Surfacing

Marriage is so strange.

Keith was out of town the last several days, off at a conference in Nashville learning the latest on a vast federal government digital data homeless management program. Sounds riveting, doesn't it? The program is called something like the FFRSIP; when Keith and his colleagues and co-workers get together they speak in a jumble of acronyms and numerical codes:
"And then he demanded we input the HR47W6 in just 4 days!"
"Oh, I know, once--get this--once he called up on a Friday afternoon and said he had to have the 6Q14BR2 by Monday. Monday!"
"Well, at least it wasn't the 7Z14 BR2!"
Gales of knowing laughter.
I smile vaguely, glance at my watch, and count the wine glasses over the bar.

When we met, Keith was a campus minister: a college chaplain, except of course LSU is a public university and so does not and cannot have chaplains. Instead, the university campus serves as a kind of ship all around which cling, like barnacles, the buildings that house the various non-taxpayer-funded, not-at-all-official university campus ministries. There's the massive Roman Catholic student center and the just-as-massive-but-in-a-non-liturgical-sort-of-way-don't-you-dare-confuse-us-with-the-Catholics Baptist student center, and then a bunch of little buildings for all the fringe groups (this is Louisiana: if you're not Catholic or Baptist, you're fringe): the Episcopalians, the Lutherans, the Mormons, the Muslims, and the various non-denominational groups that in England would be called "happy-clappy." Hillel, the Jewish student group, has a presence on campus, but no actual building (tho' on Sukkot, a grass hut-like structure does appear in front of the Student Union).

Keith ran the what was then the ecumenical Methodist and Presbyterian student center--during his time, pretty much the only progressive Christian group on campus. A voice crying in the darkness. A tiny light, always threatened with extinction by the vast bushel of Southern fundamentalism, racism, homophobia, and, well, fear of anything "furrin'".

Back then, Keith did not speak in acronyms and numerical codes. Back then, he hated forms and regulations of any kind. He preached powerful sermons. He took students on work trips to Mexico. He served as administrator to the building that was a kind of liberal sanctuary: the meeting place for the Vegetarian Society, NOW, the Big Buddy program, the Quakers, Alcoholics Anonymous, the Progressive Student Alliance, the Coalition to Save the Wetlands, the Center for Peace and Justice, the Jazz Society. He comforted the lonely and gave shelter to the homeless and counseled the oppressed and depressed. When he talked about his work, I got it.

I don't get it anymore.

I get the importance of what he does: bringing in millions of dollars worth of funding for homeless prevention programs, working with all the various private and public agencies in town that deal with the homeless, liaising with federal, state, and local officials, helping devise policy and evaluate programs. And I get why he finds it so satisfying, after the formlessness, the lack of any concrete results, the utter futility of so much associated with mainline Protestantism today. But the day-to-day stuff, the answer to the question, "So, what did you do today?"--that, I do not get.

And that's weird for me. For us.

There's a part of me that's fine with it all. He's happy. He's challenged. He's satisfied. That's good. (The income? Not so good. But let's face it: I didn't marry this man for his money.) That part of me is ok with the vast gulf that now yawns between his professional life and mine, with the fact that if he actually tells me what he did today I have no idea what he's talking about and find it all really amazingly incredibly boring. Because basically I'm a loner. I'm pretty comfortable living in my head, on my own, just me and my fantasies and neuroses, with the occasional surfacing into human connection for a lovely meal, for sex, for a good laugh, and then the quick dive back down into me again.

But the thing is, that part of me, that's the dangerous part of me. The part that goes nutso.

There's another part. The part that values and nurtures and fights fiercely for community, for good solid friendships, for relationships built over time and negotiated through differences and tempered through hardship. When I married Keith, I chose this part of me, the good part, the connected part. Not the nutso, loner part.

So here we are. Keith has a job that is so good for him and for this community. He is making the world a better place. This world, our world, south Louisiana, this funky microcosm of earthly vulnerability. (As I write this, the BP oil spill threatens the coast, the region, the state, with utter disaster.)

And yet this job--this calling--of his also, as it happens, nurtures not only the structures that will/should end homelessness in our lifetime, it also feeds the worst part of me. The nutso, loner part.

And so, here's The Question. Does a Woman Facing 50 say, "Oh Husband o' Mine, stop doing good in the world. Stop doing what you were born to do. Because, see, well, if I stay under too long, I just might not be able to find my way to the surface."

Marriage is so strange.