365 Nights (28 page)

Now here my father and I are, standing in the foyer of First Baptist Church at approximately 5:57 P.M. on Saturday, June 20, 1998. I am, as you might guess, dressed in white. My dad is quite handsome and looks smashing in his tux. The brides-maids have already made the march. The trumpeter is in the balcony above our head preparing for my dramatic entrance and my mother is at the front of the church in one of the three mother-of-the-bride gowns purchased for a day she thought might never come. And I am sweating right through a very, very expensive wedding dress. The wedding planner is fluffing my train and Dad turns to me.

“You don't have to do this, you know, honey. Just say the word and we're out of here,” he says.

Who is this guy? He looks like my dad and sounds like my dad, but no dad of mine in his right mind would offer his thirty-one -year-old daughter the chance to skip out on the wedding of her dreams and the party of a lifetime—
mere seconds before the walk down the aisle
. Not in front of all these people and not on his tab. He must be whacked . . . or drunk.

So again—
say whaaat?

“I just want you to know that, no matter what, you always have options.”

My eyes are as big as the gorgeous pink roses stuffed into my very heavy bouquet and I'm wondering if my makeup is melting off my face. Now, I suppose it is better to discuss marital options before one has actually said “I dos,” but my goodness, this was cutting it close. I am about to march down the aisle, publicly declare my undying love to Brad, and promise to cherish him 'til death do us part. Whether or not we should have added lamb to the carving station, well, those are options I can discuss.

My maid of honor is nearly making the turn. The wedding planner is pulling at my arm, positioning Dad (who is quite sober and sane) and me in front of the giant double doors that are about to swing open and reveal my sweaty, melting self to all the world—or to at least five hundred people standing in the church. You know those moments people have when they think they're going to die—the ones where their life flashes before their eyes (and they sometimes faint)? Well, that happens to me, without the fainting part. I have flashbacks to my childhood (happy), visions of swimming slowly underwater with my hair all crazy and undulating around my head (peaceful), visions of eating birthday cake (tasty), vision of holding hands with Brad (joyful), and visions of dating (horrific). Well, those visions of dating are what snap me out of it. I shake my head, take a deep breath, get myself centered, and contemplate what the heck has just happened.

And then it comes to me. I realize that, true to form, my father has simply given me a gift. He's telling me that no amount of money spent or people assembled is more important than my happiness. And up until that very minute, that very second, in fact, there has been nothing that we couldn't undo. He's offering me a mulligan if I need it. And at that very moment, I'm overcome with emotion for my dad—the very first man I ever loved. But I don't need a do-over on this one. In fact, I feel really good about this option. So the trumpeter starts his gig, the wedding planner gives us the signal, the doors crank open, and I turn to my dad and break out the best smile I've got. “Thanks for the offer, Dad. Let's go.”

Perhaps it is the power of choice, and possibilities for newer and better, that can chip away at the previous choices you've already made. For instance, how long do you love your first couch, your first car, your first job, your first husband?

Newer and greater things come out all the time, and in our consumer society, it's practically sanctioned that we swap out the old with the new. So it might feel as though you're still hanging on to a choice that you made from 1992 when you were so young and stupid, and maybe life without your husband or wife would be so much, well, so much brighter and shinier and
newer
?

And perhaps that's the scariest thing—despite the commitment we made for better or for worse, there is still the idea that our spouse could wake up one day and decide on an upgrade. We know it happens, but we don't think it's going to happen to us, especially when we're young and vibrant and “new.” But when we hit forty, well, we're not that shiny and new anymore, are we, despite forty being the new thirty? And the marriages we were sure would go kaput are still going strong. And the marriages that sometimes seemed impenetrable suddenly implode.

Working in PR has its moments. On occasion you get to do some neat things like meet your favorite B-list actors—Kim Alexis, anyone? Go on great trips—North Dakota, for example. Or you get to coordinate over-the-top firework shows or even blow up buildings. Recently, I helped blow up an old coliseum in our city. It was actually an implosion; the coliseum would collapse inwardly with force, as a result of the external pressure being greater than the internal pressure. In this case, complete obliteration of something that once stood for something. Are we all party to some sort of implosion in our marriages? Do we sometimes collapse inwardly as external pressures bear down on us? Do we contribute in some way to the destruction of something that was, at one time, useful?

Believe it, it's incredibly stressful blowing up a building, and we worked all hours to prepare to implode a giant structure so that my client could build something shiny, new, and useful. We had worked months and months on the strategy to implode this building. Where would the crowds stand? Which VIPs would push the button? What would we say about the old and the new? It ran on ESPN, Fox News, and more than seven hundred stations around the country. It was voyeurism at its finest hour—short, sweet, and utterly complete.

We imploded the old space because it wasn't needed; but we really imploded the building because we had outgrown it. Do we do that in relationships? Do we implode them, too, when we've outgrown them and it's time to move on to something else? Of course we do, especially when we're young and we lack maturity and insight to value things that have the worn patina of time.

According to the press packet, there were 524 charges timed to explode in 52 delays of 500 milliseconds, split into two sequences running concurrently to reduce the concussion from the blast. Overall, the process was expected to take about 13 seconds to complete, dropping the roof onto the floor and toppling some of the walls. In one tiny moment a building that took years to build was reduced to rubble. When relationships end, people can sometimes pin it to one tiny charge. Others say the 524 charges exploded in such subtle milliseconds that they didn't know it had imploded until they were standing in the rubble rubbing their head from the concussion of it all.

When a relationship collapses, the voyeur in us sneaks out. We want to know, we have to know: What went wrong? What did you do? How did it happen? Why did it happen? For some, it's shameful nosiness. For others, it's a need to know so that we can protect ourselves against such heartache and tragedy—and it still comes across as shameful nosiness, doesn't it?

But even if we do know what happened and why it happened, what do we do then? If knowledge is power, how do we use it to our marital benefit, and do we even know how? You don't have to be a marital pioneer to know that infidelity can cripple a marriage, for example. But what about the little triggers or charges we could avoid every day that might save our relationship a little bit—do we have the sense and the discipline to steer clear of those? I often think about my wedding day, waiting with my dad for those heavy church doors to swing open and for my life as a married person to officially commence. I could have jumped in the car that day and created an implosion of another kind. So here I am.

Independence Day!

I offered to be intimate with my husband every day for a year and
I did it!
My first day off was Independence Day, July Fourth—how incredibly appropriate. Let freedom ring, friends! This marked both the birth of this journey, and the independence from it. I was relieved, I was giddy, I was downright ebullient with the notion that I didn't have to have sex today! When we had kicked off this arrangement, I wasn't sure where we would end up after this daily affair. While I woke up in the same place as I had exactly twelve months ago, to the day—in my bedroom in my parents' house on a mountain vacation—I was not emotionally in the same place. I had gone from feeling like the best, most tuned-in wife in America, to the thoughtful Professor Oz. “Well, what have you learned, Dorothy?”

My perky little bounce had less to do with the fact that I was free from daily sex (okay, maybe a little). I was bursting with a deep satisfaction that I had carried through on this gift. “I did it, I did it, I did it,” I sang under my breath as I moved around the bedroom that morning. Brad knew I was pleased with myself, but I didn't need to flaunt it. After all, reaching Day 366 of this arrangement didn't exactly make him Mr. Happy Pants. But there are some things—like kids growing up or hair getting gray—that happen regardless of my level of involvement. And then there are things that require me to show up and do the work—like learning how to play the flute, getting a high school diploma, getting married, and giving this gift. And I have to say I was pretty darn proud of all my hard work. Soooo, “I did it, I did it, I did it!”

We had made intimacy routine, rote, customary. Sure, we had managed to throw in a couple of lovely no-kids, weekend-away connections (our awesome trip to the winery) that added some flavor and fun, but for the most part we turned the occasional into the daily. And it was wonderful, this daily date with Brad—even after twelve months of habitual snuggling, smooching, and yes, sex. For sure there were days when I was sick of the sex—I was tired of the same old thing, I just wanted my own space, or I didn't really feel the mojo all the time. But I was amazed to discover that I was never once sick of Brad. In a way, it was as if I have been reintroduced to this nice man I had married. “Charla, I'd like you to meet the person whom you vowed to cherish and honor. His name is Brad.” And likewise, “Brad, this is your wife, Charla. You might see her every day, but here she is . . . with you at this moment each day . . . with no distractions.”

I am ashamed to admit a year ago there were days when I was quite distracted and could get quite bogged down in what Brad was or wasn't doing to step up as a husband and a father. I really had neither the time nor tolerance to contemplate Brad as a person. But this daily gift unfolded many layers of surprising generosity in me. Instead of worrying about what I wasn't getting from Brad this past year, it made me wonder—besides intimacy, what else was Brad
not
getting from me? Daily intimacy brought some humanity to our marriage that I didn't know was missing. You know how those oxygen masks are designed to drop out of the ceiling of an airplane if needed? I wish something like that could happen in a marriage. Because just as we can suffer from oxygen deprivation, marriages can suffer from intimacy deprivation. And like me, you might not even know it until you start to turn blue.

A few years ago I was at the mall getting the battery replaced in my watch. I was waiting patiently and they finally called my name. I headed to a secured window at the back of the store where they handed me my watch in a black velvet drawstring bag. I reached for my wallet and the salesperson put her hand on my wrist and said to me, “No charge today, just pay it forward.” “I'm sorry?” I said. “You know, pay it forward.” Ohhhhh. Yes, it was about the time of said movie and I had to admit I was immediately touched, completely sucked into this whole idea of paying forward kindness and goodwill. In fact, I couldn't believe someone had picked me! Had thought me worthy enough to pay it forward! Had seen something in me that made her believe I could keep the tradition going!

As I walked out of the store into the mall atrium, I was quite caught up in the moment. I was overcome by the desire to pay it forward . . . right that moment. So looking around the mall, I spied a woman standing in front of the fountain. I raced over. She was perched on the side holding a large bulky handbag under her arm. It was hard to tell her age . . . she was definitely older than me but younger than my mom. She looked to be waiting for someone. “Hello!” I announced loudly. She blinked hard and looked at me. “I'd like to buy you some ice cream!” I declared, louder than I probably wanted. The lady looked around and pulled her handbag a bit closer. She squinted as she looked at me as though she should know me. “Um, no thank you.”

“No really,” I responded. “I really want to buy you ice cream . . . why don't we walk over to the Food Court and I'll buy you any flavor you want.”

The woman looked at me like I was some kind of mall stalker. Meanwhile, I was working hard to close the deal and it was all just coming apart at the seams. I started to blabber to her about how I was trying to pay it forward because the woman at Tiffany who fixed my watch was so generous and I couldn't break the “pay it forward” chain. I kept insisting over and over to just let me buy her some freakin' ice cream . . . or at least let me give her the money so she could buy her own ice cream . . .

She walked off and I trailed behind her for a few steps, calling out to her, still trying to buy her some damn ice cream. In the end, I was left standing there feeling like I had been stood up by humanity, when I was only trying to pay it forward.