but more than anything he wishes for her support whatever he chooses to do. It was the model of loving civility and both of the girls he was considering looked at this family and were delighted at the prospect of joining such a seemingly healthy group of people.

Now who knows what the truth is. We do not know what goes on behind closed doors, or what miracles are generated through skilled editing, but regardless of the validity of the scenes with which we were presented, they represented to me a wholesomeness I wish for all families on earth.