Free Planting Dandelions by Kyran Pittman Page B

from a vivid dream where I was standing opposite my friend, our palms on each other’s hearts. It was an intimate gesture Patrick and I had picked up along the way, a way of connecting. The image was jolting, much more than had it been sexually explicit. I took it as a wake-up call, calling me back from the brink before any harm was done.
    But harm was done. What a person doesn’t know can hurt them. To someone looking at my marriage from the outside in, it would have looked very much like one or both of us was having an affair. Neither of us was screwing around. But neither were we being faithful to each other. It looked nearly the same as if someone was cheating, and it felt nearly the same. Only there was no one outside of the marriage who we could point to and say, he or she is partly to blame. It was all on us.
    We still loved each other, but we were not at the top of our game. Facing another round of pregnancy and infancy was more than we could do gracefully. And so we were blundering our way through it, pelting each other with resentment and blame. In and of themselves, our grievances were unexceptional. They all came down to how we divided available time and energy. In fatter years, we could have arbitrated with more civility. But this was famine, and we were starving people fighting over the last thin scrap.
    Every emotion and perception was amplified and distorted. “You always” and “You never” became the constant, looping refrain. It felt like our wedding bands had twisted into Möbius strips—around and around we’d go, never getting to the other side.
    I have a friend who has managed to maintain a vital and dynamic relationship with her husband for more than thirty years. She says the secret is very simple: they just have to be willing to renegotiate everything, forever. It was time for Patrick and me to sit down at the bargaining table. We both had unmet needs, wants, and demands. This was a serious test of our marriage. It deserved and required our undivided energy and attention. We needed to be in lockdown at Camp David, with a full entourage of aides and interpreters. We needed bottled spring water and frequent stretch breaks; guided meditations and long, quiet walks in the woods. We needed all calls held and nothing on each day’s agenda but working out a new deal.
    But we had kids. There were clothes to wash, baths to run, library books to return, and crusts to cut. We couldn’t scream, or cry, or curse, as loud or as long as we sometimes needed to. And yet, as much as the presence of children inhibited and hindered us, I am not sure we would have hung in there without them. In a way, they were our entourage: a steadying influence that kept us from walking away on days when it felt too fucking hard.
    The urge to escape was strong. On our worst days, I thought I might as well have an affair. I fantasized about leaving, or making him leave. Then I’d remember I was three months pregnant and he was my sons’ father, and there was the house, the money, and all this stuff we shared. As hard as it was to stay in my marriage, it seemed a whole lot harder to get out of it. That, right there, is the whole point of marriage as an institution. There’s legal and financial infrastructure that can’t be dismantled overnight, no matter how badly you want to walk away. And if children are part of what you’ve built up together, you can’t tear the whole thing down anyway, because you tear them up with it. You can only rearrange the particulars: who and what goes where, and with whom.
    There were days that the only thing holding me back from kicking him out was the thought that my pain-in-the-ass husband would be an even bigger pain-in-the-ass ex-husband. And I would have to put up with him, because of the children. As long as I was stuck with him anyhow, I might as well keep him close enough to take out the trash and help with bedtime.
    I find the flip