Is a marriage really a marriage if you never think about divorce? This month marks nine years since Crankenstein and I started dating, eight since our engagement, and six since we were married. Some of those years were happy, others a mixed bag. More than once we’ve discussed ending things altogether. We persist partly because we’re stubborn and mostly because we know how rare it is to find a meaningful connection with anyone at all — much less someone who is, as Bruce Springsteen put it, “tougher than the rest.”
There is a strange suspense, tinged with sadness, that accompanies any long-term relationship — the question of how it concludes. We know our marriage will end in one of three ways: with my death, or hers, or that of our love. “And now we wait,” I sometimes think, a morbid disclosure that made her cackle as she read this. (I wonder about my death in much the same way — how far away is it? How ignoble will it be? I imagine something abrupt and ridiculous and purely accidental, accompanied by a final thought of “Oh, shit.”)
But back to marriage. As I mentioned last year on this same occasion, Crankenstein and I saw The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies on our first movie date. I had no idea what was happening (naturally, she was enthralled) and wasn’t sure the film would ever end. “The things I do for love,” Jaime Lannister sighed on Game of Thrones before pushing a child from a window. That was another series I watched for my dragon-loving spouse.
I’ve also sat, Jewishly and agonistically, through many an Episcopal church service, politely refraining from groaning when the songs are from The Hymnal 1982 instead of Lift Every Voice and Sing II. I’ve dutifully attended her boring faculty parties without asking her colleagues if my insurance will be charged for our interactions. I’ve endured interminable chamber chorus concerts (including one conducted entirely in German, a language that makes me nervous and which I do not speak), and bitten my tongue until it metaphorically bled in the presence of her family. I’ve made significant personal sacrifices in service to her career, while understanding she probably wouldn’t do the same if our roles were reversed.
For her part, Crankenstein benevolently tolerates my excessive tennis-watching and occasionally feigns interest in matches. She has stayed awake through my homemade presentations about FSAs and 403(b)s and why we should fund them, even as it bored her more than calculus-based physics. She indulges me on walks when I pause in front of neighbors’ houses to lament clogged gutters, sagging retaining walls and other signs of poor drainage. She has saved my life on occasions when lesser women would’ve happily allowed me to die, and she doesn’t cut and run when things get tough: she digs her heels in deeper.
One of the kindest things she ever did for me was on another early movie date, when she noticed my tears during Into the Woods. She knew why “Sometimes people leave you halfway through the wood/Do not let it grieve you, no one leaves for good” resonated less than a year after my life imploded.* It didn’t upset her or offend her or give her second thoughts; she’d spent a lot of time in the emotional wilderness herself in the first half of 2014. Instead she squeezed my hand and smiled. It was the opposite of the pyrotechnic immaturity to which I was accustomed.
Six months later, as the Pixar short Lava played before a showing of Inside-Out** — it’s a five-minute story-song about lonely volcanoes finding happiness together — we glanced at each other to find we were both teary-eyed, and Crankenstein again reached for my hand. It feels like a lifetime ago now, after the trials of the last few years. Crankenstein barely held it together during much of the pandemic and occasionally marvels that I stuck around. I feel similarly about her patience during this Parkinson’s surprise and the long build-up to figuring out what was wrong. Throughout it all, we still exchanged “I lava yous,” knowing from past experience that it’s better to be on the brink of extinction together than apart.
*The soundtrack to that 2014 Disney adaptation has nothing on Bernadette Peters or Joanna Gleason.
**Fear not, we aren’t Disney adults. Crankenstein’s a pediatric subspecialist and keeps up with kid stuff so she can speak their language. Or so she claims.