A New Groove

"What's been new with you?" Someone asked me this a couple days ago and I stumbled for an answer. I wasn't quite sure the context of the question--did he mean in the last month? week? 24 hours? What, indeed, is new with me? Well, as Teri and I have been known to say--everything and nothing.

We have started entertaining in the new house and that seems to be what makes it actually feel like a home. This is not to say that we are solidly in a new groove yet, but we're working on it.  We realized this past weekend that it has been exactly one month since our celebration and ceremony, sheesh, Life has just been flying along! This morning, as I am sitting at the dining room table looking out over the back yard, I have been thinking of the things I love about the new house so far:

• Attached garage off the kitchen--3 steps down to our washer and dryer (almost-vintage, but ours and so far reliable) and then 12 steps out the back door to the clothes line.
• A huge bath tub with plenty of room to roll around
• Friendly neighbors and a good diversity mix
• A kitchen large enough to waltz in
• Warm-toned wood floors
• The 8-minute walk to work (for me)
• We can see the full moon from our bedroom windows
• The sound of clucking chickens in the morning from next door
• How easy it is for friends and family to find us
• The joy of sitting on the front porch and watching the world walk, ride and wander by

Considering the past couple months, I don't know if I would have chosen to have a middle-age Wedding and then move into a new house all within days of each other. Heck, who am I kidding?  My optimistic temperament probably would have assumed it would be a an entirely-doable little challenge and while it was doable, it was a bigger challenge than we anticipated.  Would I do it all over again just to get to this new groovy phase in life?  Hmmm....maybe....

Community and Cookies

Yesterday marked our one-week anniversary of being in our new home.  We just found out this morning that we inadvertently left a few items behind in the dryer (show of hands for how many people have done this?  I think I've done it at least three times in my adult life!) Strangely enough, it seemed like an odd jolt to have to go all the way back to the old house and neighborhood to retrieve them.  Teri and I are working on feeling settled in this new version of our lives.

This past weekend, we were invited to a little barbecue by our next door neighbors and we got to meet several other folks who live on our street.  Breaking out the shiny new cherry red KitchenAid stand-up mixer we received for a Wedding gift, we used it to make cookies to take to the party.  Gooey chocolate chip cookies in hand, Teri and I traversed the fifteen steps it took to get from our front steps to our neighbors and felt ourselves slipping into an entire new community.  One of the top ten things were looking for in our home search was a feeling of neighborhood and connection with neighbors and this time the universe provided.  We had a little taste of neighborliness at our old house with some fantastic folks and friends who lived on nearby streets and we wanted more!

The aftermath of the move has been a little bumpy as we struggle to find places for all our treasures and get back into a post-Wedding, post-move rhythm.  There is work to do and just general personal care to tend to.  After so much upheaval, both Teri and I are feeling a bit ragged.  We can't help but feel that a life without checklists and trying to find a misplaced sweater would be lovely.  There are new sounds to get used to, new details to absorb (What day is the garbage picked up and what time does the mail get delivered?) and there are all the little daily elements to learn.

We baked a pie last night from apples on one of our backyard apple trees and made note of the fact that this oven runs a little hotter than our last.  We are remembering to lock our side gate at night and learned how speedy it is to ride to the nearby DariMart by bicycle for ice cream.  As we sat with a bunch of our neighbors on Sunday night, we also learned other things--twenty years of history: who lived in the triplets' house before they were born; which houses tend to have trouble with bats roosting in the chimneys; which neighbors take in all the stray cats; and who else commutes by bike or foot.  We are starting to discover a new culture and as students of such things, we find that to be just groovy.  Now if we could just remember which light switch is for the garage and which one is for the dining room!

On the Other Side of the Move

It has been almost three weeks since our ceremony and we are, at last, reasonably settled in our new house...August has been intense.  It seems ages ago that we were baking cakes and barking orders at visiting relatives.  Now we are getting used to new "house noises," meeting our new neighbors and unearthing yet one more box of books that needs to find a home.  The amazing fact that we have survived so much upheaval is not lost on us but, seriously, what were we thinking?

Our new-to-us house is a typical, post WWII West Coast one-story: Two bedrooms, little bathroom with an ample tub, living room that leads to kitchen that leads to dining nook and an attached garage that is too small to park a car in, but just right for bicycles, camping gear and the washer and dryer. When I stand in the kitchen, I get the strange sensation that I am standing in my grandparents' kitchen since the layout is exactly the same--the location of the sink in relation to the stove, refrigerator, cabinets. This house feels completely different than our last one and we like it!

Last night, as we were sitting in the living room after taking a good walk down to the river, over to the rose garden, and back through the neighborhood, Teri mentioned that in this house, she has the overwhelming sensation of being right in the middle of life.  Whereas our old house felt like it was tucked into the edge of things and surrounded by trees and neighbors we couldn't get to know, the openness, airy-ness and nearness to downtown makes it feel as though we are pulsing along with a new rhythm of now. We are living in a community.

Change can be good for the soul and experiencing change with a partner can be both extra-challenging and extra-invigorating.  This move was completely different for me than any other move I've done (and I've done plenty!) Teri did so much of the organizing, packing and coordinating that I truly didn't feel like I had to do it all on my own; I just let go of so much and let her be in charge.  I did the finding, negotiating, phone calls, truck renting and address/service changing but dividing up the tasks and such was seamless.  That isn't to say there weren't cranky moments and disagreements, but all in all it was fun.  Imagine that, a fun middle-age move!

So, with the garage left to tackle and the art-on-the-wall negotiations remaining, we are through the bulk of the move and we have left the "practice house" for good!

Newlyweds

Finding the words to re-cap the last few days seems nearly impossible. There have been nudgings for me to get back to putting something down here in the blog but, to be honest, it isn't like the day after the Wedding life went back to some breezy easy mode.  In fact, this morning (Wednesday) was the first morning that felt somewhat "old school."  Even if our house is filling up with boxes and we are both focused on our pending move in just over a week and a half, the Wedding finally feels in the past.

Last night, over the last bottle of champagne, Teri and I finally had some time to the two of us to just talk.  We talked about our favorite parts and the amazing joys, but we also shared our disappointments and what we thought would go differently or what we forgot.  There was gushing, of course, but for two pragmatic and practically-minded women, we couldn't help but make some room for the other too.

As "newlyweds," we do not feel any more committed to each other than we did before.  What does feel different is that our commitment is legitimized in a deeper way for our family, friends, and the community we care so much about.  The entire process has given us the opportunity to get to know each other even more--strengths, weaknesses, idiosyncrasies; it has allowed us some time to fully embrace our different families, meet each others' friends, and accept the unchangeable.  We have had to talk about and work through some pretty bumpy stuff in a fairly public way. We jumped into a journey that has been personal, emotional, political, spiritual, and practical and invited the world in to participate in that journey with us.

I know this woman pretty darn well after three years, but there is plenty more to come.  One of my favorite parts of our vows was when we promised to trust in the other's abiding love.  Partnered with our vow to strive to not take each other for granted, we've committed to companionship and love; we've committed to each other, to our kids, to our families and to our friends--those we already know and those who have yet to find their way into our lives.

Teri and I are still the same women we were before cakes and baked ham and champagne toasts; and the world is still the same world it was before two women stood under a beautiful arbor in a crowded garden--but I like to think that there is a renewed bubbling of love, a strengthening of community, and a hopefulness in the ability we humans have to come together in a grand metaphorical embrace.  My life may be a sloppy prayer, but nonetheless, it is an attempt at just that: beauty, love, attachment, compassion, concern--a pledge; a vow; a promise.

So, This is What One Day Away Looks Like?

There is no turning back now--well, I guess, technically, there is always a turning back but for Teri and I, we are so in full swing Wedding Land now it appears there is nowhere to go but onward.  No more second-guessing--the garden isn't going to get any greener, the house isn't going to be any cleaner, we aren't going to be any thinner so now it is time to just bring on the party!

Yesterday, Teri and I spent over seven hours baking the cakes and cupcakes.  I have to tell you, it feels a bit naughty to use five pounds of butter in one day.  After beating up the fourth bowl full of buttercream frosting and washing the beaters for the last time, there was no doubt that a drink was in order.  We had just enough time to share a few sips before the late afternoon arrival of family and friends.

In the midst of baking, the flowers arrived: two huge boxes delivered by a congenial Fed-Ex man.  We mistakenly assumed there would be instructions in the boxes telling us what we needed to do with them once we pried open the heavily-stapled boxes to unveil hundreds of blooms and blossoms. We panicked, as if a delay in 10 minutes would cause every last stem to wilt and amidst our panic I barked, "Call Rhonda!"  Rhonda is Teri's coworker and a flower and garden maven; she is also helping us with the arranging and such with the flowers so we figured of all the people we knew who might be able to talk us through a two-bride panic, she would be the one.  She did and I have a suspicion that she could sense our hysteria as she reassuringly guided us via cell phone in getting them into buckets of water.  The are taking up space in the coolest, darkest room of our house which just so happens to be our bedroom.  Who knew we would get to fall asleep surrounded by 80 long stems of sunflowers and hundreds of other roses, lilies and statice?

Today will be full, but in such a glorious way. I won't be making 20 pounds of potato salad by myself and Teri gets to make pies with her mother and her daughter. My grown kids and the Becher boys get to reunite and reacquaint after not seeing each other for fifteen years. My BFF Wendy and my BFF Doreen--two very different women--get to meet each other at last as they both pitch in to help. Our lesbian friends, our gay friends, our kids, Teri's parents, our sisters, my oldest pals--all squeezing in and around our little bungalow to arrange chairs and hang paper lanterns.  Last night, after coming back from dinner and while two dozen eggs hard boiled, Teri and I shared a glass of wine and commented that there are certainly easier ways to do a Wedding, but our goal of having a collaborative, shared experience is starting to feel very worth it.

The Four-Day Drill Sergeant

Honestly?  I am not sure whether to apologize for my foibles and flaws or call out to have my awesome bossiness celebrated...I imagine it all depends on a person's perspective and relative closeness to my current tendency to micromanage.  Seriously, though, there's stuff to do and very little time to do it in.  If it wasn't for our checklists and spreadsheets and the fact that we really are very organized, I might feel even more tyrannical. In the immortal words of Mary Poppins, "spit spot!" and in the echoing words of my dad, "We're burning daylight!"

The other day Teri put up some definite boundaries when she told me to go to work and micromanage them and stop micromanaging her. I couldn't tell her that the staff  was probably breathing a sigh of relief that I was at home and not up in their business on the work front (although it is in my job description.)  Part of me figures I can just apologize later all around for being such a drill sergeant and pushing us all along.  I am sorry, but not sorry enough to stop my behaviors...yet.

My justification is that four days is NOT very much time.  That is only 96 hours if I'm doing the math correctly.  96 hours to do all the things that couldn't be done until now: the cooking, baking, decorating, practicing, entertaining and final sprucing and cleaning of EVERYTHING IN THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD.  Okay, that was a little drama for humor's sake, but really, lots to do. The differences in our temperaments and pacing couldn't be more pronounced right about now between Teri and I and underneath is a whole lotta anxiety.  My way of dealing with the nervousness is to stay focused on coordinating and doing while I think Teri would prefer to curl up and hide out from the bustle and pressure.  Both perfectly justifiable approaches, mind you, but not the most compatible. As Teri commented with exasperation yesterday, "As soon as I finish one thing, I have to move right on to the next!"  That's the key to how it works as distraction!

I am trying to ease up or at least have some compassionate humor about the fact that I am tapping my baton and blowing my whistle (metaphorically, of course, although had I thought ahead a little...) I really do have some idealistic vision of turning over some of this to my Best Gal Wendy when she arrives on Thursday.  Surely she won't be too exhausted after driving all the way from Indiana with her two young adult sons?  In the end, it is going to be what it is going to be--but with 96 hours to go, Onward!

Who Will be Missing

Summer tends to be a somewhat nostalgic time for me anyway--as the years stack up, I find that the slow, warm days of Summer seem to fertilize memories and those creeping moments of nostalgia catch me when I am simply going about my day.  The smell of drying cedar trees, a growing breeze that shuffles along a garden hedge, the sound of bees buzzing around the lavender blossoms, the first taste of dripping, locally grown cantaloupe--Summer now reminds me of Summers then...

Throughout the Wedding Planning process, I have been overlapping the current with the past in what sometimes feels intensely spiritual and at other times is emotionally annoying.  Both Teri and I have found ourselves talking about our history books of weddings, births, loves, funerals and all the various incarnations of ourselves; we catch ourselves talking about and feeling the bittersweet presence of ghosts--all those people who have created the women we have become, but who are no longer alive in the expected sense.  Recently, Teri told me about a tribe of people she was reading about who have three different words for people--one for those who are still physically alive, one for those who have been dead a long time, and one for those who are dead, but there are still living people within the tribe who have memories of them--that third, middle, life-and-death-straddling group is the one I think of as the ghosts that move in and around my every day.

I was visiting my mother a couple weeks ago and she shared that it is during gatherings--birthdays, holidays, weekends when the "kids" are visiting that she has moments where she expects to see my dad (who has been dead amost 2 years) come walking across the yard.  I understand this.  As our Wedding day approaches, I feel the presence acutely of those people who will not be in attendance in any way but my mind and memories.

My life is full of useful sacred objects connected to these ghosts and memories.  You wouldn't know them to see them if you waltzed through our house but I do: a battered orange plastic pitcher that was my Grandma Peggy's "kool-aid" pitcher.  There is a scratchy line etched on the inside to show you where the water fill line is; a pair of wire reading glasses that were my dad's when he died--it is all I've taken as my legacy; my marble rolling pin that was given to me as a wedding gift the first time around by my late great-grandmother--the wooden handles are long-gone but I still use the rolling pin and imagine I will until I'm done in this world; scarves and costume jewelry that belonged to my Grandma Jean; worn table linens with the name "Rodley" stamped on the hem edges that belonged to my Grandma Rodley; a diamond ring my Grandpa Tuff gave to my mother. Teri has her sacred objects too--as I was finishing up the ironing of all the tablecloths yesterday, I found myself getting a little weepy and when I got to a beautiful and well-used cloth of Irish linen patterned all over with faint clovers that is Teri's, I realized that I was ironing it for the first time as part of "us" and wondering at all the O'Leary meals that may have been shared across that tablecloth.

To someone else, these items are just the "things" that make up the set dressing of our lives, but for us, they hold little pieces of the essence of those who we have not completely let go. While they may not be here in body for our ceremony or our merging of lives, and we don't get to know exactly how they would feel about the whole thing anyway, we can only imagine.  Since my grandmother who is still with us, will be at our ceremony and celebration, and I was out when all of my grandparents and dad were alive, I like to think that they would be mingling and sharing in our day--regardless, they have all been with me throughout this process.