Perfect Timing

By guest author Abby Luthin

My husband Ben and I just returned from our first-ever weekend away from our young daughters, a trip to our friends’ wedding in Arizona. No Electric Slide, no boozy toasts or weeping. Just lovely surroundings, fine food and wine, and a fun collection of people there to celebrate the new and classy married couple. It got me thinking, nearly seven years after our own “I do's”, about how far we have come together, and how things might be different if we hadn’t met. Or, more to the point, what would have happened if we’d met at a different time in our lives?

All I know is that I’m glad our paths crossed when they did because if it had been even weeks earlier, Ben and I would have hated each other. And not in a charming Sam and Diane, David and Maddie, Oscar and Felix kind of way. More of a get-a-load-of-this-guy and who-does-she-think-she-is? kind of way.

I recognize that I am very high strung. Understanding this about myself required great caution when Ben and I started dating. He might have thought the slow reveal was a feminine courting technique. I knew that if I disclosed the full reliquary of my eccentric tendencies too early, he might run for the hills.

My type A tendencies bloomed early in life. There was a whole year around the age of eight or so when I read both Hints from Heloise and Emily Post’s Etiquette: A Guide to Modern Manners many times over. If I spilled grape juice on the carpet in my doll house, I knew how to get it out before it stained. Serving cold soup before the main course? I knew which spoon to use. Need to write a letter to a colonel and his companion of many years? I had the proper salutation prepared. When we were far enough along in our relationship for me to mention having collected and absorbed these tomes in my youth (so helpful when picking the exact wording of our wedding invitations!), Ben sighed and noted, again, it was good to have met when we did.

What was Ben doing at the same age? By his own account, he was spilling grape juice, playing street hockey, and extruding mouthfuls of mashed potatoes from the gaps in his teeth.

Our late teens and early twenties also would have seen us as antagonists. One of my earliest memories at Macalester College was of reading about a kamikaze party set for the first weekend of the school year. A teetotaler myself, I thought those who imbibed didn’t take their studies seriously. My look-down-my-nose attitude poorly masked insecurities about not fitting in, but knowing that now didn’t help me one bit then. My roommate explained to me the nature of the event, mentioning that the booze in that dorm suite was always mixed in the bathtub and drunk with a plastic cup scooped into the cocktail. I probably mentioned that "cocktail" was a nice way of putting it, what with the poor sanitary conditions of a bathtub being used for a beverage hold. And then I most likely grabbed my books and headed for the library.

Ben’s college experience? A thousand miles away and four years earlier than mine, let’s just say he hosted plenty of similar parties, and still claims an acute tequila “allergy” stemming from those days.

Immediately before our friends exchanged their wedding vows in Phoenix, their rings were passed among the guests with the request that each person add a silent wish or words of wisdom for the new couple before they wore the bands as husband and wife. I surprised myself by knowing exactly what I wanted to say. That we had known and very much liked the groom before he met his bride, that we liked her right away, and that he’s been especially buoyant ever since. But that it’s important not to forget he’d had his lumps before, as have we all, and that he’d become the person ready for the relationship being formalized into marriage before our eyes the moment she’d walked into his world — and not a second sooner. It’s possible they’d have been happy as high school sweethearts, or college coeds, or twentysomethings in Boston. But I didn’t think so, and not just because of the span when he styled his hair in a fauxhawk. Yet it doesn’t make their partnership now any less powerful.

As Ben and I listened to the wedding tunes during the reception, I thought about how our formative musical experiences wouldn't have endeared us to one another either. In fact, we would never have been at the same venue. My first rock concert was Cyndi Lauper’s "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" tour at Poplar Creek for my twelfth birthday — accompanied by three friends and chaperoned by my mom. I vividly remember being outraged by the price of t-shirts and, as we stood for the entire show, wondering to myself why everyone couldn’t just sit down already so I could use the seat my mom had paid good money for.

Sure, Ben knew about these tunes, but his first concert was the Kinks and he still owns ratty Bruce Springsteen and AC/DC t-shirts. Early in our relationship, I tried to impress him by boasting that I’d seen a concert at Minneapolis’s hip First Avenue, which for me meant that I’d evolved past the music of my early teen years. Naturally, he asked who I’d seen, hoping for Hüsker Dü, or the Replacements, or at the very least Prince. There was a long, awkward silence after I answered Big Country (I still have the ticket stub to prove it!). I filled this void with an approximation of the "bagpipe” solo from "In a Big Country." And yes, dear reader, he still married me.

During my post-graduate years, due to too much Tour de France viewing combined with my now unsurprising lack of dating experience, I had a few quirky requirements for the guys I dated. One was that the boy be clean-shaven. Ben? Thankfully, just weeks before we met, he had shaved off a soul patch he’d been sporting for ages. Another prerequisite was a very specific height and physique: over six feet, gaunt, and, preferably, with hairless biker legs. While Ben’s nowhere near gaunt, he’s also not quite, even in hockey skates, anywhere near six feet. He’s also refused to shave his legs.

Ben’s requirements, as I know now, were nearly as precise. He never thought he’d be interested in someone who’d never had a driver’s license. Or who has kept a record of every book read and movie viewed since 1988. (And he hasn’t even seen the rating and cross-referencing systems I’ve added.) He never thought he’d be interested in someone whose personal life soundtrack is stuck in the Top 40 of 1987, or whose earliest reference material reading was of household stain removal and etiquette guides. Or who could even name her earliest childhood reference material reading.

Superficial? You bet. But don’t we all try to control our romantic leanings because it’s out of our hands who we fall for? That’s not to say some differences aren’t insurmountable. Just that there’s something to be said for relaxing a bit and following our instincts and letting what we do have in common — the important things — speak for themselves. Because it’s at the moment you’re willing to go on a date with the hairy-legged boy, or confess that you thought Hüsker Dü was a type of child’s toy akin to the hula hoop, or ditch whatever else it is that keeps you in such a safe place you’re unwilling to grow, that amazing, wonderful things can happen.

So after the ceremony in Arizona, as we tooled back to our hotel in our rental car — the windows down, the cool desert air blowing in — “Angel in the Centerfold” came over the stereo. I said, “You can change it” at exactly the same time as Ben shook his head and turned up the volume. Perfect timing, indeed.

Comments

[JenM]

I too have seen Big Country live!

I think I need a picture of Ben with a soul patch. I can barter a picture of Will with shoulder-length hair and no beard.