What really interests me is how two such unlike particles clung together, . . .until they reached their angle of repose . . .
Wallace Stegner
There are moments when I find myself secretly watching her as she sits quietly reading or writing a letter to our marine son in Fallujah. And I wonder what decisive circumstance and human chemistry has helped to meld us, and what marital alchemy has sustained our togetherness for more than 20 years.
As we have confided to each other, and acknowledged to our selves, we are as different in thought and outlook, and in many other ways, as the hawk is to the sparrow. I realize we’re not the only ones to experience this wonder of togetherness. Countless couples sharing the same living space and bed twice as long as we have must at one time or another been similarly bewildered. Why the two of us? Why her? Why him?
The old saying of opposites attract may be at play with us, but it seems too simple an answer to explain our divergent outlooks on life and manners of doing every-day things. Simply, we come from different worlds.
When either of us needs pieces of masking tape from a roll, I cut precisely straight lines, she tears uneven ones. My ideal setting for our dream home is a Rocky Mountain meadow, bordered by aspen and pine. Hers is a pleasant suburban neighborhood close to friends. She likes white and shiny, while I prefer wood finish and opaque. The last time we purchased a car, her sole concern was its color and how well it matched the interior, leaving me to worry about mileage, condition of the engine and body, extra features and how to pay for it. Colors dominate her life, while they are subordinate in mine. Soon after we married my entire wardrobe changed. Most of the browns and beiges disappeared, replaced by cooler colors of blues, greens, blacks and reds that she sees as “more becoming.” I accepted her choice of my new wardrobe grudgingly at first. Now I seek her advice on all matters of color because I’ve come to recognize that she has a special eye for hues, shades and tints. She says I am too predictable and sees me as a “neat-freak,” even though she fusses about the stacks of papers and books I leave about in our common living space.
Countering my neatness, she occasionally musses my well- groomed hair, or pushes a book out of line with the straight edge of the table top on which I placed it so.
For any sudden mood swing, she blames cycles of the moon, convinced that the stormy phase between us, and there have been plenty since we started sharing the same space, is caused by a full moon. I try not to scoff at her conviction, even though I waver between her point of view and other reasons for our disgruntlement.
There is common ground between us, but it’s not an extensive plain: love of travel, music, art, the cinema, laughter and reading. Even among these few enjoyments, however, we hold onto our own idiosyncrasies. She’s pickier in choosing books than I am, for example, and underlines mercilessly with color pens or markers while reading. When I finish a novel, one hardly knows a hand has touched it. In this way, I am able to recycle it at a used bookstore, one of my small pleasures.
Due to our recognized differences and idiosyncrasies, we tend to keep things simple on Valentine’s Day, and on other sentimental occasions. She and I usually exchange cards, funny ones that now replace the sentimental kind of yesteryear. We may exchange a small gift or two as well.
But no matter what I give or do for her on Valentine’s Day, I am certain she knows I cherish her and delight in her gentle smile.
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Frank L. Kaplan writes from Wheat Ridge, Colorado kaplanfăcolorado.edu
