Alison Hodgson

Expert on the etiquette of perilous times.

Valentine’s Day

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I don’t remember much about Valentine’s Day last year.  In general it was a stressful time. The house was going up but insurance was dragging its heels to pay out a portion of the settlement that had been long negotiated. This meant the builders weren’t being paid which was so anxiety inducing for Paul and me. We had jumped through so many hoops to get the wreckage torn down, then even more to get the plans for the new house approved and now we were getting to make a thousand calls just to get money that was ours and should have been paid out weeks before.

The wheels were coming off with the kids too. Eden had been begging for months to homeschool . At her Valentines’ party I found out she had told everyone she was leaving after the party and that some of her friends had been sobbing in anticipation.

“It’s not going to happen.” I assured a couple of concerned mothers. Apparently Eden had offered for me to homeschool some of her friends too, as their mothers worked outside the home.

“It’s not going to happen,” I told the second grade wanna-be dropout. “Not this year. We’ll talk about next year once the house is finished.”

Valentine’s isn’t really a big thing for Paul and me, but I usually do something for the kids, (chocolates and a card or a special breakfast) and I think that’s important, especially as they get older.

I can’t even remember if Paul got me a present last year, but I do know he gave me a card.

 

I’ll be honest, it didn’t look promising. And then I opened it.
Please note the googly eyes to the right and below.

I’m sorry you don’t get the lovely effect of glancing at the crazy eyes and then reading the copy.

I loved that Paul characterized himself as happy during such a crap of a time.

We were children when we started dating.  I was in 9th grade and Paul was in 10th, the ages Lydia and Christopher are now. Paul’s dad took his own life a year later and it’s been up and down ever since.

So much has been taken from us but, at the end of the day if all we have is each other and the kids, we’ve been given so much.

Small Appliances

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The good thing about losing everything is that you get to buy all new stuff.

Surprisingly, this didn’t really excite me. I’ve never been much of a shopper and after the fire I was really clear on how little we needed.  I didn’t want to rush out and buy a bunch of things. And yet there were little pockets of interest where my mind would go and rub its hands together in gleeful anticipation.  One of these was small appliances.

In the kitchen of the house that burned I tried to keep the counters uncluttered.  As I planned the new kitchen I thought carefully about my counter real estate.  I loved my jadeite green Kitchen Aid stand mixer.  My old kitchen was all white and the pop of color was so pretty and cheerful, but I could not find a replacement for my Kitchen Aid.  Apparently it was a special Martha Stewart shade only offered through Williams Sonoma for a limited time.  If it wasn’t going to be a pretty green I decided I wanted the mixer in the pantry.
Waring had a blender in jadeite that was just beautiful but we don’t use a blender often, which brought me back to a toaster.  I did find a minty green one that was so pricey I would be embarrassed for you to know how much. 
I hadn’t completely ruled out the blender and there was still the dim hope of finding the stand mixer on ebay, so I just thought about it from time to time. But I was leaning towards the ridiculously expensive toaster.
One day a large box was delivered to our door.  It was addressed to Paul and I was so excited   I think I called him at work to ask if it was OK for me to open it. He said it was something that he had ordered.

I had an immediate sense of foreboding which was confirmed as soon as I pulled this bad boy out of the box.

Holy Cheese and Crackers, Batman!

It boggled the mind and the senses. You can see that it’s a black plastic, two slot toaster with a…is that a GOITER?

Yes, my friends it is.

OK, it’s merely a goiter-like plastic appendage and it serves a purpose. That’s an egg poacher perched on the right side.  See the steam gathering?
Back To Basics is the brand name however, as those illustrations on the side show, this toaster is anything but basic.  

Below is Paul with Christopher, last summer. Doesn’t he look like a nice man? 
He is a nice man. 
Doesn’t he look like someone who, if he wants to poach an egg in a plastic goiter whilst toasting his bread you should just let him? 
Thinking about it that way and looking at his kind and handsome face, I know we should. Especially when I remember that he ordered the toaster within months of someone burning down his house. 
This wasn’t so clear to me when that plastic monstrosity was taking up half the counter at the rental house and leering at anyone who made the mistake of glancing at it. I need to remind myself that it was my house that someone set on fire as well.
We had all been hurt and PTSD is real, people. And yet, even without PTSD, I think Paul would have been tempted to order that toaster and I, almost certainly, would have pitched a fit.
When Paul came home that night I ranted how I wanted a four slot toaster, maybe a pretty one not this hideous, black plastic, bulbous nosed, two slotted one. 
Paul told me I could buy the pretty one, still.
I complained about how much space it took up on our small counter. He said we could store it under the counter in one of the nearly empty cupboards and I realized I was being a jerk and apologized.  Paul forgave me, as he has on so many other occasions, bless him. At the new house I found the perfect spot for it in a drawer at the end of the island just above the drawer where the bread and peanut butter and Nutella live. It’s almost like it was meant to be.  
The kids loved it immediately.  Paul makes them egg sandwiches almost every morning before school.
I want to suspend my snap judgments. I need to hold back my visceral disgust with things that intrigue or interest my family.  I want to be more curious and open for all our sakes.
 Do you have any suggestions?

Building the Story

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Today I’m working on a short account of someone setting fire to our home, of losing everything and rebuilding.

Long time readers and friends might have seen “short account” and registered a red flag.

I hear you.  I see it waving too. Short has never been my strong suit and I don’t feel ready to summarize the experience. We all know I can write about the fire and of losing everything, but when I think about trying to tell the story cogently and well my brain hurts and I imagine it looking like the picture above.

Because rebuilding was as much of the suffering as the fire, in some ways, I’ve only begun to mourn.  The story of everything isn’t finished.  I don’t know where I am exactly, maybe just breaking ground.

But someone wants me to tell the story. I’m being offered a wonderful opportunity and I don’t want to squander it.

Maybe I need to look at this “short account” as a blueprint. I don’t have to actually build a house today, just write the plan for what I want it to be.

‘Cept Only One

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Years ago, a dear friend of mine, was a helping a refugee family from Africa. Soon after they moved here the father died leaving his wife and several small children. My friend, a kindly soul and social worker by profession, took them under her wing. On one occasion the mother became ill and my friend accompanied her to the hospital.

A pregnancy was suspected and the doctor asked my friend to ask the woman if she might be pregnant. The woman, a devout Christian and a widow for more than a year, took umbrage with the insinuation.

“I HAVE NOT LAIN WITH A MAN!” she said righteously, “-‘cept only one.”

That went right into the vernacular.

I’ve been thinking about this lately. Stay with me. As much as I’ve enjoyed announcing the first part of the statement, especially when Paul has been traveling over much, it’s the second half I’m talking about: “Cept only one.”

I live in the exceptions.

A couple months ago, at church, I asked a pastor to pray for me. We were up at the altar together. She put her hand on my back. I think I was already crying. Before she began she asked, “How is your marriage?”

I blinked, confused. I had asked her to pray for me about the rebuilding and the anxiety I felt waiting for insurance, making so many decisions and worrying that we were making irrevocable mistakes. I was talking about money!

“Good.” I said. “It’s good. Tender. Sweet.” She was looking at me intently. “We’re human, we still grate…but the marriage is sweet.”

And that’s true.

Before the fire Paul and I both could tend towards the belief that maybe the other didn’t have the best handle on HOW.MUCH.I.DO.FOR.THIS.FAMILY!

It didn’t come up a lot, it wasn’t a volatile grievance, more of a quiet frustration that would some times flare from either side.

The good thing about a near death experience wherein you lose all your possessions is that you get a shot of clarity and the scope widens. This year Paul and I have been stretched so thin, have run so long and hard that -even if I still cared to – I don’t have the time to keep score. Any thing he does, any call he makes, I’m just so thankful that I didn’t. My appreciation and gratitude for him has grown exponentially. Only the two of us know what this year has been. We’ve been surrounded by amazingly supportive people who have gone the distance but only Paul and I have been entirely inside it and there is intimacy and tenderness here.

A few months ago Paul needed to have something checked out. He had cancer (non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma) when he was a boy so he doesn’t mess around. It was one of those situations where it could be a virus or cancer which was not really an either/or I needed rattling around in the back of my head – ever – but especially when I was busy rebuilding a house that someone burned down. I really didn’t need that, but there it was…rattling.

In one way the timing was perfect. We were under a lot of stress, what with the kids, the house, Paul’s heavy workload, insurance and so forth, but far enough removed from the fire itself that we could have become complacent but cue Paul’s mortality stage left and wham! I’mjust.so.thankful.to.have.him.

Burn down the house.

Withhold all the money.

Just leave me my husband; please don’t make me live without Paul.

What has been coming to me over and over this past year is that I want to love him better. I want to love him the best that I can. I think I have and I do…except…

when he wakes me up out of a sound sleep listening to something on his laptop or drinks too loudly or won’t go outside to check on the kids or forgets to turn on the coffee or asks so many freaking questions about the house that he has already asked and FORGOTTEN!

So we’re still human and there are swaths in this strong and beautiful marriage that have not love.

If I want to love Paul fully I need to look at the exceptions, where I don’t choose, where I withhold, where I place conditions on, love.