Wendy Markham - Mike, Mike & Me

The present

S o in case youve been wondering, I married Mike after all.

Which Mike, you might ask?

And rightly so.

For a while there, it was a toss-up. But when I finally made my choice, I honestly believed it was the right onethat Id chosen the right Mike.

Only recently have I begun to question thatand everything else in my life. Only recently have I been thinking back to that summer when I found myself torn between the guy Id always loved and the guy Id just met.

That they shared both a name and my heart is one of lifes great ironies, dont you think?

Then again, maybe not. According to the United States Social Security Administration, Michael was the most popular boys name in America between 1964 and 1998. Odds are, if youre a heterosexual female who was born between those yearsas I amyoure going to date a couple of Mikes in your life. As I did.

Meanwhile, if youre a heterosexual male who was born in those years, youre going to date a couple of Lisas. That was the most popular girls name the year I was born.

Im not Lisa.

Remember that song? All about how she wasnt Lisa, her name was Julie. It was a big hit when I was a kid. I remember singing it at slumber parties with my best friendstwo of whom were named Lisa.

But Im not Lisa. Im not Julie, either.

My real name is Barbra. Spelled without the extra a, like Barbra Streisands. Thats not why mine is spelled that way; I was born back in the mid-sixties, before my mother ever heard of Barbra Streisand.

My fatherwho if his own name werent Bob probably wouldnt be able to spell that filled out the birth certificate while my mother was sleeping off the drugs they used to give women to spare them the horrific childbirth experience.

That, of course, was back in the Bad Old Days when they didnt realize that the fetus was being drugged as wellotherwise known as the Good Old Days, when nobody was the wiser and nobody was feeling any pain.

I always figured that when it was time for me to give birth, Id want those same drugs.

Am I a wimp? you might ask.

Um, yeah. Ive never been good with painIm the first to admit it. I stub my toe; I scream. I get a sliver; I cry. I see blood; I faint.

By the time I got pregnant, I had heard enough gory details from my friends to know that it would be in everyones best interest if I were knocked out before I reached the stage where it was a toss-up whether to call in the obstetrician or an exorcist.

I envisioned drifting off to a medically induced la-la land, waking up feeling refreshed, and having somebody hand me a pretty, pink newborn, even if my husband spelled its name wrong while I was out.

Alas, that wasnt to be.

For one thing, we knew that our firstborn son would be named after my husband, who is conveniently familiar with the spelling of Mike.

For another, whenabout five minutes into my first pregnancyI asked my doctor about drugs, he recommended a childbirth class where I would learn to use breathing and imagery to control the pain. Call me jaded, but I didnt see then and I dont see now how huffing and counting and focusing on a flickering candle or, God help me, a favorite stuffed animal, can possibly make you forget the nine pounds of wriggling human forcing its way out of you the same way it got into you nine monthsand nine poundsago.

As the scientific theory goes, what goes in must come out. Eventually. Somehow. And the coming-out part is never as much fun as the going-in part.

Whose scientific theory is that? you might ask.

Its mine. And you should trust me, because Im an expert.

If youve ever eaten all your Halloween candy before the calendar page turned to Novemberor if youve ever done too many shots of tequila on your birthdaythen youre an expert, too.

But if you cant relate to childbirth or vomiting up a pound of chocolate or a pint of hard liquor, think about this: back when Mike and I were first married, he and my father carried our new couch up two flights of stairs to our one-bedroom apartment in Queens. When we moved a few years later, the movers we hired couldnt get the couch out. No matter which way they turned it, they couldnt make it fit through the doorway. They finally told me that the only way to get it out was to remove one of the legs.

Now, normally, I dont balk at being the decision maker in our marriage. But, normally, strange men dont request a saw to disfigure our furniture.

I tried to reach Mike at work to see what he wanted me to doin other words, to ask his permission for the couch amputationbut he wasnt there.

So the movers sawed off a leg; the couch fit through the door; they moved it to our new house up in Westchester.

When Mike arrived that night, freshnot!from his first train commute and ready to collapse, he immediately noticed that the surface he was about to collapse onto was tilting dangerously.

I explained what happened.

He was incredulous.

Okay, not just incredulous. He was other things, too. Including royally pissed off. Now that Ive had almost a decade of enlightenment regarding Mikes daily commute to the city, I can attribute his fury that night, at least in part, to an hour spent on an un-air-conditioned railroad car sandwiched in a middle seat between two large businessmen who carried on a conversation across his lap. But at the time, in my seminewlywed overanalytical self-absorption, I concluded that everything was all my fault.