On romance and repetition

time to bring back the random word generator?

Was it novelty? Was it mindfulness? Was it being in the moment? To this day, I still don’t really know.

It’s Saturday morning and the sunlamp across the room has been blaring for over an hour. I reach for my cellphone that is lying upside down on the bedside table. The room is quiet, with just the sound of raindrops hitting the leaf-strewn patio outside our bedroom window.

“Morning huny, How are you feeling?” reads the text on my phone from my spouse Janyce.

“Not so great,” I text back. “Cough kept me up all night. I signed up for my workout at the gym but I don’t think I’ll make it.”

“Hope you start to feel better as the day wears on,” she texts back instantly. “Make some tea with the honey syrup in the fridge.”

Several months ago, we had booked the Cape house for a getaway for the long weekend, but we decided last week that we both could use some time apart. Janyce mostly. She said she really needed time to rebalance— no chores, no dog, no conversation. So she left on Friday to stay at the house alone.

“Enjoy your day and evening,” I text back. “I’ll even say goodnight now.”

A friend sent me a poem in FB messenger the other day. After I read it, I immediately sent it off to Janyce in an email. We were both home working. I was upstairs and she was downstairs.

Love Poem with Apologies for My Appearance 
by Ada Limón

Sometimes, I think you get the worst
of me. The much-loved loose forest-green
sweatpants, the long bra-less days, hair
knotted and uncivilized, a shadowed brow
where the devilish thoughts do their hoofed
dance on the brain. I’d like to say this means
I love you, the stained white cotton T-shirt,
the tears, pistachio shells, the mess of orange
peels on my desk, but it’s different than that.
I move in this house with you, the way I move
in my mind, unencumbered by beauty’s cage.
I do like I do in the tall grass, more animal-me
than much else. I’m wrong, it is that I love you,
but it’s more that when you say it back, lights
out, a cold wind through curtains, for maybe
the first time in my life, I believe it.

A few hours later I received a text back from her.

“Sometimes, I think you get the worst
of me. Too many hours worked,
too tired and depleted, a shadowed brow
where the devilish thoughts do their hoofed
dance on the brain. I’d like to say this means
I love you, the pulling inward, darkened mood,
the tears, anxious days, but it’s different than that.
I move in this house with you, the way I move
in my mind, unencumbered by life’s cage.
I do like I do in the tall grass, more animal-me
than much else. I’m wrong, it is that I love you,
but it’s more that when you say it back, lights
out, a cold wind through curtains,
I believe it.

The romantic start to our friendship happened over emails like this fifteen years ago. Janyce saved them all. She has them all in a folder on her computer. Sometimes if we are trying to remember someplace we went and what year it was, Janyce will pull up the email and tell me the date. Likewise, I have saved every greeting card she ever gave me. Every slip of paper with a tiny scrawled sentiment. Every note, or playbill from a particularly memorable date out. We’ve always felt incredibly grateful for our easygoing relationship and we’ve prided ourselves on our “picture perfect” romance.

And yet, as the years tick on by, we’re also realizing that we’re the same as every longtime married couple, too. We’re not immune to the dangers of repetition and comfort. Even as we look forward to our cozy living room every fall, the jazz playing in the background, the steaming cup of cocoa in an endless loop on the flatscreen, a big wool blanket on the leather couch, and our feet in slippers up on the ottoman, we worry about what all these creature comforts are costing us.

“I miss us,” I said to Janyce the other night while we were sitting side-by-side on the couch and munching on popcorn from a shared bowl. “I give us a C in the romance department.”

“I miss us, too,” she said. “I feel guilty for feeling so down.”

“Well, this is not just you. I can’t even believe it’s November already. I don’t remember October,” I said.

Janyce and I often reminisce about the best vacation we ever had. It was a three-day trip to Highlands, North Carolina. We did nothing but hike on mountain paths or sit together in the grass looking out at the Blue Ridge Mountains in the distance. We would spend the morning leisurely savoring a basket of tiny, flaky biscuits on the table, drinking our coffee in the sunlight-flooded room. At every table, people spoke in slow, hushed tones. During the day we held hands, laughed at everything, watched the sunset over Fire Mountain. The small mountain town of Highlands was beautiful but also very ordinary. Yet, for some reason time literally hung out with us in slow motion for three days. It was the longest, and most favorite vacation we’ve had together.

Was it novelty? Was it mindfulness? Was it being in the moment? To this day, I still don’t really know. But I think maybe it could be because all of it was new, we had zero expectations, and we didn’t know moment-to-moment what was coming next.

David Eagleman, a neuroscientist at Stanford University, said if you want to slow down the perceived passage of time, you need to seek novelty. New experiences cause the brain to store more memory, and then when you recall the event later, it will seem to have lasted longer. I also think sharing novel experiences together is what keeps a long-term relationship going strong.

“Do you think we should resurrect date night with the random word generator?” said Janyce.

“I could take November and you take December,” I said.

“No restaurants,” she said.

She held the phone up to my face so I could see the words.

Coin
Nest
Address

“Ha! What are you going to do with that?” she said.

“Oh you just wait,” I said. “I got this.”