Free Artist's Daughter, The: A Memoir by Alexandra Kuykendall Page A

loved.”
    I was starting to get desperate. Not sure really what I wanted to say, but we were so deep into the argument I was trying to claw myself out of the hole I’d created with my earlier words. To prove that he was at fault. For the situation. For my feelings.
    “What do you want from me?” He was exasperated. How could he possibly meet all of my needs?
    And that’s when I realized it. I really did expect him to meet all of my needs. I’d heard people say you can’t expect that from your spouse; you must turn to God to meet your needs. But that all sounded like a bunch of Christian noise. Besides, I was going to have a different kind of marriage, a “you complete me” kind of marriage. In the same instant that I realized my expectations, I saw how faulty they were. Two imperfect people cannot one healed woman make. Only Jesus could do that.
    As cliché as it felt, I was expecting Derek to be my Savior. Expecting him to fill the burning hole my father had left. To love me so intensely I would know my worth. When I say it now, it sounds foolishly unrealistic, but I’d lived so long thinking, When I’m married, then . . .
    I’ll feel loved.
    I’ll be happy.
    I’ll be secure.
    Realizing all of this, I was angry. Angry at him and at God. I knew my expectations were the root of the conflict, but I’d beenworking the last hour to prove how right I was and how wrong Derek was. It was hard to suddenly flip and admit my own blaring fault in the issue. I wanted to stay mad at him. Why couldn’t he be more than he was humanly intended to be? I knew it was ridiculous, but that’s what I wanted.
    And I was mad at God. I didn’t want him to be the one I had to turn to—that sounded lonely. I wanted someone tangible. A man who would hug me and kiss me and tell me he loved me in an audible voice. Who would buy me romantic gifts that would be perfect in every way: beautiful AND practical and not over budget. For him to be perfect in every way.
    Derek got up and walked down the hall to our bedroom. As he walked by, I wanted him to stop. To apologize. But he kept walking, and I sat staring at the carpet. Left to pray, “God, help me.”

ii Heroes
    A few months later, Derek and I took the subway from the Paris airport to our hotel, blocks away from the Eiffel Tower. The straps from the camping backpack cut into my shoulders from the excessive weight bearing down. As we stood holding on to the subway car’s poles, I looked at Derek with his equally huge backpack and felt ridiculous. The Parisians seated around us stared at us, the obvious tourists who’d overpacked, their faces blank slates. Oh why did we think we needed so much? We were playing the role of the ugly Americans with our Costco packing mentalities. My mother trained me better.
    My father was living in France with my sister and her mother, a native Frenchwoman. I hadn’t invited them to our wedding a year earlier in the off chance they might actually show up. There was no question I wanted Larry to walk me down the aisle, and the thought of the potential tension was enough to make me want to hide. So there was one thing I needed to happen for Derek to understand my complexities: I needed him to meet my father. And I wanted him to see the places of my childhood, Barcelona and Terni, to better understand this wide-eyed girl he’d married.He’d never been to Europe before, and I wanted him to see, smell, hear, and feel the places that shaped me.
    Plane tickets weren’t cheap for a one-income couple who took the calculator to the grocery store. Derek was in the throes of full-time graduate school, and I was working for Catholic Charities, translating for migrant parents and students at a rural high school. Every penny was precious. But Derek’s grandparents, Mama and Papa, gave us some money for a wedding gift. They wanted us to buy life insurance; we wanted to go on a European vacation. Derek had the summer off, so we packed our backpacks for a