The Table- something I wrote a long time ago
Some people are not cut out for marriage. One of those people is me.
The last time I got married, I was really hopeful. I mean, even more hopeful than the first two times. But I guess when I look back at it now, the signs were there from the beginning. I just wanted to try anyway, and I thought I was so in love. What I really was was monumentally stupid.
Five years ago we met. A few months later we were dating. Weeks later he was moving in. The signs started then, and instead of recognizing it - I mean, I’d been through this before! - i ignored. I brushed it off. I barely even gave it any thought.
My kids knew. They didn’t have the love to blind them and their eyes were open from the beginning. Especially Kayla. She was 12 when she met him. At first, excited that I was happy. Soon after, disappointed and full of contempt. A few years later and I finally caught up with her. I told myself she was a moody teenager. I told myself she didn’t have the wisdom to understand. Ha!
Funny enough, most of our conflict revolved around the kids. But it was never really about the kids.
The time that strikes me as the first red flag was the controversy with The Table. When he moved in, he moved in The Table from his apartment, a dining room table he cherished for unknown reasons other that he bought it with his own money. It was ugly. I was not a fan of the table. But he wanted the table in the dining room, and I relented. Our house had been lived in by us for most of the kids’ lives, and he had had to throw out or put in storage most of his stuff to fit his life into our house. He wanted to have his place. The Table was it.
Our careworn (shabby chic) but very solid dining room table was relegated to the basement. He removed the legs and started to bring it down. But he was still angry. I had put up a good fight about it. Our table was (in my mind, and very objectively of course) better, nicer and already there. I had spent hours sanding and painting it (plus the 6 matching chairs) during my last pregnancy with Jack 8 years before. I had watched my kids grow up using it. Besides eating at it, the kids had used it daily for homework, messy art projects, hanging out. It had never been a perfectly clean table, and it was full of paint daubs and scuffs and eraser marks and melted wax and marker bleeds. I loved my table too, and it was a struggle for me to see it go. But I finally understood and said OK.
He brought my table to the basement door. The table slid out of his hands, crashed to the bottom of the stairs, and cracked. He didn’t care one way or the other, and told me as much. Red flag number one I guess. And I brushed it off, glad the conflict was over.
But once installed, The Table became a constant source of conflict. The tabletop was made of a veneer of granite squares and every time one of the kids used glue or markers, he was on them about making sure it didn’t scuff the finish. He would lean down and look at it at eye level, ensuring the shine was still apparent and nothing was permanently damaged. Permanent damage was the new catchphrase. If it had only hit me how ironic that was, maybe I would have seen the light.
One time he wanted my daughter to go somewhere else to do a project that involved paint. His communication approach: Hover and note every wayward stroke, lift up paint bottles to make sure they weren’t leaving rings, and openly complain that The Table was not being respected. She didn’t have anywhere else to go, but that really wasn’t his problem. His problem was protecting The Table. In my usual fashion I assuaged and figured out a new place for her to work. But not before rolling my eyes at her. See? Just not cut out for marriage. Always straddling the line of trying to make everyone happy, and making exactly no one happy. Including myself.
Now I know what I should have done: tell him to go to hell. Tell him if he wanted The Table in the house so badly, he should accept that it’s going to be used by the people who live here. Grow a backbone. Not allow my kid to be kicked out while being creative. I suffered for that, in so many ways. But in those days my backbone was embarrassingly weak. It was still developing. I was better than the last iteration of me, but not by nearly enough.
The Table remained pristine until we moved into a new house half a mile away. In that short distance, the movers managed to drop it and destroy an entire corner. I rejoiced. I laughed. I high fived myself in my heart (and the kids when he wasn’t looking). But the joke was on me. The movers went out and found the exact same table, on sale for $300, and brought it to us the next day. Ding dong, The Table is alive. It sits in our dining room, collecting mail. Nobody uses it.
The last time I got married, I was really hopeful. I mean, even more hopeful than the first two times. But I guess when I look back at it now, the signs were there from the beginning. I just wanted to try anyway, and I thought I was so in love. What I really was was monumentally stupid.
Five years ago we met. A few months later we were dating. Weeks later he was moving in. The signs started then, and instead of recognizing it - I mean, I’d been through this before! - i ignored. I brushed it off. I barely even gave it any thought.
My kids knew. They didn’t have the love to blind them and their eyes were open from the beginning. Especially Kayla. She was 12 when she met him. At first, excited that I was happy. Soon after, disappointed and full of contempt. A few years later and I finally caught up with her. I told myself she was a moody teenager. I told myself she didn’t have the wisdom to understand. Ha!
Funny enough, most of our conflict revolved around the kids. But it was never really about the kids.
The time that strikes me as the first red flag was the controversy with The Table. When he moved in, he moved in The Table from his apartment, a dining room table he cherished for unknown reasons other that he bought it with his own money. It was ugly. I was not a fan of the table. But he wanted the table in the dining room, and I relented. Our house had been lived in by us for most of the kids’ lives, and he had had to throw out or put in storage most of his stuff to fit his life into our house. He wanted to have his place. The Table was it.
Our careworn (shabby chic) but very solid dining room table was relegated to the basement. He removed the legs and started to bring it down. But he was still angry. I had put up a good fight about it. Our table was (in my mind, and very objectively of course) better, nicer and already there. I had spent hours sanding and painting it (plus the 6 matching chairs) during my last pregnancy with Jack 8 years before. I had watched my kids grow up using it. Besides eating at it, the kids had used it daily for homework, messy art projects, hanging out. It had never been a perfectly clean table, and it was full of paint daubs and scuffs and eraser marks and melted wax and marker bleeds. I loved my table too, and it was a struggle for me to see it go. But I finally understood and said OK.
He brought my table to the basement door. The table slid out of his hands, crashed to the bottom of the stairs, and cracked. He didn’t care one way or the other, and told me as much. Red flag number one I guess. And I brushed it off, glad the conflict was over.
But once installed, The Table became a constant source of conflict. The tabletop was made of a veneer of granite squares and every time one of the kids used glue or markers, he was on them about making sure it didn’t scuff the finish. He would lean down and look at it at eye level, ensuring the shine was still apparent and nothing was permanently damaged. Permanent damage was the new catchphrase. If it had only hit me how ironic that was, maybe I would have seen the light.
One time he wanted my daughter to go somewhere else to do a project that involved paint. His communication approach: Hover and note every wayward stroke, lift up paint bottles to make sure they weren’t leaving rings, and openly complain that The Table was not being respected. She didn’t have anywhere else to go, but that really wasn’t his problem. His problem was protecting The Table. In my usual fashion I assuaged and figured out a new place for her to work. But not before rolling my eyes at her. See? Just not cut out for marriage. Always straddling the line of trying to make everyone happy, and making exactly no one happy. Including myself.
Now I know what I should have done: tell him to go to hell. Tell him if he wanted The Table in the house so badly, he should accept that it’s going to be used by the people who live here. Grow a backbone. Not allow my kid to be kicked out while being creative. I suffered for that, in so many ways. But in those days my backbone was embarrassingly weak. It was still developing. I was better than the last iteration of me, but not by nearly enough.
The Table remained pristine until we moved into a new house half a mile away. In that short distance, the movers managed to drop it and destroy an entire corner. I rejoiced. I laughed. I high fived myself in my heart (and the kids when he wasn’t looking). But the joke was on me. The movers went out and found the exact same table, on sale for $300, and brought it to us the next day. Ding dong, The Table is alive. It sits in our dining room, collecting mail. Nobody uses it.
