We Don’t Have a Whole Lot in Common (and That’s Okay)

We Don’t Have a Whole Lot in Common (and That’s Okay)

Our daughters were whining; the back of the van was filled with groceries; a cardboard box was on the floorboard, containing three leftover slices of mushroom pizza. My husband turned on the radio to drown out the noise or to distract them, I am not sure which. He flipped through the channels restlessly until we heard six of the seven syllables that changed our world: “—angioblastoma.”

My husband and I looked at each other, eyes wide, as startled as if we’d heard our own names projected over an international radio station.

The British doctor continued to talk about brain surgery, describing the hole that must be drilled to allow blood to vent before accessing the tumor. My husband reached up with one hand and pressed the quarter-size burr hole on the ride side of his head. A spot that I sometimes forget about until I’m brushing my fingers through his hair and feel that stomach-dropping dip.

We listened to the neurosurgeon for as long as we could: most dangerous surgery, no room for error, brain damage….It was like an auditory car-wreck. You couldn’t tune it out.

Finally, when the girls were so tired of being in the car that they started screaming in chorus, my husband flicked off the radio. He said, “We wouldn’t even have known that word two years ago.”

Hemangioblastoma.

It’s strange to me how I forget sometimes, but I reckon forgetting’s a sign of healing. Last weekend, for instance, my husband and I went to North Carolina to celebrate our eighth anniversary trip. I imagined two days of uninterrupted quality time while we sat in our cabin overlooking the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Instead, three pit bull mixes were waiting on the front porch of the tiny cabin. Our best view was of a double-wide. The dogs barked all night, and my husband and I couldn’t fall asleep. The next day, I decided to go on a long hiking trip. My husband wasn’t as enthused, since he only likes to hike if he’s hunting or heading into the woods to camp.

Two of seven miles in, I said, “What do we have in common?”

He said, “Are we really going to get into this?”

“Yes.” I breathed through my nose. “Yes, we are.”

“You like to read, I don’t. You like warm weather, I don’t.” He stooped to pick up a rock, glittering like mica. He pocketed it and said, “I’m going to think of this conversation every time I look at it.”

I said, “You are sentimental, I am not.”

He grinned, for the inverse is true.

We hiked some more. Past waterfalls and mountain laurel. Past a sleek black muskrat that wove up the damp gully. We had the trail to ourselves, and it was beautiful. About five miles up the mountain, we came upon a graveyard, tucked back in the wood. Bright, artificial flowers were wedged down into cones in front of the replaced graves, but some of the stones were original.

My husband and I walked back to the graveyard to read the inscriptions and dates. A mother who died when she was twenty-seven. A young boy at fourteen. Another man at fifty-four.

I said, “People just didn’t live very long back then.”

My husband and I stood before a shared gravestone. Husband and wife.

“That’s how I want to go,” I said. “Both in our eighties.”

A miracle that it’s even a possibility.

Viewing that conjoined gravestone temporarily shifted my earthbound perspective to a loftier, eternal plane. But then, the next morning, we got stuck in three traffic jams, and I got cranky and carsick while winding down the mountain. I wish I could say that hearing “—angioblastoma” on the radio last night was a reality check to cherish the man sitting beside me. But then, the kids started screaming, and he pressed the gas, and I clutched the passenger door and questioned his driving abilities.

However, now here I quietly sit, remembering how we ate pancakes around our tiny kitchen table in our tiny apartment this morning, and though this transition has been challenging at times, looking at each other, we knew it was going to be all right. I remember how my husband wrapped his arm protectively around our daughters while giving them a ride on his four-wheeler earlier today. I remember how my husband and I (after we’d gotten the groceries unpacked and the girls tucked in bed) talked about how, no matter where you are in the world, there is always something to miss.

I think of all of this, and I know that I am married to a very good man.

Yes, he doesn’t like to hike unless there is a purpose. Yes, he is often opinionated. Yes, he will tell me if I’m being overly opinionated, too. But he is a man who would fight to the death to protect our family. Who takes his responsibility as a provider seriously. Who puts up with my dramatic flair and makes me laugh when I’m about to punch his arm. He balances me so well, and therefore I am grateful for the past eight years we have gotten to spend together, and I pray that—if the Lord wills it—we will have many more.

How have you learned to enjoy your spouse’s differences?