Friends & Lovers

I've known Amy since my library school days. We met at work and it was instant friendship. I know her family and became friends with some of her friends. I thought you had to be under the age of 12 to make a new best friend. She introduced me to Cape Cod and is godmother to my kids. I went to her 50th birthday blow-out weekend and she would have gone to mine if I had had one! We've actually gotten closer recently. She was the one I turned to when I was sure my daughter, then aged 19, would never speak to me again. She said my daughter would like me again and she was right!

She's living near me for the summer and has only been around for a week, but it has been so eye opening. Since she's going to be around for the summer and likes vintage goods, she offered to help with with my antique shop. She came over yesterday and I gave her the job of pricing. I really don't like to price. She plopped herself down in the linens and made up prices. It was great. It was so nice to feel I have someone who I can talk to about the shop, who will help me and who is on the same wave length.

This morning as I was in the shower I had a major epiphany about crucial relationships in my life. I don't know about you, but the shower is my most productive place to think! I was thinking about how nice it was to have Amy to share the shop with. For years I have tried to get my husband to be my partner in the business. It doesn't bore him completely. He has ideas, he will give me his opinion about displays and will move the furniture around if I ask him. But, sadly, it never feels like he's completely engaged. And I've known for a while that without a partner or a deadline, I just don't get many projects done.

What I realized is that there are people who think like me and there are people I have much in common with. And I don't have to demand both from one individual. Amy and I think alike. My husband and I do not. Amy's sense of style, her sensibility is similar to mine. We can work together and we have, both as librarians and cleaning out her parent's homes. We could easily start a business staging houses, or being bridal consultants, or selling antiques. We just think alike.

My husband and I do not think alike. When I met him, he was the first person I was family-close to who didn't criticize me. He listened to all my stories and was interested. So all these years I've believed we think alike. We don't. I even don't care why, which is strange cuz I always care why! But in this instance it doesn't matter why, cuz just knowing we don't think a like makes so much of my married life make sense!

What we have is a life in common. And I don't mean our married life. We have our childhood in common, even tho we didn't meet til college. We are the same age and grew up in similar neighborhoods in the greater Los Angeles basin. We experienced the '60's. We listened to the same AM radio stations. We know the same songs from high school. We remember the Sunset Strip "riots," and know it was the basis for Buffalo Springfield's For What It's Worth. We both went to The Troubador, even if we didn't see the same groups.

We also have a life in common after we met. I knew within three days of meeting him at summer camp that I would spend the rest of my life with him. We have that summer camp and all those friends in common. We have the same religious and spiritual beliefs. He knows my family, I know his. We have kids together.

Things have been difficult between us for the past six or seven years. Not consistently difficult, in fact inconsistently so, which probably makes it all the worse. Things will be going along smoothly and then I'll get hurt and threaten to leave. He wouldn't seem to understand. And I couldn't figure out why my thinking isn't perfectly clear and understandable to him. He understands the feelings, but my thinking was foreign to him. Well, if after all these years of me not really understanding how he thinks, I'm pretty sure he doesn't know how I think either. I don't know if this will make a difference to our lives, this understanding that we have lots in common, but not the way we think. I don't even know if I will tell him of this "ah ha." It helps me, but will it help him? He might think it's cool and then again he might just not get it!

Luckily we will always have Paris? No, forget Paris . . . we will always have our roots in common.