Our fifth anniversary

Amber never seems to enjoy the experience of prepping a party. She likes thinking of a theme and the outlines of a plan, but then she would like if someone else dealt with the specifics. The main exception is our annual Black Turkey Day, where we watch terrible movies and eat Thanksgiving food. Cooking and cleaning makes her tense, but she is content afterward that she could pull this off. She revels in making a big meal for whichever of our friends show up.

For our wedding, she grew the flowers and arranged them in vases that weekend. She could have asked someone else to do it or purchased centerpieces, but it was our wedding, the only wedding she would be getting. She wanted to put this much of herself into it. She still begrudges that she grew pounds of lettuce for hamburgers, then neglected to put it out in the busyness of the day. Much of the wedding came from her mind, from the location to the idea of having it be a potluck. Her contributions to it didn't stop until she walked down the aisle, no matter how people tried to take them off her hands.

Her aspirations are unimpeachable, but reality is not as accommodating. In the friction between the platonic ideal of what the party should be and what it ends up being, she feels tectonic stress.

When Amber is set on a course and the stress appears, I feel frustrated at my seeming uselessness to her. I do not know if I am actually useless, but that her own frustration makes her irritable. My neuroses decide it must be at me.

For our fifth anniversary, Amber declared her plans. We would have catered Chipotle for twenty people. I suggested catering options that would be easier or more local/less commercial. Amber wouldn't consider them. The party in her head would have Chipotle because that is the catering her job gets. (She decided that Red Robin might be acceptable until she discovered that Red Robin does not give one fries, likely because their fries would be unpalatable mush too long after they saw the fryer.)

Beyond this, complications began to appear. When several of our core friends had other arrangements for the weekend, that twenty reduced to fifteen. Chipotle tried to charge my card for twenty. My bank refused, as obviously I was not buying two hundred and sixty dollars of Mexican fast food. I assured them I was. They relented. I called again. The payment went through. When we reduced the number, the process had to be repeated.

Amber's first idea for the party was glorious in its Manic Pixiness. She discovered that a small, school-run zoo near us rents a room for birthday parties. She inquired if they might do this for anniversaries as well. She did not hear back for a week. I contacted them. I did not hear back. They called her to tell her someone else might be interested in that date, not putting together that a man and a woman separately deciding to book their room for the first time ever for a fifth anniversary party was unlikely. We tried to clarify with them, but they were slow and uncertain, so we moved on. The world is imperfect.

Amber did a few searches for venues before saying we ought to do it at the local park. I agreed this was workable. She then clarified that this was my job and she wanted no part in figuring out the logistics. The very idea of it gave her anxiety.

Amber doesn't delegate as much as says something should happen. I am to understand when it is something I ought to do and when it is something that she will do, but hasn't yet, and I am not to touch it. When I try to help and she doesn't want me to, she is short with me. Asking for clarification is a crapshoot and only makes me feel more as though I am pestering her in lieu of taking initiative or pestering her by doing things she did not want me to do. I do not want to have to wait to take orders, but I do not want the love of my life feeling more stressed because obviously she didn't want me to put that bin in my car, even though both of our cars are driving to the same park at the same time less than two miles from our home. To me, it doesn't matter. Everything will get where it belongs. To her, that was not the plan she had. It is one of the times when I most want the ability to read her mind.

I emailed a clerk, who approved me for the pavilion in a day.

The next day, she asked whether I remembered how many tables were in the pavilion. Assuring her there were enough tables for fifteen people was not sufficient, as she wanted to buy plastic tablecloths. She then needed to know if any of the electrical outlets in the pavilion worked. Stating that I assumed they must was, again, not enough. The following day, I biked there with a notepad and USB charger to account more fully. (Nineteen. Yes, all do.)

For our anniversary and her birthday in the past, I have taken Amber on trips. I find these less stressful and more memorable, if more costly, but Amber has the heart of a traditionalist. I don't know who taught her these were traditions, but she was firm that one has a party on the fifth anniversary and it was madness to suggest otherwise.

I know that, if Amber could have swung it, we could have had an echo of our wedding, one where we were around more to enjoy it. She even looked into renting the house where we had our wedding, but that was no longer available. Reenacting our wedding, even in miniature, would involve people who will never be in the same place again. Also, it is easier to convince someone to travel for a wedding than it is to eat Chipotle at a pavilion in a public park.

I mentioned to my mother that we were looking for sport equipment for the party. The park has ample space and we invited all our niblings. As she is the grandmother of six, she was likely to have a ball or two around. My mother, in typical fashion, told me she ordered a playset and it would be on our doorstep on Monday. I relayed this to Amber, who saw this as something wrong and unnecessary. As she envisioned it, this playset was not at the party. She wanted me to convince my mother to rescind this gift, but the order had been placed. When it arrived, Amber unpackaged it with reluctance and disparaged its existence. It would come to the party, but she didn't have to like it.

Planning a party is, to me, one of the least romantic activities one can undertake, short of assembling a houseful of Ikea furniture. I would be fine happening upon an already arranged party, but Amber would feel she could have spiffed it up if someone had handed her the reins.

In our daily life, Amber doesn't care to make many decisions. She doesn't care what she has for dinner, more so since she had shed any notion that she is going to be making it (unless I am sick or she decides she wants to make teriyaki salmon). When it comes to planning an event, however, the full force of her will manifests and woe betide the person who gets in her way.

The night before the party, we pick flowers for the tables at an on-your-honor, pick-your-own field near town, because Amber knows our party has floral centerpieces. Our wedding did, after all.

The party doesn't seem to be about us the way our wedding did. At our wedding, I felt the most loved I remembered being in my entire life. This party is just hanging out in a pavilion. I loved flitting around in conversation with friends, but it lacked specialness.

I asked Amber what gift she would like for our anniversary. She said paying for the party was my gift to her. We do not do gifts well, or we do them perfectly, because we don't want much from the other person. If we want something, we will tell the other person exactly what, but will otherwise not begrudge a lack of gifts. Amber, especially, has been desiring a few electronics. I know better than to buy her something that did not meet her every specification, particularly when she has yet to decide what these might be.

Paying for a party does seem like a hollow gift, but it is what she swears she wants. Planning the party, I gather, is her gift to me, white elephant though it might be.

I have recently been trying to be more actively in love with Amber. There is no question that I love her, but it is easy to fall into habits that could make the other person feel unacknowledged. She has reacted to this with suspicion, as though I am about to reveal our relationship was all an elaborate trick.

I pointed out days ago that I didn't want to be mock derisive to her. It is unnecessary (and not particularly funny) and I don't feel the need to pretend I am not fond of my wife. That's cheap. For whose benefit would I be doing that?

Amber said she didn't think I was ever derisive, then asked what derisive meant exactly. When I clarified, she affirmed that I was not that, and that she would also try not to be jokingly derisive. There is no need to undervalue the strongest relationship in my life for the sake of a weak bit.

Sometimes, when I feel I am being taunted, even in jest, it triggers one of my fears, that Amber will grow tired of me. You start to lay the groundwork with that by testing via jokes. If you don't say the words, sometimes the thoughts behind them go away, something I learned well in therapy.

Amber doesn't give herself downtime to appreciate all she has wrought. When the party is in full swing and most of the food that will be eaten has been, Amber busies herself unpacking one of the coolers so she can store the leftovers. (I do not know what portions Chipotle believes a healthy person can put away, but it is overgenerous by a factor of two.) One does not want to leave Mexican fast food out long. When I offer to help, she shoos me away. This is time away from the party where she is working and seems annoyed that she must. She will do this without help because she knows exactly how it should be.

I do not want Amber to feel put-upon, and I particularly do not want Amber putting things upon herself. The food does have to be packed away, but I am capable of the task, as are other people at the party who would only be too happy to help lighten her load.

Amber, making cotton candy

Soon, she is making cotton candy. I check-in that this is something she wants to be doing. Person after person comes up, fascinated with the process and wanting their own cone. I offer to take over, but Amber says this is unnecessary. She is doing what she wants to be doing and I should not bother her.

I mention all this to Amber's mother, who relates it to being a painter. "You have this great idea in your head for how it should be, but when you get it out, it isn't perfect. Everyone else might think it is, but you know it isn't. Amber is a painter. She isn't going to be satisfied, so she seems frustrated."

Amber often has too much on her mind, tasks she assigns to herself and then stresses over. She becomes preoccupied and hyperfocused. It is why she has devoted herself to narrow disciplines that did not reward her, why she will spend winter break exploring every cave in Hyrule. When she fixates on me, it is wonderful. I have nearly wept at some of her plans for previous Valentine's Day. However, her focus is often either the pets and school, or they are the distraction from what she would like to be focusing on. I have the summer where Amber's work is her only distraction. Its hours are always longer than stated, but are still finite. Come the end of August, Amber will take more classes and my interactions with her will dwindle. I want this summer to be as relaxed as it can be. I do not want her fretting over two pounds of spoiling guacamole.

I miss at times when her pursuits did not have time limits. I miss when she could stay up late for a meteor shower. I miss her being more relaxed. I miss her being happier, though she would likely say she is happier now. She feels a sense of purpose that she did not before, as far as I know. For all I do during the school year, I am never as preoccupied as she is. One of the virtues of my day job is that it ends at 3PM and I rarely must have anything to do with it after that. Amber's job goes on. Amber's school goes on.

When she is home, she wants to watch Netflix and take care of the pets. I get antsy if I spend too much time watching things, as it seems like a waste of my day. There is so much I would rather be doing. Amber cannot find time in her week for solid affection, but she finds time to binge a season if she can. It is a strange priority, though only to me. Many people would think binging makes more sense than wanting to write, run, and clean.

She doesn't have time for me to focus on loving her, or to focus on loving me. I miss that, as I can love so much better now than when I met her. I can make the love count even more, but she is too busy being a brilliant student of the sciences.

I have spent much of my life in the gulf between what I wish had happened and what did. One can pour much of my mental illness into that overlap.

---

You would swear he was in Hawaii

My father has his retirement party the next day. He too suffers from the chasm between what should be and what is. He complained weeks ago that he put up the flier so his coworkers would know when it was, but they overlooked it because a flashier one overshadowed it. People he worked with for over a decade told him they had no idea he was retiring. Who wouldn't be disappointed to feel disregarded?

In the end, many people whom he thought would be there weren't. Many whom he didn't expect and who had not said they were coming showed up. His own sister said she didn't see the reason to drive up from Virginia. He expected something along the ones of the old show This Is Your Life. He wanted nostalgia and appreciation. He wanted to know how much he mattered to his now former coworkers. What he got was the same recreation building used for hundreds of events and half of the fifty people he had budgeted. I saw him talking to people I did not know. He greeted the next-door neighbors for whom I used to babysit. I hoped my father was getting something like the experience he craved.

He chose a Hawaiian theme. All his family members wore ugly Hawaiian themed shirts. All the women were supposed to wear grass skirts, though I did not see one who did. There was a plastic sheet scene of a cartoon island before which people could take pictures. There was food cooked by men outside, hamburgers and hot dogs. It was a party, but I don't know that my father thought it was his party.

After cake, decorated not simply to my father but also Amber and our nephew Aydan's birthday, my collegebound niece Alieyah sings. This would be something my father would have wanted at his party, so I am glad it happened.

He didn't want to plan his own party and did not think it was fair that he had to. He wanted to come to a party thrown in his honor and enjoy himself. Instead, he had to plan it and throw it with my mother's help. This made it more likely he would be disappointed by the contrast between what he hoped for and what happened. If someone else had planned it, he could just show up and enjoy it as it was. It became something that he had done and thus for which he was culpable when it was not as he imagined. The blame is not his, but painters cannot see that.

Soon in Xenology: Writing. Summer. The Sheet.

last watched: Spider-Man: Far from Home
reading: The Trickster and the Paranormal

Thomm Quackenbush is an author and teacher in the Hudson Valley. He has published four novels in his Night's Dream series (We Shadows, Danse Macabre, Artificial Gods, and Flies to Wanton Boys). He has sold jewelry in Victorian England, confused children as a mad scientist, filed away more books than anyone has ever read, and tried to inspire the learning disabled and gifted. He is capable of crossing one eye, raising one eyebrow, and once accidentally groped a ghost. When not writing, he can be found biking, hiking the Adirondacks, grazing on snacks at art openings, and keeping a straight face when listening to people tell him they are in touch with 164 species of interstellar beings. He likes when you comment.