An Unfinished Marriage - Hardcover

Joan Anderson is a seasoned journalist who has also written numerous children’s novels, including 1787: The First Thanksgiving Feast and The American Family Farm, as well as the critically acclaimed adult nonfiction book Breaking the TV Habit. A graduate of Yale University, Anderson lives with her husband on Cape Cod, where her “Weekend by the Sea” program for women seeking to experience a time of reflection is thriving. She has appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show, “CBS Weekend,” and numerous other broadcasts in connection with A Year by the Sea.

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Getting Under way

Late September

"The beginnings of all human undertakings are untidy."

John Galsworthy

The night sky has barely dissolved to a pale blue light when I slide out of bed and tiptoe to the kitchen, relishing the early morning silence I have come to treasure. This is when my thinking is clearest, when I give over to the spirits in the air and let them direct my day. My husband Robin seems to know that I need this time and frequently rolls over in continued sleep until I am out the door for my morning walk.

I put the kettle on the stove and wait for its wail while the threadbare afghan I grabbed from the couch warms my shoulders. A few minutes later, steaming coffee in hand, I ease open the screen door, stifling its inevitable creak, step into the morning dew, and take a deep breath of Cape Cod air. Several birds are nibbling at their feeder while the neighbor's cat huddles under a bayberry bush waiting to pounce. As I sink onto the stoop, I let the sensuousness of my surroundings take over. The clarity of morning always offers a fresh start.

We've been back together some three weeks now after a yearlong separation. The decision to reconcile happened as precipitously as the decision to separate. He was able to take early retirement and, having watched me grow and change from afar, seemed anxious to get on with the adventure of his own unlived life. Having acquired a much stronger sense of self during my solitary year by the sea, I seemed to have an inexplicable compulsion to return to living with another. Once the decision to reunite was made, we slid back into relationship with little fanfare and even less preparation. Call us stubborn, karmically connected or just plain stupid, it appears that we plan to slug it out till death do us part. But I wonder if it is not so much about the power of our love as it is the strength of old friendship.

Even so, I enjoyed the vagaries of single life and am unnerved at being coupled again. This lack of ease makes me feel like the innocent I was when I flew off some thirty years ago to marry this man in faraway East Africa. We had met at Yale Drama School and soon thereafter realized how impossible it would be to try to try and survive in the theatre with no guaranteed income to say nothing of steady employment. Joining the Peace Corps seemed to offer a solution. It wasn't difficult to choose adventure over starvation, especially since there were so many illusions and hopes attached to my blushing virginity. I had an entire life spread out before me with plenty of time for trial and error. Now such innocence is gone, and I'm more practical, less expectant, and painfully aware that I'm supposed to know, not only what marriage is all about, but also how to live gracefully within its walls. Everything has become strangely reconfigured, and in the process I've been rendered anxious.

I recall asking my uncle for marital advice before heading down the aisle. He handed me a passage from The Prophet in which Kahlil Gibran likens matrimony to the oak and the Cyprus trees. "Stand together, yet not too near--for the pillars of the temple stand apart and the oak and the Cyprus grow not in each other's shadow." Perhaps unknowingly, I took the prophet's advice when I ran away from home last year. The institution of marriage had permeated my very being; my focus was always on "us," so as I became incapable of being conscious of "me." Devoted as I was to the role of good wife and helpmate, I worked mostly in my husband's shadow, until a sort of toxicity set in which poisoned the air we breathed. By the time I left, we had become more like incestuous siblings than husband and wife.

I suppose that is why we now seem to be giving each other room, fighting against a life of routine, facing each other with both detachment and cautious acceptance. By the time I return from my walk, Robin is generally off to the golf course, which is revitalizing his sedentary body. I'm uncomfortable that our instincts seem to take us in such divergent directions, and yet I sense that we both know that too much togetherness might strip away the new individuality we've each recently cultivated. Finding personal space within perpetual togetherness is key. It might appear that we are trying to avoid one another, but in fact we are both intent on creating new lives. I am determined for us not to become one of those vacant couples you see in restaurants, heads buried in their meals, looking as if all vitality and essence had been sucked out of them. Not me! Not that! I think he shares my sense that we need to create new independent lives, so that when we return home in the evening we each bring a vibrancy that comes from meaningful endeavor.

Still, I wonder how to get the marriage back on track. Where are the guidebooks for maintaining long-term relationships? There are a plethora of prescriptions for raising children, getting jobs, being sexual, and understanding the self. But veterans of long term marriage, deserted by their youthful hormones, are left to muddle along in their middle-aged bodies. In due time I expect some modicum of happiness to surface. At least I hope so, because at our age we don't have days to squander.

As the sun climbs above the trees, I am eager to turn from such troubling thoughts and more than ready to embrace the wild land beyond my door. I go inside to retrieve my jeans and sweater, lace up my sneakers, and head out toward the dirt path I have walked hundreds of times, reminding myself of the Navajo saying: The sun has only one day. Live this day in a good way so that the sun won't have wasted precious time.

The forest is alive with the sound of rustling creatures scurrying under fallen leaves and acorns being squashed underfoot. These external noises drown out my internal chatter. But not five minutes down the lane, my tranquility is jarred by the sound of a huge engine and I quickly spot the source: A North American Van Line truck, inching its way up our narrow path, breaking branches as it heads straight toward me. Interrupting the normal quiet woods the truck appears like an unwelcome mirage. Nonetheless, I step into the brush and out of the way as I hear Robin's voice and see him running through the woods, buckling his trousers while shoving his feet into his docksiders.

"Is this truck for us?" I ask incredulously.

"Yep," he assures me. "Just stuff from the office."

"The office!" I counter, my tone edgy and tense. "Didn't you leave all that behind?"

"Not my files and furniture," he answers, a curt tone now creeping into the conversation. I back away from a potential confrontation, reminding myself of my silent promise not to instruct him or ask too many questions. Men dislike instruction, my mother told me. They've had enough of it from their mothers and teachers. If I can hold my tongue, he might figure out, independent of me, how to get on with his life. Besides, I've come to know that I can have power or love--but not both. This time I'm after love.

Three young men hop out of the cab and open the side door of the van, as Robin tells them to put the cartons inside the living room. "Just stack them up along the one empty wall," he says, to my irritation, without a glance in my direction.

My heart sinks. In the past year I have tried to create a Zen-like space in our little cottage and soon, it appears, that will be undone. When he filled the guest room closet with ties, suits, shoes, and golfing paraphernalia, I figured it was only a matter of time before he would drop the buttoned up look and settle into casual clothes. But when he declared the basement his exclusive domain and ordered a new desk and file cabinet soon thereafter, I was more than alarmed. His spending spree reminded me more of a bored housewife than a man suddenly free of daily drudgery.

I watch as box after box is carried from the truck and will myself to believe that he has a plan for his new life. With that thought, I stride off through a tunnel of trees certain that motion will quell my internal disturbance. But halfway up the road, I'm besieged again with unkind thoughts again and wonder about the source of my anger. If I loved this cottage best when it bustled with family and friends, why would I now bristle at the intrusion of one? Certainly living apart has made both of us more territorial, but there's plenty of room left for coexistence. I'm feeling invaded, but how could that be? He is, after all, my husband! Besides, haven't I learned after all these years that men come rushing into homes with gusto? Unaccustomed as they are to sleeping babies, meditative states, and everyone else's space, they stomp about, slam doors, and crank up the stereo. Such behavior comes with the territory.

Mercifully my walk takes me out of the woods and into a meadow where the edges of things begin to soften, as does my heart. I hadn't wanted to assume what our life would be like when Robin joined me, and I'm not about to start now. Poor fellow. Giving up a secure job for an unknown future is bound to have some ramifications. For the past thirty years, the better part of his days have been spent within four walls of a small office. Having broken free, he must wonder if he's in exile or under house arrest. One of my tasks as a "recovering wife" is to be gracious and accommodating, even if it feels like adjusting to the strange habits of a college roommate. After all, it took me a year to rid myself of the old and permit new attitudes to surface. He needs the same amount of latitude to stumble into his old self again.

I take a deep breath and forge on, up a gradual incline toward the shoulder of a hill where the view forces me to stop, breathe and be grateful. This must be the most gentle and beautiful morning so far this fall--golden and mellow, as the chilly air quickly becomes warm. My irritable mood drifts away like the falling leaves. Today the trees display deepening hues--mau...