The Longest Date: Life as a Wife

by Cindy Chupack

  She also says “night night” to the other kids in the neighborhood—Dorian, Max, Violet, Little Violet, Benny, Harlie, Devan, the girl from her music class. . . .

  And I know these kids. And I know their nannies and parents and even their dogs.

  And here’s the weird thing. I like knowing them.

  Now when Ian and I go to the farmers’ market on Sunday, several of Olivia’s friends will be there, and I’m not annoyed to run into them or their parents.

  I never realized what a curmudgeon I was! I’m not sure why I was always in such a rush to avoid people, but I’m not anymore.

  I think my friend Winnie Holzman said it best when she told me, after I had Olivia, “Isn’t it great having a baby? Doesn’t it make you a better person?” She went on to explain her theory that not everyone needs a baby to become a better person, that some people can become better people on their own, but she needed a baby to do it.

  And I think I did, too.

  A husband can only force you so far out of your comfort zone (and Ian gives it his best shot, every day), but a baby catapults you into a world so foreign, a place so new, you have no choice but to seek help from your spouse, your parents, your friends, strangers, anyone who has information, even if it’s bad information.

  You have no choice but to become a citizen of the world.

  For me, that meant that all of the babies I had ignored for so many years, stepped around, wished quiet—now they were little people with big personalities and sippy cup preferences. And their parents were tired people with nap schedules and Cheerios in their pockets. And everyone suddenly seemed so connected and relevant to me that I could no longer ignore the rest of the world, nor did I want to.

  And it’s not just babies and parents. I now stop people with dogs to ask how old their dog is. That is something Ian used to do, and I always thought, Who cares? Why are we stopping? But I now understand, as a fellow dog owner, that when a stranger assumes your dog is younger than your dog really is, it makes you extremely happy. It’s as good—or better—than being told you look young, because being told your dog looks young means maybe you have longer with your dog. I see this now. I see the dog, and then I see the owner, just like now I see the child, and then I see the parent. I never used to see any of this.

  I still see single women, of course. I’ve always seen them. I still relate and sympathize with their plight—the checking of the text messages, the debating of the scone, the making of the small talk on a bad date. Having been a single woman myself for so many years, and knowing I could be one again at any moment (this is Los Angeles, after all), I hope this book is an optimistic reminder that the happy ending of marriage is not an ending. It’s another beginning.

  And I now see married women. I especially feel for married women, because it’s so hard to talk about your problems without feeling disloyal, or worrying you’re opening a door you will never be able to shut again. Not everyone is willing to spill every sordid detail about her marriage in a book, especially while she is still in the marriage and hoping to stay in the marriage.

  Initially Ian worried that a book like this was inviting an ironic end. He told me that if I wrote a book about how great we were together, we would certainly break up and look very foolish, to which I replied, “Don’t worry. It’s not about how great we are together.”

  But I can’t help feeling that Olivia is the happy ending to this chapter of my life, even though I know she is the beginning of another.

  I am a parent.

  I was never in this club before. I knew it existed, but the line was always so long, I didn’t bother looking inside. And now I live inside the club, and it’s a crazy place with crazy hours, and I’m so happy—as Ian put it, since we both live life fully—that we are not missing this big part of life.

  I hate saying that, because I was so comforted knowing we didn’t have to have a child. And we could have had a nice life without one, I’m sure. But it wouldn’t have been this life.

  I realized I had crossed over to the other side when I caught myself showing baby pictures that nobody asked to see. I was never someone who oohed and aahed over baby pictures. If you don’t have a baby, it seems strange that you have to see a picture every time you see a friend with a child. Didn’t I see one last time? I used to think.

  But now I’m the one showing pictures, because Olivia is so much better than anything Ian and I could have created on our own, and I just have to show her off.

  I do feel, though, as if we’re helping create her every day, when Ian takes her up to the roof to light a magic balloon (like the one we wished on in Thailand) and almost sets the neighborhood on fire. Or when we take her traveling with us and we are suddenly the people I used to hate on planes, except that now I can’t tell who is more annoying—Olivia for crying, or Ian for singing and making funny noises until she stops. Or when I read to her and she “reads” to me, and we laugh about things she’s learned from reading, like the fact that she’s become the pigeon who wants to stay up late.

  She has a little of both of us in her, and a little something magical that nobody can take credit for, which I now know is the case with all children, no matter how they came into this world.

  One night recently, I was putting Olivia to bed, and even though we’ve had two years to get used to it, Ian and I still both love being the person who gets to put her to bed. I’m not sure if this is because we’re still amazed we finally have a baby, or if we’re just sick of each other, but each night one of us takes a turn being the parent who sits in the big overstuffed chair in Olivia’s room to read her a bedtime story while twinkly stars dance on the ceiling (because, of course, Ian had to order a planetarium projector from Japan).

  And on this particular night, I was too lazy, or just too cozy sitting with Olivia, to get out of the overstuffed chair and get a book from the shelf, so I decided to make up a story instead.

  That’s what I do for a living. How hard could it be?

  The backstory of this bedtime tale is that when Olivia was a newborn, anytime she was sleeping soundly, it was Ian who was the stereotypical worried parent, convinced she wasn’t breathing. He would put his hand in front of her mouth until he could feel her breath, or he would wake me to wake her. I always felt that he was being slightly ridiculous. I knew she was okay. I don’t know why I was so confident, but one of the few things I did not worry about was whether Olivia was breathing when she slept. She seemed quite capable on her own. It was the two of us, the adults in the house, who were in constant need of manuals and reassurance.

  But one night when I got home late from work, I did what you’re not supposed to do as a parent: I picked up a sleeping baby and held her in my arms and rocked her for few minutes, not because she needed it, but because I did.

  And during those few minutes, there was an earthquake.

  Now, in California, you have a lot of earthquakes, and this was not a large one. Olivia didn’t even wake up, but still I was so relieved that I was holding her at that moment that I didn’t have to worry about getting to her to protect her.

  And I started thinking about what I would do if anything ever happened to her, and if I couldn’t get to her, or if I could get to her, but still couldn’t help her, and it took my breath away. I finally knew how Ian felt all of those nights, how all parents feel at some point—that you would not be able to go on if anything ever happened to your child.

  And then I thought: My mother, Ian’s mother—they can’t still feel this way, because that would be untenable! It would be impossible to go through life feeling this much love and worry all of the time! Clearly at some point, maybe when the child rebels, the parent can also step back. It must be like a breakup, I thought; both people don’t necessarily want it, but you have no choice—you have to move on when the other person does.

  I asked my mom and Ian’s mom if this was the case—if there was a poi
nt, as mothers, when they felt that they could finally exhale.

  And they both told me the horrible truth: you never love your child any less, or worry about your child any less.

  Oh. My. God.

  I suddenly regretted every time I’ve ever worried my mother. Or said something hurtful. Or just not called.

  And I regretted reading the hilarious story of Ian’s apartment rappelling incident to his mother, who did not find the story funny. At the time, I thought she just didn’t get it.

  Oh, she got it, all right. And even though Ian was clearly fine, had lived to tell the tale, and was laughing along with me as I told the story, there was a moment (when I explained how Ian might have fallen to his death) that his mother was more horrified than amused.

  She explained that, as a mother, you not only continue to feel what I was feeling for Olivia, it grows.

  It grows?! How could this love grow? I could barely contain it already.

  I felt sick. And that’s what I was thinking about when I started to tell Olivia a bedtime story.

  I told her that our love for her was like a giant hot-air balloon, and the more we loved her, the higher we went. And every day we loved her more, so every day, we went higher and higher, past the trees, past the birds, through the clouds. And then at some point . . . we realized we were too high. We had to get back down. But how?

  How indeed? I had no fucking idea!

  Why had I started this story (the one I was telling, not to mention the one I was living!) if I didn’t know how to get to a safe, happy ending?

  I still don’t know how people get down from this height.

  And, of course, I am very appreciative that Ian is in this balloon with me, but let’s be honest: he is no help. His love for me and Olivia is just making the problem worse. He is taking us higher than I ever wanted to go.

  And as I thought about this, how Ian’s love was making things worse, I had an idea for an ending—if not for life, then for Olivia’s story.

  I told her that in order to land, we would have to love everything else in the world as well. We would have to love all of the other children, and the birds and the trees and the earth and the animals and the people, even the weird people, and eventually everything else would float up or we would float down—I wasn’t sure about the specific mechanics of it—but I assured her that by loving everything else in the world in addition to one another, we wouldn’t feel so vulnerable and alone. (Or, at least, I wouldn’t.)

  “So,” I continued, “we loved the animals and the trees and the people, and eventually, we got back down and crawled out of the balloon and went to sleep.”

  I looked at Olivia to see if I stuck the landing, so to speak, and I guess I did, because she was asleep, just like in the story.

  I felt kind of proud of myself.

  I also felt like I could exhale for what seemed like the first time since the earthquake, which had actually taken place several months earlier.

  • • •

  So, maybe taking a chance on loving someone and committing your life to that person (even if that person is sometimes crazy), and then taking a chance on creating a family (even if it is very hard to create, even if the pain and loss are sometimes too much to bear), maybe all of that gives you the chance to see higher highs than you ever imagined.

  Which, of course, means you have farther to fall.

  The altitude still scares me.

  I feel like there is so much to lose.

  I feel, quite often, like life was easier when it was just me, just one person, safely grounded, but it’s too late for that.

  We’re already in the balloon—all of us—not just me, but Ian, Olivia, even Tink (who is not comfortable with this situation either, as evidenced by her need for all of us to be in one room whenever possible). We’re all in this thing—the neighborhood, our families, our friends, our dogs and cats, and you . . . you people just falling in love, just moving in together, just getting married, just having a baby, just reading this sentence. . . .

  We’re all in this together.

  Acknowledgments

  Mostly I have to thank Ian, who could not have been a better sport as I was writing this book and as we were living these chapters. The fact that no matter what I wrote, he still came off as dreamy . . . well, that just proves how limited I am as a writer, and how dreamy Ian is as a human being.

  I want to thank my mom for being such a warm and wonderful mother, and also for giving me Grandma Ruby’s bentwood rocking chair, which spent a lot of time in storage unit R3176 before making the transition back to the Fabulous Beach House (aka the House of Sand and Fur). I remember my mother and grandmother rocking me in it, and now Olivia’s favorite thing is to rock in it herself until it knocks into a wall.

  I want to thank my dad, who calls some parts of this book “the bad parts,” meaning there is too much information for a dad, and maybe for an audience. So if you were ever uncomfortable reading something, you have my dad to thank for trying to shield you, for telling me that some things might be too personal, that not everyone needs to know everything. As usual, I didn’t listen to him, and now, karmically, I have a daughter who will not listen to me someday, and I can only hope I live to see it.

  I want to thank the storytelling community of Los Angeles, which supported and encouraged me as I read many of these chapters in progress. I will always have a soft spot in my heart for live storytelling and spoken word events, not only because they brought me and Ian together, but also because they remind everyone lucky enough to be listening how compelling, hilarious, poignant, and healing a true story can be.

  I want to thank my literary agent, Joy Harris, because she told me many years ago that I should write a book about marriage, which is why I wanted her to represent me. I had not planned to write a book about marriage—I was still wondering what I had to say on the subject—but she was sure I would have plenty to say, and apparently she was right.

  I want to thank my editor at Viking, Rick Kot. From the beginning he made me feel that I had a story worth telling, and at times when I worried nobody would care about me or my marriage or my dog, he assured me that at the very least, people would care about the dog. (I’m kidding, although it’s true that he’s a dog person, which I now love in a person, but also, he is a book person, and a friend to writers, and I feel very lucky to have had him on board even before there was a baby on board.)

  Speaking of which, I want to thank—and apologize to—Olivia. This is probably more than you wanted to know, and yet I hope you grow up loving your story, and seeing the humor and heartache in everyone and everything. I am so happy you came into my life (and my book). Your father and I could not love you more.

  But we will. Every day. For the rest of our lives. And then some.

  Publication Notes

  “Get This”:

  Published in Dutton’s Girls Who Like Boys Who Like Boys anthology, May 2008; shorter version published in New York Times “Modern Love” column, May 6, 2007.

  “Oh, How We Love Bad Boys”:

  Published in People’s Sexiest Man Alive issue, November 28, 2005; included in the St. Martin’s Press What Was I Thinking? anthology.

  “In Sickness and in Health”:

  Written for the Stand Up to Cancer Web site, posted May 2008; Published in O, The Oprah Magazine’s October 2008 issue.

  “The First No No Noel”:

  Published in the New York Times Sunday “Styles” section, December 24, 2006.

  “Now We’re Cooking?”:

  Published in O, The Oprah Magazine’s April 2008 issue.

  “We’re Having a Maybe!”:

  Published in the St. Martin’s Press Afterbirth anthology, April 2009; shorter version published in O, The Oprah Magazine’s September 2008 issue.

  “Eggspecting”:

  (Note from Cindy: I wrote �
��Eggspecting” in July 2009 and it was slated to appear in the New York Times “Modern Love” column, but then we lost the baby, so I pulled the piece because, as you can see, that’s not something easily put into a footnote.)

  “A Father’s Story: The Baby We Never Had,” by Ian Wallach:

  Published in O, The Oprah Magazine’s October 2010 issue.