“It’s an absolutely glorious morning,” says my spouse Janyce as she enters through the side door of the Cape house with the dog, morning sunlight streaming in behind her, the wind making a melodic sharp whistle through the pines— an apt soundtrack for the bracingly cold and clear day to come. I’m sitting on the couch with my coffee cup on Monday morning and the Sunday Globe Magazine spread open beside me. The room is disheveled from yesterday, remnants from the still unfinished window washing. We have many chores left before we return home from the long weekend, mattress covers to replace, a new bedside table to assemble, wood floors to wash with with our citrus cleaner. Our rental company will be here next week to do a deep clean, but as homeowners, we have our own punch list of things to do the way we like it done, and items to replace before the spring rental season starts up again in March.
Janyce sits beside me on the couch with a bowl of oats and yogurt.
“I slept for 7 hours and 51 minutes,” she announces while looking at her sleep stats on her phone. Swirls is dozing in a shaft of sunlight and patiently waiting to walk the beach one more time.
Last night we took advantage of the ghost town that is Chatham in February and leaned back together in the upholstered seats, munching on popcorn in a mostly empty but newly-updated movie theater. We were there to see a sumptuous art film we’ve been waiting for called The Taste of Things. And it didn’t disappoint. Juliette Binoche is at her most radiant in this film, and all the indoor scenes are lit like a Dutch master painting. The film opens with one twenty minute-long balletic scene of the two main characters cooking together in a 19th-century French country kitchen. The room is full of large copper pots constantly getting filled with cold well water and hoisted up onto coal-fired ovens radiating waves of heat, the darkened interior space lit and warmed by the light flooding in from windows and oversized open fireplaces. The entire film is a delight for all the senses: you can smell the pots of boiling herbs and vegetables picked from the garden only hours earlier, steam billowing up into the cold air. You can taste the flaky pastry as it’s pulled, puffed and crackling, from the oven and doused with a thick buttery cream sauce. Later, you can feel the wind that gently billows through a carpet of white flowers in the woods. But it’s the soundtrack that steals the show. The scene with the two longtime partners dressed in period garments resting together at a tiny table sipping digestifs is breathtaking. They share quiet conversation outside in summer at twilight, at the edge of a verdant swampy pond teeming with croaking bullfrogs while cicadas hum and buzz in the trees.
The Taste of Things is a supremely sensual film about sensual things: expertly cooked food, nature’s visual feasts of wildflowers and sunlight, a tepid bath by candlelight, the music of birdsong and wind. But it’s also a romance between middle-aged people that celebrates the slow flicker of a longtime love affair. Not the exhilaration and heart-pounding energy of new love, but the enduring pleasures of a well-matched partnership.
“God damn it!” says Janyce. She is kneeling on the floor beside me while I type away at the laptop. She has all the pieces of the rustic wooden side table spread out on the floor and is hovering over a thin slat, brandishing a screwdriver and unfolding the pages of the printed paper instructions.
“Now I know why my father was always taking his glasses off when he was putting things together,” she says, while moving a few of the pieces to the island countertop under the bright lights in the kitchen. She sighs and mutters and swears under her breath, now standing bent at the waist while screwing and tapping, her face inches from the wood.
“Do you need help?” I say.
“Nope,” she says and backs up a bit while muttering quietly to herself, “yeah that’s good enough.”
Midweek last week, Valentine’s day came and went without fanfare in our house. It’s on purpose because I harbor contempt for this particular holiday. One that is, in my opinion, the worst of capitalism’s bad ideas. The garish commercialization of romance now reduced to tacky tropes of unscented bunches of cellophane-wrapped red roses grabbed from grocery store displays, or substandard packaged chocolates that have sat in warehouses far too long is just not worth the money and trouble. I’m happy to let the holiday go by unnoticed mostly, even though preserving the romance in our now long-term marriage is still paramount to both of us.
I heard a podcast recently and read a NYT article from the author and I immediately ordered her book. I was going to surprise Janyce with it, as the next book we read out loud together. But I left it in the shopping cart of her Amazon account by mistake instead of mine and she ended up ordering it for me.
“I figured this is something you wanted,” she said when it arrived on our doorstep the other day.
“Oops”, I said. “Well, we can call it a Valentine present for each other.”
Midlife can be a frustrating time of life, full of high and lows. On the one hand, we are grateful to have a weekend home and enough disposable income to not think about our budget all that closely. We have an empty nest, shared values, shared tastes in art and music, and an easy longtime friendship. We like each other a lot.
On the other hand, midlife brings more responsibilities, more time spent helping family, more time tending to our aging bodies and our own health concerns, and, well, let’s just say that libido doesn’t live here anymore. But even as we both slowly get used to the inevitable decline in desire, it doesn’t mean we are willing to lose this part of our partnership.
“Hmm,” I said out loud the other day, “So here she’s talking about centering pleasure over desire. Because great sex over the long term is not about how much you want sex, it’s about how much you like the sex you’re having.”
“That’s a pretty great reframe,” said Janyce.
“I know.” I said. “Let’s make time to read the book together.”
I’ve been typing away on the couch here for far too long now. We have more cleanup things still to do and the sun is reflecting off the snow on the back deck flooding the room in daylight. The dog is poised to jump up and demand her beach walk any second now, and my butt is starting to get numb from sitting.
“Is the table done?” I say. “Almost,” says Janyce. “Just in time for lunch!”
Moments ago, she was swearing and now I can see she is back to her jubilant self, a wisp of her hair standing straight up in the back in a comical way. I’m starting to think about reframing things. We have plenty of day before us still and any number of pleasures await.
thank you for this