Let me take you back to the summer of 2005. George W. Bush is starting his second lap as President. Americans are staying strong in face of the divorce of Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston. Without music on our phones, we’re downloading “Hollaback Girl” and “Boulevard of Empty Dreams” to our iPods. On Thursday nights, we’re getting acquainted with a quirky little television show called The Office.
On a more personal note, it was the summer Jenni and I completed our cross-country trip from East Windsor, NJ to Carlsbad, CA. We were still newlyweds, having been married the year before. After stuffing as much as possible into our Mazda 626, we wandered across the country–stopping to see family, friends, places one or both of us had never been before. We went to Chicago and Jenni saw her first Cubs game. We visited my sister in Denver. And as Jenni will tell you, we sprinted through an abrupt tour of Zion National Park because I was preoccupied with getting to Las Vegas and playing blackjack. (I had just read Bringing Down The House and I was eager to try out my card counting skills.) We spent almost two weeks on our “road trip of a lifetime” and the journey served as a second honeymoon. Very soon though, the honeymoon would be over.
We landed in California in mid-July and the rest of the summer was sort of an extension of the road trip. Sure, we had to take care of the mundane–opening a bank account, passing the CA drivers license test, finding a new dry cleaner–but even these tasks were filled with a sense of exploration. Whether we were finding our favorite beach, trying new restaurants, or grocery shopping at a place called Trader Joe’s, everything was new and we were discovering it together. Even a trip to IKEA for a dining table turned into an adventure, as the LËRHAMN set had to be lashed to the roof of our faithful Mazda as we tentatively drove home from Mission Valley, fearful of losing parts on the 15. Furniture challenges aside, it was a fun summer.
And then it was over. In August, Jenni started teaching at Potter Junior High in Fallbrook. Every morning Jenni would head off to work and I would be all alone in our apartment. With no one to play paddle ball with at the beach and no one to go out to lunch with, I was woefully without things to do. I was like Rapunzel in the opening of Tangled (minus the long flowing blonde hair) or Will Freeman in About a Boy. Obviously, I was in need of an adventure involving finding my natural birth royal parents or hijinks by pretending to be a father to a weird boy, but neither were in front of me. So I was bored…real bored.
Additionally, for the first time in over decade, I was not starting the academic calendar as a teacher. As we departed New Jersey, I wasn’t sure what my next vocation was going to be, but I had decided it wouldn’t be a middle school math teacher. I was waiting to get my real estate license from the state of California, but the bureaucracy of Sacramento didn’t have that arriving in my mailbox for another few months. So, I was in a new place, didn’t have any friends, and was professionally without direction. Sounds like the recipe for the ideal spouse, no?
It got bad. I’ve never been one who’s great with a lot of free time to myself. As I child, when my mom told me to “go entertain myself” I had no idea what she meant. I’ve always needed motivation to get up in the morning in the form of someplace to go. As hard as I tried, I couldn’t fill my day with a trip to the coffee shop and checking the mailbox. With little to do, I watched every minute of Hurricane Katrina coverage that CNN could broadcast. Making dinner became the only real meaningful task I had. Throughout the day, I would ask myself, “When is it too early to start making dinner?” Without the proper tools or knowledge, I attempted to make homemade pasta and spring rolls just because I had the free time. Pinterest didn’t exist yet, but my “epic fails” in the kitchen certainly didn’t do much for my state of mind.
When Jenni did get home from work, I was like a faithful, yet needy dog greeting her at the door. I had no idea how long she was gone, and I was desperate for human interaction. Jenni got to leave the house and be around people; all I had to offer was that they were low on water and blankets at the Superdome. Before she could put her coat down, I needed her to provide positive reinforcement on what I had accomplished that day. Which by the way, wasn’t very much–perhaps a load of laundry or taking out the recycling. Without having to catch her breath, Jenni had to answer all my questions about what our plans for the evening would be.
So this was Jenni’s existence: go to school each morning to teach remedial English to seventh graders and return home in the evening to molify her emotionally fragile husband. It was probably a tossup as to which portion of her day required dealing with more immaturity. At least she was getting paid for one of them.
After about six week of this, something had to be done. At least that’s what our apartment manager said, and he was my closest friend at the time. Sick of my own moping, I did what did when I was seventeen…and got a job at the mall. Like many of the stores, Crate & Barrel was looking for holiday help and I signed on. While the two month stint isn’t listed on my resume, it certainly helped turn my nascent California residency around.
It’s amazing what an hourly retail job will do for your psyche. Putting on that black apron and grabbing my note pad and box cutter, I was filled with purpose. The fine people of North County needed home accessories and, by god, I was there to help them. I arranged throw pillows left to right from darkest to lightest. I carefully organized glassware in descending height order. When I told someone “we might have something in the back,” I actually went and looked for it. Most importantly, I got off the couch and stopped wallowing; it was the power of having to get up and having somewhere to go.
Dinner conversations became more interesting as I actually had something to talk about. With great drama, I would describe to Jenni my cast of coworkers and detail the corporate secrets of folding area rugs and napkins. And some nights when Jenni got home, I would be working. Given how the fall started, I’m sure having some time and space to herself wasn’t the worst thing in the world for our marriage.
Was our marriage seriously in trouble? Probably not. Is the title of this post designed to be overdramatic to grab the reader? Of course it is. But in the second year of our marriage, our move to California presented a test to our relationship. One we passed with the help of a houseware company based out of Northbrook, Illinois.
In early December, my real estate license finally arrived in the mail and I let my manager know I would work through Christmas. There was no goodbye card or going away party in the break room, but I did take steal my black and white apron as a souvenir of my two month tour. Every year at Thanksgiving, I put it on to carve the turkey and I remember the days of our young marriage when we first moved to California. Just the year prior, we had received lots of things from Crate and Barrel as wedding gifts: All-Clad cookware, silverware, cutlery, serving pieces, bowls designed just for popcorn. You can’t add a Crate & Barrel associate apron to your wedding registry, but that seasonal job was one of the best gifts our marriage ever received.
