This Is Marriage

Carrie Cariello

Writer

Right now I'm sitting in a hospital.

I am waiting for my husband, Joe. He is gowned and unconscious, undergoing a surgery called a discectomy, where they cut a teeny tiny hole in his lower back and shave away the bulging disc that's been infringing on his sciatic nerve for five months.

This bulging disc has likely been in progress for years -- decades, even. Years of poor posture and carrying toddlers and stacking wood has contributed to the slow pop of an unhappy disc. And finally, a heavy deadlift at Crossfit was the straw that broke the proverbial camel's back.

About an hour ago I watched while Joe undressed and put on his pale blue hospital gown. I watched him kick off the new brown shoes I made him buy during a recent trip to the outlets, so I could get a pair of orange suede heels half off.

Dressed in light blue scrubs, the surgeon popped into the room just as Joe settled into the hospital bed. The two of them started to go over the procedure, to talk about how Joe would not breathe on his own during the two-hour surgery. I focused my gaze on the toe of his brown shoe sticking out of the shiny bag.

And I thought; this is marriage. One day you're shopping for shoes at the outlets and just a few weeks later, the new shoes your husband reluctantly bought for himself will sit, discarded, in a room down the hall while someone else breathes for him.

I write a lot about raising our five kids and our son Jack's autism and teamwork and blah blah blah-dey blah. But the truth is, some days this marriage is so hard. It is so hard I can barely breathe. No one -- and I do mean no one -- makes me as angry, as frustrated, as enraged, as this man does.
The biggest argument we've ever had -- and believe me, we've had some doozies -- was over Oreos. Yes, you read that right: the biggest fight I've ever had with my husband was over a chocolate wafer cookie. (To be fair, they were double-stuffed, and I think that ups the ante a bit.)

We'd been married less than a year, and I had to go to a dinner for work. It was incredibly boring, and I spent most of the long evening nodding my head and looking forward to going home, climbing into my pajamas, and eating a few cookies before bed.

I walked into our apartment just in time to see Joe holding the empty blue cellophane bag -- plastic cookie divider cast aside on the floor -- and shaking the last of the chocolate crumbs into his mouth.
I was outraged. How selfish! How greedy and thoughtless and disgusting. Before long, the argument took on a life of its own, launching itself from a Nabisco product to everything that was wrong with us as a couple. You never think about anyone but yourself! You overreact to everything!

We didn't speak for days.

In the middle of huge arguments like 'The Great Oreo Fight,' I often have the sensation I am teetering on the edge of a large abyss, that Joe and I are separated by the deepest chasm. Married, yes. But also so very alone.

I know divorce. I've personally experienced three divorces, not one of which has been my own. I am not afraid of divorce. But somehow, thus far, Joe and I have always managed to cross the gulf that separates us. To buy a new bag of Oreos and move on.

This is marriage. It is standing on the edge of the abyss and saying, I choose to stay. Today, I will stay.

As Joe's leg pain worsened and two cortisone shots did nothing to help the inflammation, to relieve the pressure on his aggravated nerve, it became clear that surgery was the next step.

Once he explained the recovery to me -- no lifting anything heavier than a gallon of milk for six weeks, no driving for two, no twisting or bending -- I developed a plan for him. He would go to his parents for at least a week, where he could rest and recuperate without a 55-pound four-year old launching at him like a cannonball. When he came home I would drive him back and forth to work.
But Joe didn't want this. He didn't want to go to his parents for that long and he didn't want me driving him around and in general he didn't want me to be the boss of him. It was infuriating.

I confided in Jack's psychologist when we met to talk about his anxiety over fire drills, figuring she would take my side. She didn't.

Instead she said, "I hear fear in your voice. So why do you go straight to anger? Stay with the fear a moment. Let yourself feel it."

Sitting on her light brown couch with a giant Elmo peering over my shoulder, I did. I let myself feel my fear.

For the first time since June, I talked about how scared I was to see Joe's health decline, to see him wait ten minutes before getting out of the car. I wept describing how he struggled to toss the football with the boys and twirl our daughter Rose in the air.

How terrifying it is to see the strongest man I know falter.

This is marriage.

A few years ago I got up in the middle of the night for some water. I walked towards the door as Joe came out of the bathroom, and when we passed each other sleepily he reached out his arms and hugged me for a long moment.

For days afterwards I lived with that moment in my heart and my mind. I marveled that this person could love me so instinctively, so thoroughly, to reach out half awake and embrace me without even thinking about it.

It is this memory I cling to like a life preserver when the storms of marital rage and frustration sweep over me. This is the Joe I am thinking of now.

Shifting a little in my hard plastic chair, I go online and look up Webster-Merriam's definition of marriage. It uses weird words like state of being united and recognized by law and intimate union.
But to me, it's so much more.

It is sitting in a hospital fifteen years later and realizing it wasn't about the cookies after all, that I went straight to anger in order to avoid the really scary thoughts; you don't love me enough and I have made a mistake and this marriage will never work. To avoid my fear.

It is finding grace again and again in the small gestures; buying shoes and eating Oreos and spontaneously embracing in the dark hours of the night.

It is complicated and raw and tender and long and giddy and miserable and scary and exhausting and exhilarating and broken and yet whole and I know this is a lot of adjectives but they're all true.

It is waiting, waiting, waiting for the surgeon in the blue scrubs to tap me on the shoulder and tell me it all went fine, that within a few hours my husband will slip on his new brown shoes and walk out of the door -- sore from surgery, groggy from anesthesia, but free of the live wire that has electrified his leg for the past five months.

That he is breathing on his own so I don't have to do it alone.

This is marriage.