This is love…

There was a moment, just after Micael was diagnosed with testicular cancer in 2020, that he decided he needed to be near the water. We were in the depths of the pandemic, both of us had lost our jobs and we were on financial assistance everywhere. I wasn’t sure what that meant, to be near the water, and honestly I don’t even remember suggesting this. But he swears it was my idea for him to start sailing.

He started looking for used boats. He found one that we could almost not afford (instead of really not afford) and he took me to a parking lot in West Seattle to visit it. I told him I would rather take a bathtub out to sea than that thing, and so we kept looking. Eventually we found a friend willing to share his boat with us in exchange for help with maintenance, and Micael’s sailing journey was born.

I will admit, although it’s not cool to say so, that I don’t love sailing. It turns out I really love land. I love trees, plants, dirt. I really love them. I love seeing the water, I grew up always seeing the water, but I like seeing the water from land. I’ve tried to fall in love with sailing the way that Micael loves sailing. It was my idea to take the family to the San Juan Islands on the sailboat when the girls were just 5 and 1. Getting on a boat and crossing major shipping channels with a walking, jumping toddler should be an obviously bad idea to anyone, but I was determined. I wanted to love sailing as much as Micael loves sailing. Or at least I wanted to watch him love it.

When Micael is sailing, happiness moves through him like a river.

When I see his happiness, happiness moves through me like a river.

And so we keep sailing. This year to Port Townsend for a weekend, to celebrate our anniversary. We thought it would be just us, but in the end the girls joined us and it was a different kind of trip than we had imagined. It’s a 7 hour sail in one direction to reach Port Townsend, and we’d planned a three day trip in all. We brought books, activities, the iPad loaded with movies. We thought it would be great. But the kids aren’t yet interested in sailing and when the wind dropped, a noisy diesel engine kept them from the cabin and their iPad down below.

We found ourselves on the way home, moving at 2 knots through Admiralty Inlet, winds high enough to make us all cold, but not high enough to move us. The sails blocking the sun. Kids grumpy. Happiness was still moving through Micael like a river. He couldn’t understand our frustration, our discomfort. And we fought. In the middle of that beautiful place, on our anniversary, in the midst of everything good we’d tried to build.

Marriage is humbling. I was so certain when I began this journey that I would be good at it. I have been wrong, so many times. Sometimes I am good at it, and sometimes I am not. And often I can’t know when it’s going to be one or the other. I thought we were creating a magical weekend, that happiness would move through us like a river. And in the end, mostly everyone was grumpy. The kids were grumpy from boredom and wind, and sitting too long at a special dinner they didn’t want to join. I was grumpy from trying to make them comfortable and happy and from feeling very alone while trying to do it. Micael and I missed each other almost completely, because we were having such vastly different experiences, even though in almost every moment we were so close we could touch. I had no idea when we were first married that I could be that close to him and still feel so far apart.

It has taken many things to bring us here. Children, finances, health scares, a pandemic, and a million small disappointments that have weighed on each of us in their own ways. It’s impossible to know when you are young how these things will pattern you as you grow. You unfold. It surprises you.

Your partner unfolds. They surprise you.

There have been moments I wasn’t sure how we would go on, how we would still meet each other, see each other, hold each other. There have been moments of such distance, of anger, of loss.

We fight, we get angry, and sad, and disappointed. We build. We tear down. We build it all again.

On that sailboat home, in Admiralty Inlet, we found ourselves in a moment of profound isolation. Him, with happiness moving through him like a river. Not understanding why no one else was happy. Me, frustrated by trying to care for kids on a small boat, cold, not moving, and powerless to shift the experience. We were so close we could touch, and somehow we couldn’t see each other.

We fought then. And in it, we called on all the moments of fighting that had come before it, and all that we had learned in those struggles. We talked through our feelings and our needs and what could be different. We shifted. Him out of his happiness, and me out of my frustration. We shifted from places that felt like they could hold us, so that we could meet, and instead hold one another. It’s not easy, it never is. It takes a lot to stay there and move through it.

And this is love. It is so much more simple than I had imagined, and so much more difficult.

You build. You tear it down. And then you build again. Together.

Part of me wishes all I had to say was that we sailed, and it was magical. But somehow I know this is better.

This is Love

The Language of Me