Let’s face it, 20 years doing anything of the same thing can get boring. Maybe not the whole thing, but parts of it. Imagine the same job for 20 years. Sure, new people come, old people go, but if you’re doing the same basic thing no matter how much you love it, something is going to get boring.
I can honestly say, hand to God, not one day of my marriage has been boring.
The key to fighting boredom when you’ve been doing something for 20 years is imagination. I would wager that it’s not the key, but the reason you keep going.
I should have suspected the wife’s imagination would be the manna for our marriage. It started when we were dating. No, I didn’t get notes like a normal boyfriend, as we didn’t attend the same school. I got art projects. Lovingly crafted and wonderfully romantically imaginative things. The best was a red folder. My wife must have taken countless hours to cut our words, pictures, phrases from an assortment of magazines. She then pasted these onto the folder to describe me. In my 17 year old mind I am sure I thought nothing of it, but when I came across it the other night as a 38 year old man I cried. Spotaneously. Sure, I am a sappy guy; I mean who among us doesn’t cry during Kodak or Cotton commercials, but this was heart grabbing.
This imagination of my wife’s cotinues throughout our marriage. It’s deceptively simple, but powerful. Sometimes you miss it, as she doesn’t celebrate or laud about it. It’s just her nature. I’ll give you two examples that stand out. One early in our marriage and one that just happened last month.
As I’ve explained before, my daughter was born premature and my wife dedicated her life to raising and educating her. Part of this was creating toys for her to play with that stimulate her. Luckily, my neice was about the same age as my daughter, so there was always someone to play with. As they grew from babies into kids it became harder to keep them occupied. My daughter and neice were naturally inquisitive, but they are both very smart. Toys that would fascinate other kids lost meaning with them quickly.
Over the course of a few nights my wife worked furiously on her sewing machine. One day, maybe, I’ll explain the sewing deal. (I think you can call this heavy, drop a rock on your head foreshadowing.) When she emerged with the final product it was a canvas teepee standing over five feet tall. I can remember my daughter’s reaction to it. She thought it was the coolest thing in the world as it stood on three PVC pipes and expanded so her friends could come in and play. These weren’t sold in stores nor were they available through the mail. My wife imagined it and it became real.
We’re veteran home owners at this point in our marriage. We’re even more prolific procrastinators. We start things and don’t finish them. Whereas other home owners will start painting or start cleaning something and don’t finish, we’ll destroy a room and let it sit for a nice four or five or ten years.
When we started thinking about redoing our family room I was cautious on the inside. I know our history of starting projects and our dreams of finishing them. I also know that we lack the inherit ability to see the final product. At all. Well, I thought we did until my wife surprised me this spring.
We had a 1950’s era rock garden in our family room that I removed with a ton of work. I slammed a sledge hammer against it, it broke, I picked up the pieces and took them outside. Sure, I emptied the dirt first, but if it had not been for my daughter vacuuming up the remaining dirt and rock pieces, it would have become another unfinished project causality.
The wife took up the banner of remodeling and we now have a seating area with shelves where the rock garden once stood. She designed it, helped build it and finished it. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before and it draws rave praise from the people who see it. Functional, yet attractive. Sturdy, yet comfortable.
It’s just another benefit of my wife’s imagination keeping our marriage fresh and frothy.
Today’s Gift: Over the weekend I did some imagining of my own. It concerns our backyard and landscaping. Right now we have a lawn grade that leads right to Hades. We’re going to do something about it, and to this end I took two books out the library to help us. I am hoping my wife has time this weekend to look at them with me and help me design something we can do for our backyard.