Landscape of a Marriage
Clear the Ground
Oak Park, Illinois—Saturday morning, April 9, 1994
I have left my house after screaming at my parents that I’m not going to college. I am eighteen and sitting on a bench facing Rehm Park, the playground of my childhood, watching kids dig in the sand, watching them pretend the ground is lava, watching them perform the mighty quest of going up the twirl slide until someone’s parent tells them to cut it out.
Last night the world learned Kurt Cobain was dead. I found out at a party where Milwaukee’s Best (“the BEEEEAAAAST!”) and a goblet of Peppermint Schnapps was being served and Cypress Hill’s “Insane in the Membrane” thumped loudly and not in the background. “Punks just jealous cause they can’t outwrite me/or kick that style, wicked, wild” pulsed through our lungs, our bloodstream, our souls.
“A bullet to the head! He put a bullet to his head!” one girl wailed.
Kurt Cobain was dead and my ex-boyfriend walked in with his new girlfriend—the one he dated before me—and I knew exactly what I was more upset about.
“I hated his music anyway,” I said, cracking open a beer and, deciding it tasted like pee, reaching for the goblet of Schnapps. “He was always screaming.” Really what I mean is I didn’t understand his music. Really what I mean is I had a feeling I was the one he was singing about.
Later that night, I take everything my ex-boyfriend ever gave me and set it on his front yard: dried flowers, his Letterman’s jacket, a giant stuffed bunny rabbit he’d won at a carnival like in some kind of Hallmark movie.
I’m too old to play at this park, but I’m too young to sit on this bench like an old lady waiting for the bus or for pigeons to hop over so she can give them some of her old ass oyster crackers she keeps in her purse from when she was having soup and pie at Baker’s Square. Something needs to happen in this space between childhood and old ladyhood but I don’t know what. Really what I mean is I don’t want to find out. Really what I mean is I am afraid.
Consider What To Plant
Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan—Winter 1997
Jesse, my boyfriend, who I know will soon be my fiancé, is in my dorm room during one of three of Calvin’s allotted “open house” hours, when girls can go into boys’ rooms and vice-versa. We must keep our doors open and there’s a “two feet on the floor” rule that is probably some Christian Reformed myth but the point is at Calvin, we give our hearts to the Lord promptly and sincerely, and we always leave room for the Holy Spirit.
I am reading Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein—a story I need to read with Cliffs’ Notes, index cards, highlighters, and various pens, and a large bag of gummy worms I buy at Meijer from the candy bins (the worms no longer exist, nor do the bins, a heartbreaking shame), and a “Poor Man’s Mocha”—coffee and hot chocolate mixed together for fifty cents at “Johnny’s,” Calvin’s snack shop. (Yes, it is named after John Calvin.)
This is how reading is for me. This is how reading always will be. I am slow to understand and quick to be affected by stories. Reading is jumping into Lake Michigan on a day in June when the waves have realized they are no longer frozen, and they move with a ferocity from being held still, and they rush to shore knowing part will seep into the sand and part will tug itself into deeper water eternally changed and changing. I will take an abundant amount of personality and learning tests because as much as I seep myself into the stories I read, as much as I plunge into the depths of them, when I leave the water and I’m asked what it is that happened, I can’t answer, thus resulting in solid a C-/D+ assessment of what I know (and let’s face it, who people think I am).
“Some people are just not cut out for academics,” I am told by people equivalent to Professor Umbridge.
“And some people are not meant to wear bathing suits, but they do anyway,” is what I wished I’d said instead of, “Thank you. Thank you so much for your time.” I’ve learned by now that the world is set up for the Straight A, for the Rule Followers, for the Straight and the Narrow. I’ll explore the rest of it. I’ll carve out my own damn path. This is who Jesse will marry, though I don’t think he knows it, yet. I’m not sure I do, either.
Tonight, it is the story behind the story that I’m most interested in. Legend has it that Mary and her boys (Lord Bryon, Percy Shelley, etc. all) were gathered ‘round the fire one dark and stormy night, and they decided to have a ghost story contest. Whoever writes the scariest story wins.
“Mary totally won,” I tell Jesse, who is deciding where to pursue his PhD in Civil Engineering. He’s narrowed it down to two schools—both have offered him a full ride and a stipend—Notre Dame and the University of Michigan.
He talks to me about the campuses, and the neighborhoods. Ann Arbor, he tells me, is a storybook town. He knows I’ll love it there. South Bend, on the other hand, is a tad more gritty. He uses the word “industrial.” (Years later, my brother will go through a breakup that will leave him confused and sad, and Jesse, in true engineering fashion, will ask him what it is he liked about this girl that left him broken-hearted. “Well,” Geoff will say, “we had a lot of fun together.” “Of course you had fun,” Jesse will reply. “You’re in Chicago! You wanna see if a relationship works, move to South Bend!”)
There is a professor at Notre Dame that Jesse wants to work with. He specializes in hydraulics—hurricane storm surge—which is what Jesse’s interested in. I wouldn’t call Jesse a nice guy, but he is a caring one. The way he acts out his concerns is by learning—and mastering—concepts that will be a part of a solution. I will begin to understand this tonight as he analyzes which school he’ll say yes to, but not fully. I’ll try to listen, but I am thinking about Mary Shelley. I’m wondering whether she was working out something within herself as the creature Frankenstein made and abandoned lurked outside his house sobbing for the love he’d never have. Or was she just trying to beat the boys—those poets who think they knew everything? Or was it a bit of both?
I keep reading while Jesse picks up the phone to call Notre Dame and accept their offer.
Prepare Your Planting Beds
South Bend, Indiana—1999-2004
We live in an apartment in a building called, “The Pointe,” named after a triangle patch of land that the St. Joseph River and the East Race—a man-made kayaking route —border. On Saturdays, we walk along the river to the Farmer’s Market. We bring home vegetables and sunflowers, and I tell Jesse about the sunflower I planted in my backyard that grew so tall my dad put me on a ladder so he could take a picture of me next to its brown face and yellow pedals.
Saturdays we also go to the football games, but other times we sit on our balcony and listen to the crowd and guess whether Notre Dame is winning or not.
Tuesday nights we walk to Corby’s, the corner bar down the street from us, for two-dollar pitchers of Leinenkugel that a bartender fills while the music of Maroon Five plays. “This love has taken a hold of me,” I sing while I follow Jesse outside to the picnic tables on nights when it’s warm. We talk about what’s next—where we’ll live, when we’ll have kids, how many kids we’ll have, careers, houses—we want a boat, too. It’s all thrilling. It’s all an adventure. It’s all doable.
Jesse spends his days (and some nights) at a lab on Notre Dame’s campus. He has a giant map of the Gulf of Mexico and part of the Atlantic Ocean that covers his wall and sits above his many computers. He is tracking hurricanes.
Every few months he travels to New Orleans because he is developing a storm surge model for Louisiana to evaluate the levee protection system. Simply put—New Orleans cannot handle a hurricane storm surge of certain proportions, and Jesse and his cohort are attempting to communicate this through science and research.
I spend my days (and more nights then I care to admit) at Covenant Christian School, where I teach a split 5/6th grade class of twelve. The curriculum is designed around units and we integrate all the core subjects into those topics. It is an amazing amount of work, teaching this way, but I love looking for and sharing connections and intersections so that my students can see it all matters, it’s all tied together.
One afternoon, I come down with a fever that turns into the flu. I am miserable by the end of the school day, but that night, there is a big Christmas show the school is putting on. My students and I are doing a lip sync and dance routine to Harry Connick Jr’s “I Pray On Christmas.” (Yes, I choreographed it. Yes, I am dancing with them. Yes, this is 100% my idea.)
At home, I sip orange juice and swallow ibuprofen while Jesse heats up chicken soup. He knows not to tell me to stay at home. He knows not to say this isn’t a big deal. He ladles soup into bowls and hands one to me.
On our drive home from the show I tell him I feel like a dragon on fire, but I had so much fun. “When you teach,” Jesse says while we drive past campus, toward the river, toward home, “it is like a light switch has been turned on.”
I will be at that school for two years before I burn out and go to another one where I’ll stay for another two years. This is how it will go for the duration of my teaching career. I cannot stay in any school for more than two years.
I do not know if teaching is a dementor or a patronus.
Test And Improve Your Soil
Washington DC, August 2004
I have never felt humidity until this night. Humidity does not exist North of the Mason/Dixon line. She is alive and well here though, and she feeds on the Yankees— those of us who’ve traveled to our Nation’s Capitol thinking we are going to do so much good. She likes them best and she’s lucky because they’re everywhere: in Washington DC, everyone is here for a specific reason, and that reason is a passion. So she waits on the Metro for one of them to tug at their red tie, she stands outside of Congress breathing wet and hot air on the sensible yet fashion forward skirts and white Oxfords hoping someone will slip and fall while texting on her Blackberry just one more mandate that will set the world right.
She is on the prowl for the Type A, but deep in her uncomfortable soul she knows she’ll never devour them. She’ll never stop the law-makers, the liberals or the conservatives; anyone who knows precisely what it is they’re doing with their lives, and so she comes for the tourists. She glides slowly and stealthily between the monuments leaving her wet mark on the statues of our forefathers like the white handprint Saruman the White marked the Orachai with. She hovers above the Potomac River, steam rising from the water, lurking and teasing those fools thinking, It's so hot I’ll just have a lemonade by the water. Here is where she’ll wrap her victims up in silk and smother them. Humidity is a spider, and Washington DC is her web.
I am not a tourist but neither am I a Type A person. I’m more type D+, so she’s coming to devour me, too. This is what happens on our first night here, while I try to get two bedrooms, two bathrooms with laundry worth of stuff into a one bedroom, one bathroom, no laundry, and a kitchen that is so small I can’t open the oven without hitting the opposite wall apartment. Nothing fits where it is supposed to. There is no room for anything.
I am panicked and raging and wanting Jesse to fix this problem, except he doesn’t see a problem. This is where we are now. This is what we chose. This is what Jesse tells me while he sets his computer in our dining-living room-kitchen. He doesn’t have time for this, he says. He’s working on his dissertation and he starts a new job in two days.
He starts click-clacking away and I open my mouth to keep fighting when I realize the click-clacking isn’t coming from Jesse. It is coming from a cockroach making its way up our only window.
“I wanna go home!” I yell.
“We are home!” Jesse yells back.
I storm out of the house and into humidity’s waiting and hungry arms. She tries, but she does not chew me up and spit me out.
The Beltway, sometime in 2015
I have dropped Hadley and Harper off at school, and I’m driving to meet my friend, Cara, for breakfast before I teach in the afternoon. Once a month, we meet to discuss and review our writing. We’ve been doing this for over five years. We know when to challenge, when to encourage, we’ve seen each other at our worst, and we’ve pushed each other to be our best. Cara is the perfect mixture of colleague and friend.
The Beltway reminds me of an eternal assembly line. Around and around we go, circling Washington, DC until we drop ourselves off at an exit. I like that part—you have to know we’re you’re going, otherwise you just drive around in circles, always on the outside trying to figure out where and how to get in. Not me. Not today. A decade of living here, and I know how to navigate this place. I know where I’m going.
This is when Jesse calls, and when I answer, he sounds cautious, maybe nervous, maybe excited—like a kid who just found five dollars on the sidewalk and isn’t sure what to do about it, or if he should do anything at all.
“There’s a job,” he begins.
Jesse has worked at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration for ten years. It’s why we moved here. He is an expert in hurricane storm surge. He briefs news anchors, city officials, and at times, the President. He is respected, admired, and heartily relied upon.
Here is where we became parents. It’s where we’ve made great friends, where our kids found friends. I became a writer here. I found a job that I love and I’m good at here.
He tells me the details of this other position. Something about science. Something about water. Ships. Fish.
“It’s in Ann Arbor,” he says.
“Take it,” I say back.
Consider The Plant
Oak Park, Illinois, April 9, 1994
That Saturday I yelled at my mom and dad, declaring I would not be attending college, I took a book with me. This would’ve been a footnote in the moment of my life had I been a reader, but back then I wasn’t, and so this was pivotal.
The book was Joy in the Morning by Betty Smith. My mom suggested I take it along with me on Spring Break that year. Here is another detail that could be a footnote, except the last time my mom suggested I read a book, I was twelve, and she wanted me to read Little Women. I hated it, and made that very clear with an abundant amount of snide and snarky comments. One morning as I slammed myself down on a chair and said in a sing-songy voice, “Let’s see what adventures Joe and the gang are up to today,” my mom ripped the book out of my hands. Maybe giving me Joy in the Morning was another chance—for her and for me—to share a story that would rewrite our narrative.
I took the book that Saturday because I wanted to stay out of the house for a while. I had no money. I didn’t drive the car, so I couldn’t go too far, and in those days cell phones were called car phones and were used for emergencies only. (For example, “Dad? Hi. I’m home, and it’s really dark. Can you please like, come outside and stand here in case there’s like a murderer in the garage? Kthx.”)
Given my circumstances, it would be a story about a newly married couple who are living in Ann Arbor, that would keep me out of the house, and settle me down enough to consider that there is life beyond the Chicago Skyline.
I was enamored with Annie McGairy, a girl who didn’t think much of herself intellectually, but who loved writing and stories, who stood outside of classrooms at the University of Michigan so she could listen in on the lectures, who didn’t fully understand a word until she felt it.
I didn’t want to be Annie, but Annie showed me something of myself—who I was, and who I might become. When Jesse said, “Ann Arbor,” I remembered that 18-year-old girl who, so scared, so beat down, so sad, found some strength in a story, stood up, and walked toward an adventure. I didn’t feel sad or beat down or scared the day Jesse called. I felt strong. But I was ready for another adventure.
Pick The Best Garden Spot
Ann Arbor, Michigan—2016 to ?
Three days short of 25 years of marriage, Jesse and I wake up to a power outage. A snowstorm the night before took away our heat, our electricity, and left a wind that could slice your throat if you inhaled.
“Coffee. How?” I grumble to Jesse from underneath a thousand blankets.
He reaches for his phone to see the scope of the power outage. “Not York. Not Zingerman’s. Not Drip House. Not Roos Roast,” he reads me a list of all the coffee places that are not open and it’s as long as those parts in the Old Testament where a billion people are begetting each other and their names are impossible to pronounce so it takes extra long to read, and none of it moves the story forward and in this case, brings me coffee.
“Not Starbucks. Not Whole Foods,” he keeps going.
I’m going to beat him with a pillow.
The four of us eventually find a place that’s open, and set up at a table near a heater. Harper has an Algebra final later this week and has brought along some study materials. Hadley is reading a David Sedaris book, something I picked for her for Christmas after she’d come home from school raving about an essay of his. (“How is he so haunting and hilarious?” she asked me. “I have no idea,” I said.) Jesse is reading Braiding Sweetgrass—also a Christmas present from me.
“This is my favorite chapter,” he tells me, pointing to, “Burning Cascade Head,” and tells me what it’s about—water and salmon, science and community, renewal.
“I hoped you’d like this book,” I said.
Harper starts to get frustrated with her work, and Hadley flips over her book and leans towards her. “Harper,” she says, “I think I can help.” I try not to make it obvious that I’m watching them, leaning against each other, both tapping out equations on paper.
A barista comes over with a tray of pastries fresh from the oven. “On the house,” he says, and puts the tray on our table.
With fanfare, gratitude, and delight, as if we are at a wedding, we all take and eat.
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I get lost in your stories every single time. Beautiful work, Callie 👏🏽 You’re a master at weaving in the past.