My Spouse.

LIS I have a lot of marriage cred. And a lot of laugh and weep—a lot for better or worse. And also courage.

Life is difficult, delicious and complicated. But so worth it. Marriage is the same.

My husband is the most intelligent and caring person I know. He’s a critical thinker and teller of truths.

I Used To Be Important—a reality poem I wrote in honor of the former, the present, the fiddlers and forevers.

I used to be important 
Is this because everyone told me I was?
And now they don’t bother because 
I’m not as rich as I could have been 
Or as tall or fit
And there’s a pause between brain and mouth
And it takes me longer to cut my food. 

Once I was the youngest in the room.
Now I am the oldest
And if the truth be known
Today I am alone in my home office
In a friggin’ Zoom room full of fiddlers. 
This is because I’m vulnerable
And also I falter in step. 

Some of them are listening.
Some are trying to figure out
How I came to be so important 
Back then (and even now) 
Concluding it must have been easier. 
Most just fiddle with their equipment
And attempt to look through me. 

Perhaps the concept of seeing through me
Awakens the sub of their conscience
To the reality of what important might be
How to grab it and hold it 
And put it all together
So the brain can work beyond the body
Filling the Zoom room with the answers. 

My husband coaches C-level executives on board relations, acquisition management, business policy and business ethics.

Random Musings:

Mike and I grew up in Oceanside on the south shore of Long Island in New York. We first met in 7th grade. By that time, his parents were no longer living together. His dad was Greek—a rogue and easy to love. His mother was of Lithuanian descent and Catholic. She was into sin in a big way, especially the sins of Mike’s dad—real and imagined. The first time I met her she was burning my future father-in-law’s possessions in a bonfire in the back yard. Mike had two sisters and three brothers. He was the youngest brother. His parents and two of his brothers have since passed away. His younger sister is now a brother.

When Mike was 10 he prepared to be confirmed in the Catholic Church. This is how he tells the story of the demise of his Catholicism. So the priest asked each boy a question. If you answered incorrectly you were banished to a separate row for failures and you were likely to be held back. Mike’s question was a “what if” about getting shot down and imprisoned in Korea. “What if your captors demanded you give up your religion; would you give up your religion Mikey?” the priest asked. “Oh no,” said Mikey. “But what if they tortured you?” asked the priest. “Well. If they tortured me,” Mikey paused. He looked at the miserable kids sitting in losers’ row. He thought about getting ridiculed by his brothers. Mikey lied. “I would rather die, Father, then give up my religion.” And so Mike was confirmed but from that day forth he was no longer committed. This made it much easier for me to convince him to convert to Judaism so we could be married in Temple Avodah. His conversion is the only thing in our marriage we both have regrets about because we have come to believe religion is a sacred gift—you receive this gift or you don’t, but it must never be the result of coercion or blackmail.

When we were kids, we hung out at Nathan’s in the old Roadside Rest on Long Beach Road—eating hotdogs that snapped and the most amazing fries ever! Often at dusk we sat on a bench on the Boardwalk in Long Beach, all salty and sandy, watching the planes land at Idlewild Airport (soon to be renamed Kennedy). JFK. We believed nothing could be worse than 1963. We were wrong.

Mike wanted to be an actor. In high school he played Harry Beaton in Brigadoon. His flips and leaps were quite astonishing. Instead he became a CEO. Interesting—the choices we make.

From the late 1980s until 2008, Mike served as a CEO in the telecommunications industry. He empowered his employees to make decisions; his company had a no lay-offs policy, a dependent care program, paid family leave, and full company paid healthcare benefits.

In May of 2006, on a beautiful top down kinda day a guy from the UK, driving on the wrong side of the road, hit my darling Mike and our son (in law) Frank head on. Kaboom! Frank and Mike are two miracle Humpty Dumpties who got put back together again and who were the recipients of a second chance at life.

Years passed and in 2016, Mike started to limp just a little. His body parts were aching just a bit. He upped his martinis but his body deterioration continued until early 2020 when he began to lose the ability to use his arms and hands and walking became too painful for him to bear. He started falling. On March 9, 2020, he was admitted to Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia for tests and had major spinal surgery on March 11, exactly two days before Philadelphia and the rest of our country shut down because of Corona.

So. My darling Mike is glued together with so many rods and screws and plates, plus layers of honor, integrity, kindness, generosity, a bit of grit mixed with plenty of spit for mortar, and more than his share of pain.

Thank goodness for eternal optimism, Motrin, deep breathing, Moon Valley Organics Muscle Rub, kids, grandkids, porches, Duvel, Chateauneuf-du-Pape, steak, swordfish and bagels*.

Each day, my MANO gets better.

Mike believes music is more important than lyrics. I vehemently disagree.

He listens to Diana Krall, Sydney Bechet and Errol Garner. He loves the songs of Leonard Cohen.

Mike is very comfortable living with art. It’s a good thing he is.

Every Sunday at 10AM Mike watches Eddie Muller and Noir Alley on TCM. Monday through Friday at 9AM he watches Perry Mason on MeTV. He sometimes watches Morning Joe which I call Morning Joke. He uses the Hallmark Channel to fall asleep to.

Mikeisms:

If the boat misses the dock, is it the dock’s fault? In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king. The juice isn’t worth the squeeze. Recipe for rabbit stew is to first catch a rabbit. That’s about as useful as tits on a boar. Put the candle back. There is no such thing as an adjusted actual. If the neighbors peek, they do so at their own peril. When I get out of bed it takes 35 minutes for my body to join me. Pain is my friend. I do not believe in self-limitation. Outwit yourself and everyone else.

And then this very zen one:

If a tree falls in the woods and your spouse isn’t there to hear it, is it still your fault?

Mike believes in the creation. Here’s how it goes. God created the red herring. If man freezes a red herring and then eats it his penis falls off. And this is how women were created. The end.

Moreisms:

My nickname for Mike is MANO.

Martinis don’t ease pain. Marijuana ain’t Nirvana. Opioids make living dead.

Once you have PTSD (or whatever they’re calling it now) it never goes away. You learn to cope but there is no cure. What I just wrote is not science; it’s my opinion.

There is a cure for yellow jockey shorts. Buy black ones.

Remember. We all started out wearing diapers and drooling and most of us will end up wearing diapers and drooling.

Today, January 25, 2022, is our anniversary. Mike and I have been married for 52 years.

*We get our bagels from Hot Bagels in Somers Point, NJ. When it comes to bagels, we have sampled the best of the best, and Hot Bagels’ bagels stand up to all of them. Their jalapeño cream cheese is to die for. And it’s so spicy you just might kick the bucket.

And some other Biddy Notes from LIS:

1. I’m not always the voice of doom.

2. NORG promises she will get to her Spouse blog and it will be hysterically funny because her spouse is one of the funniest people on this planet. FUNNIEST.

3. I’m sure you’ve already figured out our blog is one big/little experiment. It turns out we need to be more flexible with blogging than we ever could have imagined. Easy to blame it on our collective depression from two years of Covid but it’s also about politics, other medical issues, family difficulties and the unexpected twists and turns lives take. For everyone. So. We’ve decided to post randomly—as we can, when we can—together and individually. We’ll keep you posted (lol) @giddybiddiesblog on Instagram.

4. I screwed up our last blog (Next…) mostly because I’m demented when it comes to technology. Oh. You can read Next… but you can’t make comments under it. I suggest you comment about Next… in the same place you comment about Spouse. That’s a heck of a lot easier than me trying to fix the error I made.