JulieLeung.com: a life told in tidepools

Yesterday Ted described his response after listening to my session on Emotional Life at Bloggercon III (recently posted on IT Conversations). It’s always interesting and refreshing for me to see the world through my husband’s eyes, or in this case, hear it through his ears. I wish he could have been there, but I’m glad he can experience the session through the mp3 recording.

He also wrote about his uncle’s death this week, …dead, and not yet dead, and this season of life where we find ourselves, with his parents’ generation beginning to pass away. Since we’ve been married, we’ve lost four of ten aunts and uncles in Ted’s family, three of them in the past five years. It’s a time of sorrow but also, I find, a time of cherishing what we have and those we can love in the here and now.

Speaking of those we can love here and now, I should go spend some time with Ted. Through IT Conversations and family conversations this week, we are each looking at the other in new light. Ted described me as my famous wife, which sounds funny to me. I feel he is the famous one! Whenever my husband sees me do something new for the first time, or I get to observe him, it’s a revelation for our relationship. I remember the first time he saw me run a road race, after a year or two of our marriage, even though I had been running since childhood. And listening to IT Conversations was the first time he heard me lead a discussion by myself, although I have taught classes and lead groups without him.

We love to work together but there’s also something wonderful about seeing and supporting the other partner in his own passions and choices. I know Ted has chosen to go out east next week for the love of his family, and I want to support him at this time, as his family is changing. His family is my family too, but at the same time, his family is not mine: there are experiences, culture and history I can’t share.

We inhabit a world together but also separate spheres. We dance and then we step apart, as if through sliding glass doors, able to get a glimpse here or there of what the other is doing somewhere else on the planet but unable to participate ourselves. We applaud and pray and wait for the return and the embrace of our beloved.

One of the wonders of marriage is how intimate we can be, not only in body but in spirit and emotion. We are two and also one. In some sense, we are never separate.

We know each other better than we know anyone else in the world, and yet there will always be mysteries in our marriage, surprises that continue to reveal themselves, as we grow old together. ‘Til death do us part.