Nancy Shulins - Every Day I Love You More (Just Not Today): Lessons in Loving One Person for Life

EVERY DAY I LOVE YOU MORE (JUST NOT TODAY). Copyright 2001 by Nancy Shulins. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

Warner Books,

Hachette Book Group

237 Park Avenue

New York, NY 10017

ISBN: 978-0-7595-2067-7

A mass market edition of this book was published in 2001 by Warner Books.

First eBook Edition: January 2001

Visit our website at www.HachetteBookGroup.com.

For Mark

A woman of forty-seven who has been married
twenty-seven years and has six children knows what love
really is and once described it for me like this:
Love is what you have been through with somebody.

JAMEST HURBER

We grow up believing we know all about love. After all, who among us doesnt love our parents, our siblings, our pals, and our pets? By the time we reach voting age, most of us have experienced at least some semblance of romantic love: the pounding heart, the sweaty palms, the libido on overdrive, the overwhelming intensity, the inevitable broken heart. But no matter. One day, we are taught, we will gaze across a crowded room and into the eyes of our intended, our one and only, our other half, the person with whom well live happily ever after, in sickness and in health, until death do us part.

Once we get home, though, and the clink of champagne glasses is replaced by the dishwashers hum, we find were just another couple peering across a dining room table wondering if weve done the right thing. Because grown-up love, for the most part, owes far less to fate than the movies would have us believe. The fact is, theres no one person out there whos perfect, no other half destined to complete us. Instead, there are any number of people with whom we could no doubt find happiness, from that freckle-faced kid with the wide, goofy grin who sat next to us in second grade to the tall, lanky guy with the geriatric schnauzer we always flirt with at the park.

For most of us, its largely a matter of timing and the person who happens to be there when the music stops and its time to sit down. When our best friend gets married. When our sister gives birth. When we decide we really do like bone china. Something feels right, so we make a commitment. Not to just anyone, of course, but to a kind, loving person with warm eyes and a wonderful laugh. Someone we care about who cares about us. Someone whose soul fits with ours.

My own crowded room was a bustling newsroom in New York, the world headquarters of the Associated Press. Thats where my husband and I locked eyes for the first time over a computer terminal sixteen years ago. His were brown and incredibly soft; they were also bloodshot as hellnot just from staring at that electronic screen, but from months of working from midnight to eight. Since I was working days, I still have no idea what twist of fate brought us to the office at the same time that once. Our conflicting schedules helped fan the flames after that as we stole moments between his shift and mine. Most courtships benefit from an obstacle or two; the struggle to surmount them is an ideal dress rehearsal for overcoming lifes troubles as a team.

Not that either of us gave real life much thought as we unpacked our wedding gifts at home. And what newlywed couple ever does? Everything seems so shiny and perfect and new. We put away the china, mail our thank-you notes or change-of-address cards, and get ready to happily grow old together.

Over time, though, things crop up that make us less sure of our choices, a daily onslaught of things we didnt count on, like illness and conflicts, domestic disasters and debts. The stuff of reality comes at us from every direction. It takes its toll on our relationships and our psyches because its so inconsistent with our fantasies. In the fairy tales, every day after the wedding is compressed into a single line: And so they lived happily ever after. And yet none of us do, not exactly. We live happily on some days and horribly on others. Mostly, we live somewhere in the middle, never in quite the same place.

But despite the gap between fantasy and reality, some people do manage to live happily, when everything is said and done. Theyre the ones who see love as a process, as something theyve learned how to do, through humor, sensitivity, kindness, flexibility, tolerance, patience, and more. As with all of lifes teachings, these lessons take a long time to master, but that only strengthens the magic. In the end, lasting love is more extraordinary than even the poets profess, because its something you and your mate teach each other, bit by bit, day by day, year by year. You explore all its facets together, including the ones you dont think of as love until later, the ones that surprise you every time. All are woven together, airtight, overlapping, a layer for each day and night. In the end, what you have is far richer than any fairy tale youve ever read. Its as complex and wondrous as life.

Long marriages run in my family. My parents took their vows fifty-one years ago; my grandparents, more than seventy. My grandmother continues to keep count even though her husband has been dead twenty years. Regardless, she says, she still feels married. She still keeps his birthday on the calendar and his raincoat in the closet, along with two pairs of neatly ironed pajamas, and ties that now look much too wide.

In the hope of building an equally strong bond in my marriage, I began talking to my grandmother about hers. And to othersmy mother, my sister, my friends; then to their friends, their mothers, and so on. Nobody had all the answers, but everyone had one or two. And by weaving their wisdom together, I began to see how it just might be possible to condense a lifetimes worth of lessons into a single book, one that might help explain how to feel truly married, regardless of what comes our way.

The essays on these pages blend stories from my marriage with those of my family and friends, along with bits of advice and practical suggestions applicable to us all. Most were written outdoors at an old picnic table with my curious horse looking on, a cat or two in my lap, and the wind in my hair, which may account for the breeziness of the tone. It is midwinter now as I write these last words, and the paddocks are knee-deep in snow. Married life, like the seasons, is always in flux; soft breezes give way to stiff winds. But I have already seen the first buds on the trees, and my horse is beginning to shed. Like restaurant hash and the coming of spring, grown-up love must be taken on faith. You dont need me to tell you how hard that can be. Its my hope that these stories will help.

Nancy Shulins

There are only two ways to live your life.
One is as though nothing is a miracle.
The other is as though everything is a miracle.

ALBERT EINSTEIN

I T WAS SIXTEEN years ago tonight, January 29, 1985, when the big, bearded man in the dirty beige parka picked me up for our first-ever date. It was a cold Tuesday evening, although we pretended it was Saturday, a little trick we perfected during the years I worked week-days and he worked nights and weekends. On that first night in New York, we ate Indian food at a hole-in-the-wall, then walked around the city, stopping for drinks every now and then to thaw out. Mostly, we talked about life, work, ourselvesand we kept right on talking until the buses had stopped running and I had to take a cab home. Just before we said good night, we walked down a side street, past a bakery. The place was closed, but the display window was all lit up, and we paused to check out the fancy, overpriced goodies. Thats when we saw it, on top of a linzer torte: the fattest mouse in Manhattan trapped inside the window, happily gorging away. The last of our first-date nervousness melted away as we stood there and laughed like hyenas. We still do, whenever one of us brings it up. It was an arresting sight, incongruous and rare, not unlike finding love on a side street at two in the morning in a city of eight million souls.