Laying Foundations: A Memoir

as we are now

A few years ago, I mused aloud to Henderson that seventy-one acres was a lot of land for just two people. Wouldn’t it be fun to share it with others by turning our home into a bed-and-breakfast? Better yet--a guest house? Because our town’s one diner and one family restaurant are five and a half miles away and, to my mind, 1950s depressing, we could provide the three meals a day. Henderson said, as he does to most of my ideas, "Go for it!"

I wrote the copy for a brochure about our place, describing the quiet and emphasizing its rustic nature. Prospective guests should expect long walks and bonfires rather than four-posters and Victoriana. We took a photo for the brochure to show guests that Henderson and I are black and white, respectively. I advertised, sent out brochures, and over the last several summers we’ve entertained eight couples. This was hardly a get-rich-quick (or ever) scheme, but we’ve enjoyed sharing the beauty of this place we built together from next to nothing, and each visit has provided us with congenial company and interesting anecdotes.

In our daily lives, Henderson and I thrive on routine. When it comes to dividing chores, we each take on what we do best. Henderson has begged off cleaning the toilets, which I don’t mind doing. He shovels the mountains of snow we get some winters--he’s got the upper-body strength for it, and Sisyphean challenges invigorate him. In summer, I spend contented hours mowing the lawns--I’ve got the leg muscles, enjoy the exercise, and am passionate (perhaps beyond a normal enthusiasm) about the look of a cropped expanse of green.

Preparing and presenting sumptuous meals and making conversation are not Henderson’s strong suits, so running the guest house falls to me. During the days prior to a guest weekend, one piece of my brain pulses with migraine, for I am the house and every room in it; I am the dinner and every ingredient in it. And although we get only unprejudiced, athletic folks who like dogs and goats, I fret over how Henderson and I will appear to them. We make an unlikely couple: I majored in English and psychology at college and recently completed a master’s degree; Henderson dropped out of school in the ninth grade at age sixteen.

Sometimes Henderson stammers and garbles his words, and I worry that guests will be baffled by his mispronunciations--mookini for zucchini, sofessor for professor, streak for street, ofitti for graffiti. The conveyor belt at the recycling plant where he works is a soveyor belt. Sprite, the soda, is Stripe--he’ll have a Stripe, please. And since fighting in Vietnam, he’s still uneasy about the Vietmanese.

I’ve finally come to understand these Hendersonisms and now, instead of correcting him, just reach for the heart of what he’s saying.

"Took you long enough," he says merrily.

"Frankly," I grumble, "I thought you’d try to copy me."

I worry every bit as much that I’ll commit some social faux pas--unwittingly lose some of my stuffing, revealing that I’m only clumsily sewn together with big, lopsided stitches. Having guests requires a performance and, somewhere deep inside, I cower during the entire weekend they’re here, expecting to be exposed as anything but the gracious, self-confident hostess I’m impersonating. God forbid I use the wrong word--say it’s a mute, when I mean moot, point or mispronounce the name of the dough that the main entrée’s made with--filo (feelo), not to mention the name of the entrée itself--spanakopitta (long o sound). Lately, I’ve caught myself in malapropisms. The other day I said that something or other was "spreading like wildflowers," which might have been poetry if I’d meant to say it, but I hadn’t.

I spent my first forty years living mostly outside my skin, looking back through narrowed eyes. The serenity we now enjoy allows me to inhabit my body and look out upon the world from that more grounded place.

On a typical evening, after the dinner I have ready when Henderson comes in from work, we either watch a movie together, or Henderson watches one and I read upstairs in our bedroom.

"Call me when you go to bed," he says.

I do. He comes up, turns down my bed, and kisses me goodnight.

We have grown from knowing one another. Even more importantly, the life that became available to us because we combined our strengths has enriched us more than we could have dreamed. Henderson has a good sense of humor and an easy lightness, now. He is sure of himself and of his indispensability to me. And while I still struggle with frustration and self-doubt, I hope I have assimilated some of Henderson’s patience and fortitude, and begun to understand what it takes to love without contingency.

But none of this was so at the beginning, which is where we began.