Like everything else, date night at the cottage is simple. Not fancy. Just real. Just the two of us.
We took the big boat with the comfy seats down the channel and out into the open water, but not very far. Ended up anchoring leeward of the Lizard (for those who know). It was a calm night, still some ridiculous roaring going on way out there, but we were far enough away that it didn't disturb our water/sky vibe.
Our cottage faces west, so sunsets on the dock are our thing. But there's something good about getting out for a different perspective, and that long, warm reflection on the water.
This was my idea. Ken was neither here nor there about it, particularly. In fact, the flies bothered him more than they did me when we were out there. But he didn't say anything, just swished the flies away with a clean boat rag, and waited patiently until the sunset space in my soul was filled up enough and I said we could go.
We do a Scrabble thing pretty consistently, and quite competitively, while we're here.
Since it's just the two of us, we've made up a few of our own rules, like being allowed to look up things in the dictionary in advance of your play, and not accepting or rejecting any word unless it is actually in the dictionary. He wins most of the time, despite my best efforts otherwise. Mind you, he always keeps score. But I'm certain than has nothing to do with it. Every once in a while I smoke him. And when that happens, well, let's just say that he narrows his eyes just a smidge, and doesn't seem at all to appreciate my round of self-applause. There's no one else to clap for me, since there's just the two of us.
Yesterday we worked together on a very thorough cleaning of the kitchen.
I wondered how it would go since I knew we needed to toss some things (either Garage Sale or outright garbage) and while Ken reigns as Scrabble champion, he is <ahem> not really good at parting with stuff. But we managed. We're not done yet though. It's the kind of chore that takes a few good sessions. And our kitchen can get hot in the afternoon. And, well, we've just done months of this sort of thing in selling the house. So easy does it, else we get all triggered and grumpy, which is really unpleasant since there's just the two of us.
Without a dishwasher, but there just being the two of us, we only do dishes once a day. There's a caveat to that, however. Rinse well, stack neatly. Two reasons. Easier to wash later. Ants. Usually I wash, Ken dries and puts away. That's why I can get super annoyed when he hands back a dish as a 'reject' (not completely clean yet), and it's something he had for lunch that he didn't rinse. Of all the nerve!
Other times we get all sweaty and irritable hauling bins of construction junk to the dump. Or cutting and stacking wood. Or working on the never-ending finishing touches of the bunkie. There's no end of prioritizing in all of this, since there's so much to do and it's going to take us a long time, and we only have so much energy in any given day, any given week, and there's just the two of us, and what day is the building inspector coming, and why do we have so many buckets of used and rusty nails, oops, sensitive subject since that's something that needs to be tossed, and some people <ahem> are not very good at this.
AND YOU CAN'T REPEAT YOURSELF AT A HIGHER VOLUME WITHOUT SOUNDING ANNOYED AND EVENTUALLY FEELING ANNOYED! And too many times, I fear, it comes out sounding way sharper than necessary, since there's just the two of us and no one else is here to be that subconscious monitor of tone that happens when you know someone else is listening.
Also, even though it's just the two of us, we have "calendar meetings" to coordinate the orbits of what we do separately. We stop and consider where we are in this whole big transition of housing thing we're up to these days. We mark the progress. We lay out what's next. We make plans, tentatively, for what's past all that. We pray. Just the two of us.
In a recent Netflix fling Ken and I did, a murder mystery series, the setting was that of a fabulously rich family led by what social media dubbed as 'The Perfect Couple.' Without giving away any of the whodunnit bits, let's just say that, well, they weren't. Not in what they wanted the world to believe of them at least. Far from it.
Wild television depictions notwithstanding, marriage just takes a lot of work, and for the long haul. There are lots of spaces in a string of 46 years (for Ken and I) that have been surprisingly sweet and romantic and lovely. Like a sunset date on the leeward side of the Lizard.
And it's also been less than idyllic. And not in the big crisis times. In those times we shine, we cling to each other, we are so amazing, just the two of us.
It's more in the small irritating spaces of life, like being at the cottage, just the two of you, in the middle of a rather stressful life transition, where all of it, the good and bad of it, can swish around a bit and make you real.
Is marriage worth it? Oh yes. But the bigger idea here is that, in reality, it's not just the two of us.
Forty-six years ago we stood in the presence of our community and made a covenant under God. And the real story of our lives together is the wonder of how God could actually take such an imperfect couple and want to make anything of us at all.
We're not 'just the two of us.' We belong to something much bigger than that.
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