Marriage By The Numbers

"I've lived in all the houses he's built. The one in the air. The one underground. The one in the water. The one on the sand." Carly Simon from We're So Close


I've been married most of my life. That fact occurred to me as our wedding anniversary approached. It also made me wonder just how many times I've asked my husband what he'd like for dinner. Or watch on Netflix. Or make weekend plans. How often has miscommunication been the unwelcome cause for an argument? We can't even count the times we've howled with laughter in a car or sat in angry silence as the miles dragged by. 

Marriage, including mine, continues to change and evolve. Americans are still getting married but at an older age. The median age of first marriages has hit its highest point on record according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Median age for men is 30 years; median age for women - 28 years. And whom we're marrying is changing. Since 1967, there's been a steady increase of Americans marrying someone of a different ethnicity, reported Pew Research Center. Also, 39% of Americans (married since 2010) are married to someone of a different religion. What's a bit more certain about marriage is that you're most likely to choose a mate who agrees with you politically. A poll conducted by the Pew Research Center found that 77% of both Democrats and Republicans have spouses of the same party.

What hasn't changed is marrying for love. And 88% of us apparently believe love is the reason to marry according to Pew Research Center. And how do we remain in venerable wedlock? In a 2015 survey, the Center found that 64% of Americans believe that shared interests help us to stay married. 

Maybe it's also all those times our eyes meet across a crowded room and we know exactly what each other is thinking.

We have a long history together. We are each other's history. 

This is our marriage:

Apartments - 5
Houses - 3
Cars - 11
States Lived In - 4
Sets of Dishes - 4
Vacations Alone - 1
Living Room Couches - 5
Number of Years Promised to Try This Marriage Thing Until Amicable Separation - 50
Ferry Rides - 5
Trips to ER - 3
Forgotten Anniversary - 0
Exchanged Same Anniversary Card - 1
Car Accidents - 2
Longest Road Trip - 4725 miles, Florida to Alaska
Shared Food Poisoning - 1
Trips to Graceland - 1
Countries Visited Together - 3
IRS audits - 2
Pets - 2
Renewed Vows - Almost once in Las Vegas but changed mind and went to Cirque du Soleil "O" instead
Months of Dating Before Proposal - 3 

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"...there's a full moon rising. Let's go dancing in the light. We know where the music's playing. Let's go out and feel the night. I want to see you dance again on this harvest moon." Neil Young "Harvest Moon" 1992 

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Marriage between the covers...the classics

Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
The Age of Innocence - Edith Wharton
Rebecca - Daphne DuMaurier
Northanger Abbey - Jane Austen
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? - Edward Albee
MacBeth - William Shakespeare
Angle of Repose - Wallace Stegner
Joy in the Morning - Betty Smith
The Awakening - Kate Chopin

Marriage between the covers...thrillers

Gone Girl - Gillian Flynn
The Silent Wife - A.S.A. Harrison
Lisey's Story - Stephen King
The Breakdown - B.A. Paris
Every Last Lie - Mary Kubica
The Guest Room - Chris Bohjalian
Don't Go - Lisa Scottoline
The Last Mrs. Parrish - Liv Constantine
The Couple Next Door - Shari Lapena

Marriage between the covers...general

Becoming Mrs. Lewis - Patti Callahan
The Husband's Secret - Liane Moriarty
The Amateur Marriage - Anne Tyler
The Salt House - Lisa Duffy
All We Ever Wanted - Emily Giffin
The Wife - Meg Wolitzer
Waiting - Ha Jin
The Paris Wife - Paula McLain
Sea Change - Karen White
Silver Wedding - Maeve Binchy
Bird in Hand - Christina Baker Kline
Small Blessings - Martha Woodroof
A Change in Altitude - Anita Shreve
Loving Frank - Nancy Horan
Mrs. Kimble - Jennifer Haigh
The Bride's House; The Patchwork Bride - Sandra Dallas
Mrs. Bridge - Evan Connell 

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                    Is it summer yet?

"To sit in the shade on a fine day and look upon verdure is the most perfect refreshment." Jane Austen, from Mansfield Park


Dreams of summer were, perhaps, never more vivid or more desired than during this past winter. In the Upper Midwest, we expect snow, cold temperatures, cars struggling to start, and afternoons spent staring out at the gray heavy skies and wishing to be almost anywhere else.

However, this winter was tougher (and longer) than most. I usually love winter - at least the accessories: hot chocolate, lovely scarves, crossword puzzles, pine-scented candles, and fuzzy mittens - the whole Hygga life.

No amount of simmering soup or hot tea helped speed up the winter that would not quit. On January 31, my community hit an all-time low of -30. That's not wind chill, it's the actual temperature that frigid day.

And the snow? No matter how often the sidewalks and drives were shoveled, more snow appeared as if by magic. Walking to a friend's house for tea one morning, I was joined by my trusty snow shovel which served both as a makeshift crutch guarding me from buried ice, as well as doing some  shoveling along the way. 

Summer living room 

Now the fourth snowiest winter on record has been laid to rest. The best things about summer have arrived: sweet chunks of watermelon, dazzling flowers, brilliant colors on everything from Capri pants to tote bags, and temperatures that are not measured in negative numbers.

Jane Austen would've most likely approved of a porch, wicker chair, and a good book on a summer afternoon.

                            Summer Reading List

Vacationers - Emma Straub
Beach Music - Pat Conroy
Dandelion Wine - Ray Bradbury
The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
Summer Sisters - Judy Blume
In a Dark Dark Wood - Ruth Ware
Prodigal Summer - Barbara Kingsolver
A Room With a View - E.M. Forster
A Month of Summer - Lisa Wingate
The House at Riverton - Kate Morton
Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle-Stop Cafe - Fannie Flagg
Divine Secrets of the YaYa Sisterhood - Rebecca Wells
Atonement - Ian McEwan
Summer of '42 - Herman Raucher
A Midsummer's Night Dream - William Shakespeare

Looking for lighter summer beach reads? Check out Luanne Rice, Elin Hilderbrand, Dorothea Benton Frank, Mary Kay Andrews, Mary Alice Monroe and Debbie Macomber.

Racine, WI

 

No matter your age, young adult books can transport you to a long ago summer...Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants by Ann Brashares or I Know What You Did Last Summer by Lois Duncan. 

I'm reading Summer Wives by Beatriz Williams.






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        Would you have dinner with me?

"Inject a few raisins of conversation into the tasteless dough of existence." >> O. Henry


It's a reliable cocktail party question, a breaking the ice question, an English Lit 101 class question - what three writers, dead or alive, would you invite to dinner?

And this past spring, when Alison Weir, author of Jane Seymour, the Haunted Queen, was asked that age-old question by the New York Times' Book Review, she answered...Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare, and Clive James. Interesting choices to be sure, but one thing jumped out - the writers were all male. No female authors? Not Jane Austen? Not Iris Murdoch? Dorothy Parker? Phyllis Wheatley?

Which authors would you choose to spend an evening with dining, toasting, debating and reveling?

My dinners with writers:

Eudora Welty/Flannery O'Connor/John Steinbeck

Ann Patchett/Curtis Sittenfeld/David Foster Wallace

Daphne DuMaurier/Shirley Jackson/Stephen King

Charlotte Bronte/Emily Dickinson/Henry James

Mary Wollstonecraft/Nellie Bly/Ralph Ellison

Sandra Cisneros/Edna O'Brien/Henrik Ibsen

Margaret Atwood/Ursula Le Guin/JRR Tolkien

Jane Austen/Alice Munro/Chris Bohjalian

Alice Walker/Gloria Steinem/TC Boyle

Phyllis Wheatley/Gwendolyn Brooks/Mary Oliver

Isabel Allende/Zora Neale Hurston/Carson McCullers

Anne Tyler/Elizabeth Berg/Stewart O'Nan

Beverly Cleary/Lois Ehlert/Louise Fitzhugh

The books:

Welty - The Optimist's Daughter
O'Connor - A Good Man is Hard to Find
Steinbeck - The Winter of Our Discontent
Patchett - This is the Story of a Happy Marriage
Sittenfeld - American Wife
Wallace - Consider the Lobster (essays)
DuMaurier - Rebecca
Jackson - The Lottery
King - The Green Mile
Bronte - Jane Eyre
Dickinson - Because I Could Not Stop for Death (poetry)
James - The Portrait of a Lady
Wollstonecraft - A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
Bly - Ten Days in a Mad House
Ellison - Invisible Man
Cisneros - The House on Mango Street
O'Brien - The Country Girls trilogy
Ibsen - A Doll's House
Atwood - The Handmaid's Tale
LeGuin - The Lathe of Heaven
Tolkien - Lord of the Rings
Austen - Northanger Abbey
Munro - Dear Life
Bohjalian - The Sandcastle Girls
Walker - The Color Purple
Steinem - My Life on the Road
Boyle - Tortilla Curtain
Wheatley - Poems of Phyllis Wheatley
Brooks - A Street in Bronzeville (poetry)
Oliver - Devotions (poetry)
Allende - The House of the Spirits
Hurston - Their Eyes Were Watching God
McCullers - The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
Tyler - Earthly Possessions
Elizabeth Berg - We Are All Welcome Here
O'Nan - Emily, Alone
Cleary - Dear Mr. Henshaw (juvenile)   
Ehlert - Growing Vegetable Soup (juvenile)
Fitzhugh - Harriet the Spy (juvenile)

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           It's True. Hell Freezes Over*

"It's cold and it's getting colder. It's gray and white and winter all around. And oh, I must be getting older and all this snow is trying to get me down..." Denver/Taylor/Kniss >1972


The four walls are closing in right about now. Call it what you want - a marshmallow world, a snow globe, or just winter in the upper Midwest. The wind chills are

View through a frosty front door

ridiculously perilous. 40 below - really? Schools, including universities, are closed. Mail and newspaper deliveries postponed. With weary gravitas, newscasters tell us to stay indoors and if we must venture outside to keep it brief, don't talk too much, don't take deep breaths, cover our eyes, and watch for signs of frostbite in less than 15 minutes.

Indoors, there are lists of things to do such as cleaning closets, organizing the basement, catching up on laundry, dusting and vacuuming. But the lists are forgotten as the landscape outside beckons a long look.

My own snow globe

Yes, it's snowing again. Sidewalks disappear under inches of fresh snow. Steam rises from the river. Cars slide. Cabin fever sets in. 

It's almost a relief to hear of one side effect of this snow globe life: we can become lethargic, or to put it bluntly, lazy. This is where hot tea (or cocoa) and books come in. And there's a name for needing warmth and comfort: hygge (HOO-gah). What is hygge? It's a Danish concept all about enjoying life regardless of (cold) weather. (See blog post April 2, 2017) A simple meal, a good book, the cheeriness of a candle are all hallmarks of hygge. And comfy pants, added Louisa Thomsen Brits, author of "The Book of Hygge." Are we really going to argue with Denmark? It's one of the happiest nations on Earth according to the World Happiness Report.

Put the kettle on to boil, choose a favorite blanket and chair, and curl up with a good book (or a map of the Caribbean Sea islands). 

                                 Nonfiction

Bibliophile: An Illustrated Miscellany - Jane Mount

We Are Displaced - Malala Yousfzai

Radium Girls - Kate Moore

Becoming - Michelle Obama

Hunger - Roxane Gay

Mary Queen of Scots - Antonia Fraser

Declutter at the Speed of Life - Dana White

H is for Hawk - Helen Macdonald

                                       Fiction

The Gilded Years - Karin Tanabe

Snow Child - Eowyn Ivey

Becoming Mrs. Lewis - Patti Callahan

Mansfield Park - Jane Austen

Little Fires Everywhere - Celeste Ng

Clock Dance - Anne Tyler

The Chilbury Ladies' Choir - Jennifer Ryan

When the Lights Go Out - Mary Kubica

Truly Madly Guilty - Liane Moriarty

Fates and Traitors - Jennifer Chiaverini

House on Tradd Street - Karen White

The River at Night - Erica Ferencik


*Hell, Michigan (15 miles northwest of Ann Arbor) has indeed frozen over, according to WILX news. On Thursday, the frigid weather was "warming up" with temperatures approaching 0 degrees and a wind chill of -14 degrees.  


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