Our first-born was just a few months old when I realized loving my husband wouldn’t be enough for our relationship to survive children.
Until then, we’d weathered minor differences: his disdain for my love of certain music, mine for how he put takeout food in the refrigerator STILL IN THE BAG.
But differences in parenting were more consequential. Hold them when they cry or wait for them to settle themselves? How to punish them when they misbehave, or punish them at all? Should they attend Bible study at daycare despite the fact we don’t practice religion?
Fortunately, we agreed on most everything, or at least gave each other the space to stick to what we each felt most strongly about. He’s a stickler for nutrition, so he handles the dinners. I love fashion, so I make sure they have all the shoes, coats and hats they need (and they seem to need a lot).
Yet the reality of the pandemic showed the cracks in the common ground we’d always managed to find, and it didn’t take long to notice the differences.
I put the groceries on the counter and washed my hands after a trip to the store. He left the groceries in another room, stripped down and took a “Silkwood shower,” as if he’d been exposed to nuclear radiation. At a joint trip to a home improvement store, I rolled my eyes when I saw a shopper without a mask. His shoulders visibility stiffened, his jaw looked set in plaster.
There is no space in a pandemic when you’re all cooped up together and decisions can mean life or death.
For me, a birdfeeder delivered to my doorstep is a thing to be enjoyed. For him, it’s a potential hazard, or worse. He thinks sending our kids back to the classroom could risk our lives. I think keeping them home could deprive them of friendships and community, the things that make life worth living. What if they retreat so far into themselves that I can no longer find them? How do we negotiate this one?
Our differences went on sharp display when one of the things we feared most became reality: A trip to the emergency room after our 8-year-old son took a bad tumble from his bike.
As my husband walked him to the door of the ER, I could see the fear in his face — the fear that one day our son or daughter could have coronavirus, and we’d have to let them go, through these same hospital doors, alone. And that we might not ever see them again.
My husband is the one who unflinchingly checks strange noises in the night, takes the kids on the highest rollercoasters, clears the spiders out of the house.
And yet he was scared.
At last, I heard him.
The future is still anything but certain, but this much I know: I will keep listening to my husband. My hope is that the more I hear him, and the more he hears me, we’ll find the common ground that once came so easily.
TAKE ACTION: Listen. Communicate — with each other and with organizations and agencies making decisions that will impact your life. Make sure they hear you. My husband has answered every survey the school system has sent about reopening, and he is actively monitoring and commenting on social media feeds for our school board, our mayor and our council members.