SEPTA_Silverliner_II

Photo: Adam E. Moreira

 

I miss my wife. Which is odd because she’s right there in the house next to me, every day, working as I work to raise our kids, sharing the same bed with me at night. But we have two of them now, children, and the attention they require means I miss my wife, means that we don’t have much time for one another.

I felt this most deeply this morning on the train. A man and woman were sitting across from me, sharing one of the two-seaters on regional rail, bundled against the frigid cold outside. The woman reached over and tapped the man on the left ear of his oversized old-school headphones and he flipped them off and she leaned in to whisper something. It was an intimate gesture of the type my wife and I had once shared. And I envied the couple.

What she said, of course, I don’t know, since I didn’t eavesdrop. I was reading, and after I saw this, returned to my book. But I couldn’t focus on the text. The gesture had put me in mind of when my wife and I had commuted with each other. In the early days of our relationship, when we lived in the city, we walked to work in the morning together. Our offices weren’t far apart, hers on 8th and Spring Garden, mine at 4th and Chestnut. And after we showered and dressed, we’d head out the door together. At first, we had separate apartments. When she stayed at mine in West Philly, we took the Green Line Trolley, and when we stayed at hers, we’d stroll—it had always seemed leisurely. Then, when we moved in together, in a South Philly spot, we walked nearly a full mile, and this was good too. We talked—what we talked about, I can’t remember—but this talking was part of what kept our relationship close and strong.

Even after we moved to the suburbs, we took the train in together, and then, we acted much like that couple with the gesture I witnessed today. I’d wear headphones and read and she’d scan her iPad, and every once in a while, she’d see something and lean over and comment on it. We shared observations of the odd behavior of our fellow commuters, and sometimes, I’d sit and stare and make stupid faces at her or tickle her knee. And it felt good, playful. It was a type of flirtation we rarely get to engage in anymore.

Nowadays, logistics don’t make this common commute possible. My wife has been home for six months with our infant son. I have to leave early most mornings to get into work by eight, so that I can get out and get home to pick our daughter up from daycare. For the most part, it’s a scramble making sure they’re cared for, and when my wife and I find time to talk, our conversation revolves around our children. Being as young as they are, there’s always some new milestone—our son learning to smile—or some new concern—a cough that’s developing, a redness to the eyes that might be conjunctivitis. We assure ourselves, when things get rough, that it won’t be this way forever, that as they grow, they’ll develop their own lives and want less and less to do with us, need us less. We’ll come back together then and be ourselves again, have a relationship. But I’m sometimes frightened by this. I’m sometimes concerned that the bonds that tether us to one another are going to snap, and I’m going to float off into space, unable to find her again.

This is where effort comes in, the effort I’m often too tired to make. A few days from now, it’s Valentine’s day, which, even if you think it’s a Hallmark holiday, still offers the chance to make some gesture, to remind the person you love how important they are (and admittedly, I know, that line sounds like a commercial of the self-same Hallmark variety). In the past, my wife and I rarely celebrated Valentine’s on the actual day, but we observed it (the day before or after; being misanthropes, we scheduled around it to avoid the crowds). And this year, when she asked if we were doing anything, I told her that I figured I’d get her something, even if only a small token of appreciation. Because as hard as it might be to make it happen, to bring us back to the same intimacy we had prior to our children, I know it can’t wait until they’re grown. I have to put in the effort now. I have to remind myself and force myself to put in the effort. It may not sound terribly romantic to say, but I think that people like us, people in our same situation, understand.

I’m going to keep on missing my wife while the kids are the center of our attention. The trick is to make sure I keep missing her, to not allow that sense of wanting to be with her, around her, and intimate with her to slip away. Because in missing, there’s yearning. When I stop missing her, we’ll be in trouble. And maybe it’s true: maybe when the kids have grown, we’ll come back together, as strong as ever. I hope so. And when that happens, I’m sure the conversation will turn. I’m sure I’ll be sitting on the train with her, and I’ll see a toddler, and I’ll turn and I’ll say, Don’t you miss when the kids were little? And because of what time does, we’ll have forgotten how hard it was. She’ll smile and reach out and touch my hand, and she’ll nod, I do.

At least that’s what I dream.