When the Moon Hits Your Eye

Our family had cause to celebrate the other night, so we loaded the kids in the van and headed out to a new restaurant I'd been wanting to check out. Within moments of arriving, it was clear that Patrick was less than thrilled about the place. It was crowded and busy when we got there, the service was cafeteria-style and rushed, the menu was expensive, and they were out of the steak I thought might win him over in spite of all that. Customers were swarming for tables, pouncing the second any of us rose up to fetch a fork or a cup of water.

Beyond the obvious irritants, there was a kind of hive atmosphere, because this is a small town, and the place has been getting lots of buzz. My husband is particularly resistant to social buzz. I could tell it was grating on him like the noise of florescent lights.

Me, I was excitedly flitting around. I love buzz. I thought it felt festive. The nine dollar glass of wine helped.

The restaurant's specialty is wood-fired pizza, served up in a style I would call "rustic," and my husband calls "sloppy." We ordered three, and when they arrived, with their toppings in a more or less virgin state (slices of cheese instead of shredded, fresh baby spinach instead of cooked), mine was the only smile that stayed right side up.

We left with most of it in boxes, and have been fighting about it every time it comes up since, which is a lot, because, you know, the buzz.

"That place is awful," he says, "sloppily prepared food and no service masquerading as philosophy."

"It's trying to do something different and creative," I argue back. "Just because the pizza's not to your taste, you shouldn't tear it down. Just because it's not how you were raised to understand pizza should be, doesn't make it bad pizza. You should support the pizza just for trying. " (Yes, dear reader, it's possible one of us is talking about more than pizza.)

"Pretentious," he declares. "Inflated."

"Small-minded," I charge. "Judgemental."

The negative side of being even a little bit hip to psychology, which we are, is that you can spin any conflict into evidence of your opponent's unconscious "issues."

Clearly, I told Patrick just yesterday when another couple suggested the restaurant for a get-together, he is threatened by the pizza's success. And I said it with a nearly straight face.

Why is it so hard to let people be who they are when that happens to be different from who we are? Being judged hurts. I know that. But there I go, anyway, judging.

A few weeks ago, we had our first fight over the new house. Patrick has given me more or less free rein with the remodel and decorating from the get-go. In return, where he expressed a preference for this or that, I was gracious about it and trusted his input. No regrets: he gets the credit for the fabulous turquoise above the pink bathroom tile, and his last minute executive decision to paint his office the same soft blue as our bedroom turned out to be serene like he hoped, and not sleepy like I feared. Then he moved his desk in front of one of the two pairs of windows and decided he had to shade them in order to work at his computer. Which is all the time.

Sunlight to me is like oxygen. The idea that half the windows in that room, in the center of the house, would be permanently shaded, made me crazy. Worse, I knew I didn't have a leg to stand on: he's the one who has to work there, he's the majority breadwinner, the desk is much better in that position, and he let me have my way in virtually everything else. All I could do was sulk. And glower.

Which I did everytime I passed through for the next two days, thinking, go ahead, take a happy, bright space and make it a sad and dark space. LIKE YOUR SOUL.

I really did.

Because natural light is important to me, and if it's not as important to you, then you must be wrong. And maybe bad. And most likely a fascist.

And if you don't like your very expensive pizza flung down in front of you with all the toppings scattered unevenly and the edges a little charred from the wood fire, if you don't find that charming, if you don't GET THAT, you must not get me.

I've been accusing Patrick of taking something as a personal offense that merely happens to not to be to his taste.

The really negative part of being even a little bit hip to psychology is that you can't get away with that shit.

What's wonderful about staying undivorced through minor and major differences of opinion, through each other's big and little fuck-ups for ten-plus years is the gradual acceptance that the person you married is really, terribly flawed, and that, by now, they probably suspect the same thing about you, and that there isn't another human being you can hang out with, day in and day out, for over a decade, and not come to the same inescapable realization.

You can find your soulmate sight unseen three thousand miles away, he can pursue you up and down the length of a continent, promise you the moon and bring it to you. You can get on a bus one morning and leave everything you ever knew behind to ride off into happily ever after and never look back, and one day, I promise, you will find yourself leaving a restaurant with that very person, wondering what in the world you are doing with someone so obviously wrong for you in every way. And in the same instant, in a one-two punch to your consciousness, you will realize that they have sometimes wondered the same thing, and you will know that you are loved, as pouty and judge-y and broken as you are.

And that is amore.