The Mama Politic: Love in the Fourth Degree
We are in recovery—not from the usual addictions: drugs, alcohol, or too much food. We are in recovery from wounding each other. Now that our daughter is three—sleeps and eats mostly without a fight and pees and poops in the toilet—we can finally see the light, each other, and the shape of the future of our lives together. This year we bought a house, went on vacation alone, talked of a vasectomy reversal, and made a recommitment to each other. Spoken or unspoken, we have hunkered down in our little war box home and lit the fire. We are not like these people we see in the mirror, but we are talking and making things right, maybe for the first time in our erratic lives.
Then the phone rings… The ring is from a phone from the past. It is our couple, our other half, our comrades against the world of blah. They are not postcard shiny like the other couples we meet. Their past is sordid, rocky, and just a little too much like ours. And before baby we were a foursome, and not for just one night but for years. Over three thousand miles of phone line and tipsy on red wine, they tease us with, "We're talking about moving back to Seattle." First, I should state that our sex life has never been normal—although I'm not sure what normal is. People tend not to divulge the dirt about what goes on in the sack. When my husband and I were first together, just out of college, we had flings, threesome flings, foursome flings, group flings, flings on liquor, flings on pot, flings on hallucinogens, and wake-up-the-next-morning flings that leave you raw and running for the door. We'd gotten to a point where we had sworn off this type of behavior because it was mostly just getting old. Then we met "our couple" and literally had them for dinner. It was August 1999. Our 1930's apartment, which overlooked the city and the Space Needle, was hot, hot, hot. I cooked us four-star Pad Thai in the middle of a heat wave. The moment they sat down at our table, I knew. I sweltered in my polyester knit dress, hair piled on my head, barefoot on the wood floors, stirred piping hot food, and dripped in sweat. I subjected them to my messy self, blazing hot noodles, and numerous bottles of wine, and our lives changed forever. The four of us were inseparable from that moment on. We were like teenagers with brand new hormones. The first few weekends the four of us spent from Friday after work until Sunday night in our Queen Anne apartment. We would venture out for food, film, and wine, but then race back to talk, watch movies, and have that early-on kind of sex that only leaves you hungry for more. We discovered each other, we told each other our secrets, and we fell in love. Sometimes on Friday nights after work, my boyfriend and I would ask ourselves rhetorical questions like, "Should we call them? Should we give them a break? Are we calling too much?" But one of us would call, and they would arrive with their overnight bag in tow. It was sweet and somewhat innocent—like we were onto something that no one else had figured out. We were dripping in desire for each other and falling, falling, falling into one another. Our first holiday together was New Year's. It was like any first New Year celebration in a new relationship. We dressed up, had dinner on the water, sampled five different wines, walked on the pier under the fireworks, and made a secret commitment to each other. We found our way home with all the other people stumbling and laughing in the streets. We opened the windows, blasted music, and danced as our neighbors watched from the sidewalk. At midnight, we fell in a heap on the floor and one year spun into another with all four of us intertwined. Nevertheless—like all relationships—we had our rough moments as well. It became most evident when we packed up our lives and all moved to New York City together in the summer of 2001. Nothing strains relationships like a terrorist attack, living in Spanish Harlem, lack of jobs and money, graduate school, and rats and cockroaches. However, no matter the arguments or the times of distance, we were irreplaceable to each other. We would take unspoken breaks for weeks but then we would get together again and fall right back into our old patterns. In all reality, it has often seemed easier with four. It is too hard to get everything you need from one person. During one of our breaks, my boyfriend and I became pregnant. I immediately called my female cohort and said, "I wish it was you." And I did. Not just because I wished it wasn't me. But she so desperately wanted kids her entire life and her husband was dead set against it. And as it is so often the reality when babies come, our relationship with them changed. Our break turned into what felt like a separation. We all freaked out with my pregnancy. We were the fighters of conformity. We loathed breeders. I felt like a misshaped sculpture in a city of straight lines. So with my master's degree and my eighth-month-along belly, my boyfriend—one shotgun wedding later—my husband and I moved back to Seattle and away from our foursome. As time passes, so does the state of our minds, and our lives become something larger than ourselves. The future comes into view and we make decisions that include children. Now we both have families. They had a daughter a year and a half after we did. We've both struggled on our own as first-time parents. Sometimes I wonder if we were still in the same city how much easier it might be. My husband and I didn't wear on each other so much when we had two other people to lean on and hash stuff out with. Two other people on board sometimes help the harmonies of the day to day—with the overtired, often sick, constant needs of a family. And no one of the opposite sex really quite gets you the same way someone with the same chromosomes does. I think about how much I want my daughter to have a sibling. Although both of our partners love their children, neither of them was thrilled with the prospect of having one child, let alone two. But what if we shared? What if we had interchangeable laps, hugs, and boobs? Isn't this how things used to be? Were we all supposed to end up in our separate houses, with our separate stoves, and separate fires? No wonder we're all living on credit and using up resources faster than we can figure out how to replace them. But what if it's not? What if it's too complicated now that there are children involved? What if our parenting styles differ? What if the fact that we now have children has so altered us that we cannot find each other the same way we did before? It has happened to us each as a couple so it's likely it would happen to us as a foursome. Since we have each had a child, I think us women have found much of our sanctity with each other and our daughters. The men are often missing from our equation and I wonder if this would upset the balance of our previous relationship. Now when we visit each other, our lives feel even richer, full of texture and meaning, and the six of us together feels natural and right. We talk, have dinner, and take walks. The passion seems to be deluded, but the love is ever the more intact. Maybe it's just too hard to set aside the passion for your child and give it to anyone else. It reminds me of the way my husband and my relationship has changed. It took us three years, a major separation, and a garbage load of negotiation to get to our current comfortable space. We may never be as passionate as we were in our early years together, but in many ways, we are more at peace. A peace we would gladly share. So we talk about how it could be and think about that teasing phone call. When we drive through our neighborhood and see a house for sale, my husband will look at me and say, "Hey, they could move in there and then we'd be just down the street from each other." And I think, maybe it could work. Maybe this is our new way of being rebels—suburban style. Maybe we're freaks or maybe we're really onto something. Possibly, at this point in our lives, we'd find a more platonic place in our relationship with them. Regardless, we're forever linked like the first time we stood on the pier, under the fireworks, holding eight hands together and making our New Year's wish. |
Michelle Taylor
 Michelle Taylor has taught in a New York City public school, at a New York Penitentiary, and at Sarah Lawrence College. She is currently a teacher at a community school in Seattle where she has packed her daughter Autumn-Wilder around in a sling, a backpack, and upside down for the past four years. You can find her other work at Mama Out Loud and The Living Classroom. Read more of Michelle's Mama Politic column. search mamazine:
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