Category: Marriage Enrichment

Dear Eddie, Sometimes, I feel like we are being chased by lists. Lists help me to organize, and lists work for pleasant tasks, but being chased by lists messes with my sense of calm. I don’t want to add to your anxiety, but I am certainly happy to have you as a partner in facing the lists of the less than pleasant parts of living.

Lists make demands in different ways. We laughed about the difference between the window sticker in your ‘91 Mighty Max truck and the digital panel in the 2015 Sonata. Your sticker quietly suggests that you are about 100 miles short of needing an oil change. The Sonata computer, on the other hand, warned us as we approached the scheduled service date; with every start, we were told “You are due for service in — miles.” When Zero day arrived, the panel kicked up a Diamond Exclamation Point warning. With every ignition, it threatened, “You are – miles overdue for service.” And the warning indicator sat there until the service was completed. I am the list maker and the rule keeper; your attitude toward problem solving safeguards our coupleness in dealing with the lists, in whatever manner they present..

With lists of recurring responsibilities, you either put up with, go along with, or share in what needs to be done. If I can take care of the tasks like paying bills on time, keeping up with biannual bills like insurances and taxes, you let me do it, and you thank me for the attention I pay to the detail. When we both have to be inconvenienced by the same things like regular blood work and flu shots, we accompany one another. When it is your thing like pacemaker checks, or my thing like eye specialists, we express our appreciation for the company given. We can grouse about the necessity of these tasks, but you affirm that we are a team. It may seem dumb but we even have a Shingles shot date for January when the resupply comes in. Yes, it is on the list again even though we were responsible about that issue ten years ago.

There are some doozies In the list of financial things that chase us. They threaten our sense of security. Some of them look innocuous enough like painting the house. We sat for years, commenting on the soot darkening the living room ceiling from our enjoyable wintertime fires. But dipping into liquid funds to do something about it was a major effort. Likewise, not everyone drives vehicles until they drop. Even using liquid funds to buy pre-owned vehicles may take us years of “if-then-whens.” Thanks for having learned that I have fiscal security buttons, You honor them and me while also being insistent that we move ahead even if it is difficult.

And, heavens, let the lists chasing us be about more than money and threaten our life together in the ultimate sense, we can put something off ad infinitum. Thank you so much for repeatedly having the painful conversations with me. Updating wills and checking on beneficiaries takes saying words like, “If —- should predecease, …” Yuck! But we are responsible grownups, and you are my excellent teammate. Let’s march right in to the refrigerator and put some stars and “way to gos” on that Growth Plan. We get some big check marks this six months. The paint is renewed, the car is sweet, the wills and beneficiaries are updated—for now, anyway. Together, I am confident we will deal with what comes. I love you. Sylvia

Darling Sylvia,  Our marriage, like my football,  is a participatory sport.    Neither is a game for the timid.  There can be no half way measures. In our marriage, we wholeheartedly participate. Our marriage  is a participatory sport. No watching from the stadium seats is tolerated.

Last Saturday’s 50^th reunion of Alma College’s 1967-68 Conference Championship Teams was a sight to behold.  Twenty-five of the forty members attended.  They were very pleased to see that teammates were still vertical.  Their memories of events 50 years ago were more vivid than what had happened the previous week.  Some of the stories were even true.

During the drive home to Georgia, I kept thinking of what had been told.  It’s amazing that I came up with the notion that what I learned as a member of the squad is used every day in our marriage.  The first issue was commitment.  I was all in for the team.  Commitment to our marriage is not half way.  Being a member of a team or marriage means that it is more important than self.  Sometimes you lead and sometimes you follow.

In our marriage, I need to speak for self and listen for understanding.   In Robby’s Raiders, the kickoff team, we knew the rules and stayed in our own lanes.  On the defensive team, I needed to know where Dillingham, Shrope, Roger, and Zinns were at all times.  Their chatter told me where they were and what they were going to do.  As a couple, we have had to learn skills and unlearn habits in order to keep our messages clear.  We have learned to trust each other’s intent and actions.

In football, we practiced our actions until they were automatic.  Practice did not make us perfect, but it did make us better. In marriage, the practicing of speaking and listening skills is fundamental. We never lose the need to practice both.  Practice is hard work, but it does make us better.

On a brisk fall football Saturday in 1969, I saw your tears. You were looking out of the window of the laundry across the street from the University of Minnesota Golden Gopher Stadium.  They were playing Michigan State, and the crowds were gathering.  You asked, “Don’t you ever want to go to the game?”  Not for the first or last time you mystified me.  I replied, “No, football for me was a participatory sport. I was on the field or on the bench but never in the stands.”   After all these years, I am so glad that you have made our marriage a participatory sport.  You have never allowed me to move to the stands.

Love, Eddie Bert

Dear Eddie:
You have a knack. What a funny word but the proper one. You have “an acquired or natural skill” at performing a task. You really have a knack with flowers, and you have a knack with me.

Dr. Rob’s Garden Bouquets is making regular appearances at the Waleksa Farmers’ Market. You provide a bright spot for strollers as well as for those who adopt your creations. Daily, you sweat through multiple sets of clothes weeding in the garden. Wednesdays, you cut so the flowers can “harden.” On Wednesday nights, you assemble color and filler. Zinnias, sunflowers, cosmos, and celosia are joined with mint, basil, pampas or whatever else looks pretty with them. One week, the palette is pink, another orange, another yellow.

You have a knack with flowers. You also have a knack for including me. I have never been required to sweat in the garden to have your attention. Sometimes, you like for me to sit and read in your vicinity, but, either way, flowers appear by the kitchen sink, on the mantel, in the bathrooms. I just add the “Ooo, Ahhh, Gee, Wow” factor. This summer, I am happy to be part of your market experience.

By 7:30 Thursday mornings, we are setting up the stall—the canopy, the table, the vases, the buckets of flowers. We started with two chairs, and then, one morning, you loaded the wicker lovereat instead. And that showed your knack for doing something different to connect with me. It happened to be an atypical cold, rainy August day. You cuddled me up to keep me warm and dry. We were not comfortable, but I was comforted. Now, the loveseat always goes to market, rain or shine.

Your knack for connecting with me changed an already joint experience into a romantic experience. Changing the loveseat for the chairs makes the 9 to 1 time block a long date. We get smiles from some. We are kidded by some. It is all good. We have learned that doing something different together turns up the romance. Who would have thought that something different could be a change of seating? Thank you, dearest.

Love, Sylvia

Darling Sylvia, Living in the moment and intentionally putting ourselves in position where miracles can happen are skills that we have honed together.  They are gifts you gave me that keep on giving.   Forrest Gump said, “Life is like a box of chocolates.” It has been a summer of sweet surprises, but when you returned from 8^th grade open house last night, I knew any lazy, hazy days of summer were over.

For real, our days this summer have been anything but lazy. With your guidance, we put ourselves in position to make memories with our three grandchildren.  We have intentionally invested in our grands and in we two.  Our time at the lake was lived fully in the moment and will be remembered to tell and retell.  We watched our boy’s canoe being hauled across the lake by his first big  large mouthed bass.  We stood in awe when he cleaned the bass and discovered the blue gill in its stomach.  We baked silver turtle pocket meals in the fire pit and feasted.  We celebrated that this year our baby could swim like a muskrat. She and her brother played freighters and tugboats instead of battleships, and big sister sang the score of Hamilton while treading water just for the heck of it.  We caravaned to Attica for ice cream at the Chilly Cow accompanied by the harmony of silly bus stop songs.

And then, there was Greenfield Village. In 1957, you went to a Girl Scout overnight there. While courting in 1967, you took me, and you gave me Luther Burbank’s Garden Cottage library list one Christmas.   As young parents, we visited with our children and your mother. This year, we once again went to the roundhouse and rode the train with its steam locomotive belching smoke. Afterwards, I watched Big Sis pick cinders out of your hair and wipe a sooty moustache off Little Sis’s face. Like the Grinch my heart doubled in size.  I rode in the back of a 1928 Model T and listened as Mr. Mechanic in the front seat with the driver asked questions about H frames. We rode the hundred-year-old carousel.   I listened to our kids, who know everything from books and television, rave about our visit to the Wright Brothers’ Bicycle Shop and Edison’s Menlo Park Lab. Greenfield Village became part of who they are.  In our sharing, we are connected in our experiences. You put us all in position to link past, present and future.

At five-thirty this morning, while letting out Peter the cat, I discovered the light from the red moon was so bright that I could see my moon shadow on the deck.  This summer, our moon shadows became part of our grands. I hope they will have those gifts for as long as they live.

Love you, Eddie Bert

Dear Eddie, A great pleasure in my life is watching you. Over the years, cameras have repeatedly captured my rapt expression as I watch you carrying on. You could be talking to friends or students. The look on my face says, “Oh my, where is he going with this? But, ain’t he somethin’!” In the Dollar General the other day, I spoke to a former student. He asked about you, of course. He said, “Dr. Rob would start off talking like a normal person, and then the botanist would kick in, and I would not have a clue.” And, when the Dr. Rob persona kicks in, I sometimes wonder “What on Earth” And, I find you have touched a heart, eased a pain, brought a memory or a smile. I love watching you talk.

This morning at the cabin, in the cool after a long rainy night, you are asleep on the long couch. One cat is behind your knees; the other is balanced on your hip. You rolled over when I moved out of the cradle of your arms. I think of watching you piled up with grandbabies on that couch, and I remember you with our kids. I remember a baby CJ sleeping on your chest, and I remember a small Nate sleeping in your crotch with ABear and you saying you once slept like that with your dad in Walter Cronkite days. I smile, watching you sleep.

And I watch you work. Once it was rewriting lectures every summer. More recently, it is you working in the garden for hours every day since last frost. We joke about how many sets of clothes Papa sweated through today. We also have the prettiest flowers and the tastiest table imaginable. Facebook kicked up a memory of Aryn eating white raspberries out of one hand and broccoli out of the other. And you are playing with the Farm Market again this year. I adore watching you teaching Abby how to make garden bouquets with the right kind and number of stems and the fillers of mint or basil or oregano. Your mama taught you well. I love watching you work.

So, in this week which began with Father’s Day and includes our 49^th wedding anniversary, let me assure you that I am still watching you, and I am fascinated!

Love, Sylvia

Dear Sylvia: I had been proactive and given Charity my old tux to be refitted.  You asked me if I had spoken to her about it. I saw the words shoot out of my mouth.  I was not incompetent.  I was not stupid. I had taken charge. I was proud of myself. My reply was hot and mean.  I meant to hurt you, and I did.

In response to my anger, you calmly walked out of the closet with my old tux in hand.  I had sent my new suit to Atlanta. It was apparent that this Grayling boy did not know the difference between a tux and a suit.

Last July, I inadvertently mixed up my Round-Up and Malathion sprayers.  I proceeded to spray my prize roses, hollyhock and Althea with herbicide.  I realized my mistake too late.  Three weeks later, you commented on how the Althea flowers were deformed.  I was forced to give up my pride and admit what a dumb thing I had done and how stupid I felt. After all, Forrest Gump stated that stupid is as stupid does, didn’t he? With nine years of university training in botany, I had made a fundamental mistake.  I failed to read the sprayer label.

Once again, in the case of the tux, I resorted to the old habit of defending my mistakes when I feel stupid. It would have been one thing not to admit my mistake, but I went on to attack with intent to hurt. True to Mom’s dictum, my pride preceded my fall.

In my seventies, I still really do want to be a better man than I was in my twenties. I wish I could unlearn old habits more quickly. You deescalated the tux conversation by not responding in kind. Thank you. We decided that “stupid” is most often a feeling; well, most often. Will you please continue to help me to more quickly admit when I am wrong and to ask forgiveness if I hurt you? I still want to unlearn old habits and to learn new ones that allow me to show you better how much I love you.

Love you – Eddie Bert

Darling Sylvia,   Bluebonnets, Mariposa Lilies, Indian Paintbrush and Starry-Eyed Grass welcomed us back to a Texas spring.  We had made a mistake in our flight plans and found ourselves at Love Field rather than DFW.  As we exited Love in our economy rental car, we were dumped onto Mockingbird Lane.  The familiar name of the road triggered two very different sets of memories.

I thought of being fired at Mobil. Dallas was 41 years ago, and the events of the summer of 1977 traumatized our early years.  The gritty gray industrial flavor of Mockingbird Lane brought back my memories of my failure and the guilt of losing a job that put my young family at risk.

You, on the other hand, thought of our home on Willow Crest Lane.  It was where you nursed and weaned our Nate.  It was a beautiful house and a hopeful time in our life.  We were making a lovely home.  Your dad had given his seal of approval.  He wrote to you that I had said we would be back in the States by Christmas, and we were.  He could trust that I was a man of action and could care for you. We bought the house in the springtime.

We used the Navigator to find our home.  The house and yard were smaller than they were in 1977.  We had to sell seven months after buying.  I had been fired, lost a home, and made the future scary.  In our need, we reached out for help to Charlie Standifer,  our Methodist pastor.  He patiently listened to our pain and then calmed us by telling us the truth,  “Listen guys. It sounds like you both love the Lord, each other, your children and have between you five college degrees. You just need a job.” 

At Baylor, we met with our Better Marriages family.  Among the conference attendees were young Masters Degree Social Work Students. They were pretty babies with so much to learn about life ahead of them.  Reflected in their faces were the kids we once were.  In my mind, our pair was as vivid as the bluebonnets.

We had our dialogue, and we forgave the kids we were for the mistakes we made and the ways we hurt each other so long ago.Thank you for forgiving the child I was, and for helping me become the man I am today.

Love you – Eddie Bert

Dear Eddie,  It is an invaluable gift that we learned to turn toward one another–often, daily, in joy, in fun, in trouble, in anger. Dr. John Gottman describes the turning toward behavior in his marriage research. I am more fortunate; I get to live it with you. Even though I know that I also turn toward you, I am most conscious of the many times you turn toward me. When you are reading and think something is thought provoking or funny, you tell me about it. If you find some incident with the grandchildren precious or hilarious, I hear about it. When your chicks down another feeder refill of crumbles in record time, I know it.  If you are feeling outrageous or “inappropriate,” I’m the one who gets to share. Those ways that you live your life with me are intimate and dear to me. I feel secure and cherished in those connections.

I know it is more difficult to turn back toward me if there is some distance or brokenness between us–from too much busyness, neglect, disappointment, or plain old mad. And, you do it anyway. I am so glad that you do. You may have to cool down, cogitate for a while, reframe, or find some starter words but here you are again, turning toward me—knee to knee, heart to heart—reconnecting.

I know we were taught the skill of turning toward each other. Fun stuff was easier, but turning toward was not always second nature, especially with hard emotions. We were told that deciding to deliberately turn toward or back toward each other would get us “where we wanted to be.” Now, we even like the words “turning toward.”  We get excited when we witness other couples doing the behavior, sometimes in our groups. We know that place of connection is where we can learn about ourselves and each other in safe space we have created together.

Thank you, sweet man, for every time you turn toward me.

Love, Sylvia

Darling Sylvia, We were friends that became lovers. It all started when we were assigned as lab partners in Dr. Potter’s Bonehead Chemistry Lab.  You were bright, hot, and safe. I was with ‘her,’ you were with ‘him.’ We could be flirty friends. Winter Bust Out in Tyler Auditorium occurred. ‘She’ was at home. You were leaning against the stage.  “Why, hello there, sweet young thing.  Do you want to dance? “

“Goodbye for the summer.” Another fall football season and “have a nice life, Joanna.“  “Hello there, Sylvia. How about a hayride and a movie?” “You don’t kiss on a first date? Well I DO.”  At Christmas, it was time to get rid of Mitch! “Make a choice–him or me?”  I gave you a Christmas gift as a token of my feelings. What was I thinking? You came back with the Tiger Eye necklace around your neck and a smile that clearly told me that it was me.  What had I done? We were very special friends; why would I ruin that? In spite of the risks, we were friends that became lovers.

I knew you were bright, but suddenly I realized you were also drop dead gorgeous.  Your eyes, your smile, were no longer niceties but had become necessities.  Becoming lovers was the last thing I wanted.  How could I run away from my best friend? I did not run away and was surprised to learn that I did not want to escape. On the way back from Dr. Kapp’s spring field trip to canoe the Manistee, you met Mom.   Another summer with lots of letters (no texts or Skype). Meeting you with your family at Wert’s Lone Pine Restaurant was a surprise.  A private kiss out of your brothers’ view sealed the deal.

You take risks with real friends. You become truthful. You share your soul.  Your soul is beautiful, and you loved me more than I loved me.  I could no longer be the best me without you at my side. Best friends became lovers. In June of 1969, we became husband and wife.  As we grew together, we added trust and forgiveness to our repertoire. This June, we will have been lovers and friends through 49 years.  You have graced my life.  I do not know what the next years will bring, but I do know that we will only become better together. Our marriage is an ascending staircase, and it grows more intimate every step of our way.

I am so very grateful to Dr. Potter for the Fundamentals of Chemistry. That class changed the path of my life forever.

Love you, Eddie Bert

Darling Playmate, I have laughed often lately at how we play. We get the giggles in the kitchen. We get silly in the bathroom. We share jokes with each other that other family members would not get, should not get. We have been a thousand places together and shared thousands of experiences and laughs. When we play, we make memories together. Our memories are part of our glue. I am so glad.

It has been frigid in Georgia this winter. Too cold to play? As transplants from the northland, we know we have little about which to complain. This week, the cold brought back memories of a favorite Minnesota day in the Seventies. We were grad students with few pennies. It was a snowy Saturday, with sunshine sparkling. We took a road trip to Red Wing, south on the Mississippi. The heater in our little red Chevy II blew hard against the zero temps outside. We were totally cozy. We visited the pottery, saw the boot factory, and watched Bald Eagles fishing in the scarce open ice where the Chippewa met the big river. We had lunch somewhere, crossed into Wisconsin on one of the little bridges, and returned north via Siren, WI. You and Me.

Yesterday, we went out to play. Sandhill Cranes wintering in Tennessee called our names. The day was sunny; the high temp was 34. We bundled up and headed north. In Birchwood, we boarded an old school bus shuttle to the Hiawassee Wildlife Refuge. Thousands of beautiful birds did their thing while we admired them, held hands, and kept each other warm. We reminisced about our Sandhill times in Florida, Wisconsin, Michigan, Nebraska—Now, that was a frigid trip. I love you, Eddie Bert. Let’s go play again soon. And, let’s never stop laughing.

Love, Sylvia