Intermitent reinforcement

Intermitent reinforcement. This is the way to build a really stable foundation for love.

never the same again

          We met each week in couple’s therapy. We arrived together and departed together, but that is really where we met. Cheryl pushed her agenda and I stood outside of that; neither of us willing to compromise. The therapist--I don't remember her name--I'm sure she had her own thoughts, too. Mostly she refereed. We spent a good part of the summer there, an hour in the afternoon, each week. We kept holding an appointment with her until sometime in the early fall.

          Cheryl wanted commitment. She wanted to trade in the engagement ring for wedding bands. I was the problem, she would say, "How are you ever going to handle a baby and be a father," she would say, "unless you grow up and settle down." I don't really remember her words, but they were like that. She left me with the sense that she thought that the morale high ground of adulthood was hers alone. "You're too set in your ways," I would respond. "Do you think that the baby is going to fit into your schedule so neatly? My lack of routine is so much more adaptable." Those words I do remember. She didn't think that working out every morning could be too much. She didn't think it could be as much a vice as something like drinking. 

          When I moved across country and left my west coast life behind, it was to be with her, to live with her, to love with her, to raise a family and live a life. We rented an apartment, got engaged, bought a condo and furniture. She made some time for me in her schedule, but not enough. She kept her pre-dawn appointment at the gym each day. She kept working her long hours. She kept the meetings with her circles of friends. She started putting herself to sleep each night before nine and then insisted upon quiet as I worked through the last four hours of my own waking day. Our schedules never matched up.

          After she went to bed, I was restless, anxious. I slipped out the door and stood in the doorway of the porch, peering out across the width of the street at the lights and shadows of other people's lives. The long hours were too quiet and left the uncertain thoughts in my head too loud. Neither of us wanted this disconnect. She tried to be close to me and I tried to be close to her, but we lived within different time zones, even under the same roof. The wakeful hours that we spend together were too often spent struggling for control. 

          The therapist asked us to answer a lot of questions about what we wanted in life and what we valued. We never talked about the answers, or even gave answers. It's easy to step back and see that we were each self-medicating our version of pain. It's easy to see how much we loved each other and how good our relationship could be when it was good. It's easy to see how much we each tried to fit the other into our lives. How do you end up fighting so much with someone that you have been so in love with for so long? How do you sit with the pain and distress and trust that it will evolve? How do you not move on and keep searching? These are the real questions.

          "When we have a baby—" That was always the answer. It was the only catalyst that forced change. It was the only transformation that we could both bet on. It was a bet and it was all or nothing. And maybe it was all and nothing. "Things will take care of themselves. Things will be better." Or maybe not. Maybe they would just be more complicated.

          As we neared the third month of working with the therapist, our mediator, Cheryl told me that she was again pregnant. I thought that she was going to tell me that she wanted out. I wanted out, but I didn't want to give up trying. I didn't know how to give up trying. She told me that she was pregnant and I was very surprised. "We'll see what happens," we said. "Maybe this is what we need to get through it all? We weren't going to walk away from that potential. We also weren’t going to look down to possibly see our feet spinning in the air, and that our cartoon cliff was no longer beneath us. "I don't know how we will be able to handle things if it all falls apart," I said. "We don't really have much strength in reserve."

          We mentioned the pregnancy at the end of a therapy session, off handedly, almost embarrassed for the complication that it caused. We went through the motions of each session: sharing our determinants, our indictments, our wounds. We went through the motions of the first trimester; she more committed emotionally than I was willing or able to be. Both of us in fear, I expect. Hopeful but in fear.

          The ultrasound visit was in the same darkened office in a distant corner of the hospital. We were probably less than 1,000 feet from home, but thousands and thousands of distance from the comfort and shelter that was found there, even within the struggles that we were unwilling to accept in each day. The monitor lit up with the murky soundings of Cheryl's womb. We heard the strong beat of her adult heart, measuring out time a bit faster than the ticking second hand of the clock.

          And after that, things were never the same again.

Separation from God

Emmy didn't remember time in the womb. She couldn't, really. It was hard enough to remember last week. in utero? How could she? As a young girl, though, she would tell people that she remembered. She remembered the heavy floating. She felt the emotional knowing—knowing what some other being was experiencing; being part of a whole and whole in her own right. Her knowledge transcended the details of this experience over that one. She could tell when happiness was surging, or when delight numbed her world. She felt the wilting of sadness; the fire of anger.

And what was it like to be born? Did she remember that: the squeezing; the pushing through from one world into the next; the sensations of light and air and the un-muffled voices all around her? It must have been wonderful, she would tell herself. She knew even as a child that she was in love with life itself. The sharp pain of fire; the lingering pain of a puncture, the tortured convulsions of tickling—all of it—she understood sensation as a thousand different messages. Each one as treasured as a religious scroll. She was fascinated by the tactile pleasure of information. She would pick up a pencil or some other object and hold it in her hand. She would move it between her fingers, back and forth, and understand that it was round, or that it was near so, or not at all. The flood of information—it was wonderful.

To be born, that must have been beautiful she would say—even to herself; it must have been beautiful. Inside, however, she could not dissociate the sense of loss and sorrow when she set herself to recall the moment. It was a practiced memory and as an adult she could not truly trust the intellectual shape of it, but the emotion was there, as plain as day. Before she was born, she knew that she was complete. She lived and grew and developed, all the while against the backdrop he mother's beating heart. It was not just another heart in the collective body. It was the audible nourishing command of God, the magic sound that told her to grow, to live, to be, to stay alive. It was like the day and the night, as it beat and paused, beat and paused, over and over. The command vibrated through the womb and energized her cells. It ceased, the pressure ebbing, the echo of the heart beat pushing back to fill the space left behind, pulling her toward that vacuum. Again, the push of pressure, on her body, sound upon her ears; the heartbeat mentoring her own heart to speak: grow; live; grow; live.

And then it was lost. She knew that the crying wasn't from pain or the shock of the air, or even from the slap of an overzealous doctor’s hand. It was the absence of the mother's heartbeat. Separation from God. That one unavoidable commanding bark to continue in each moment, replaced with a thousand, thousand mixed messages of light and sound and taste and touch. She cried at birth from the loss of that pulsing sensory overload of love, from the shock and confusion of the noise that replaced it. She cried from her first new flash of emotion, abandonment and loneliness.

Emmy felt the truth in the emotional memory. She trusted her intuition as a trained emotional intelligence, an emotional memory that transcended the plot heavy details that people wanted to grasp onto. She couldn’t admit the truth that she felt, that it was so much worse on this side of birth—so desperate. It was nauseating misery to be born and all that was beautiful had been left behind. The new beauty—the new emotions that must rise up to the linguistic and cultural standards of pleasure and quality—these were all poor shadows of the true, first sense of the divine, in the womb.

committment -- I can't even spell the word right ;)

I am most interested in commitment to the moment. That is my philosophy; nothing more. I've found that commitment is often a crutch that people use to give form to their deficient content. Imagine a ball of clay. Maybe it is shaped like a wobbly golf ball. "We" want this to be our relationship--hypothetically--and so we call it a circle! Because relationships are like big circles. And so then we look at the glass of water that we have before us and notice the form of a circle. That glass, emptied upon the clay, becomes the commitment. It comes down out of the sky like a cage and slices into the clay on one side and misses on the other. So now the perfectly wobbly ball of clay is like a crescent of clay outside the glass and a ball of clay wedged up along one side of the glass, inside, and then there is that open space over there by the other edge, on the inside. So what has been achieved, you ask? Well, some of the content doesn't fir within the form. So it is thrown away. And some of the form is empty of content, so it is a void, pulling upon what is. And nothing has been achieved except to give the content a misfitting shape. So much better to just let the content be the form and love it for what it is. Does that make sense? If something is not a part of the mass of clay. . . well, then it's really not a part of the mass of clay. And if it is a part of it, then it is. And maybe the clay organically grows and maybe there is a proverbial sculpture hidden within the mass. Isn't that so much better than standing within the containment, peering out at what has been lost and remarking at the ghastly empty void? These things work themselves out best, I think, when they are allowed to grow organically.

the best moment of her long—too long—life

Emmy could feel the slower beating of her heart. She could hear it now and again. More and more, she felt that fluttering sensation of arrhythmia in her chest, and then the too strong thumping of her heart; that one tribal drum, beaten without mercy inside of her, pulsing throughout the flesh of her body with its simple command to live. Her eyes weakened, the distance blurred so that it was just colored light and shadows, the memory of shapes, and the sense of near and far. The close up world held stark relief against the soft impressionist focus of the distance. The smoke—she could see the smoke curling away; it had a scent that she remembered, but her sense of smell had long since left her. She brought the rolled tobacco leaf to her lips and paused, looking down at the glowing ember. It was beautiful the way the light emanated from within. She smiled. She could feel the warmth against her upper lip. It was burned down short, so that it almost burned her fingertips. Over the years, her fingers had callused to cradle this fire; she knew it could burn all the way down to between her fingers and she would be fine holding it. Sometimes sleep came at odd moments. She tilted the faux magic wand rested in her fingers and brought the damp, open tip to her lips. There was a slight excitement, an expectation, as her throat lungs dilated to inhale the smoke. This drag was going to be the best moment of her long—too long—life.