The Seven-Year Stitch

Tomorrow, Ma'ikwe and I will recommit to our marriage.

While that may not seem such a momentous occasion given that the original ceremony was April 21, 2007 (which means our marriage is older than this blog, and not exactly above-the-fold front-page news), tomorrow is the one-year anniversary of Ma'ikwe's decision to divorce me. It's also Bastille Day, the anniversary of the start of the French Revolution (325 years ago), marking the overthrow of tyranny and the French monarchy—just as Ma'ikwe was prepared to throw off the yoke of matrimony.

So it's no small thing to schedule our recommitment for July 14. Think of it as smudging the calendar. Right on the brink of dissolution, Ma'ikwe and I were carefully—over the course of the last 12 months—able to pick our way back from the edge of the falls without going over the edge and crashing on the rocks below.

It's been quite a year.

Marriage By the Numbers
Seven years ago we celebrated for four days. In the course of those four days we invoked four circles of community and enjoyed special meals with each: blood family, intentional community family, FIC family, and our spiritual family. The commitment ceremony featured four parts: past, community, who we are, and magic.

The first time we got married in the fourth month of a year ending in seven. Now we're getting re-married in the seventh month in a year ending in four. Balance. Ma'ikwe is an Enneagram Seven: the epicure and adventurer. In the seventh year of our marriage she'd had enough struggling and was ready to try something new. Yet she was also aware of the work set out for this type to mature and thrive:

Your spiritual journey is to search for right work and focused concentration. Spiritual growth will come to you when you approach life with disciplined sobriety instead of getting high on new ideas, options and plans. Like a stone skipping across a lake that sinks deeply when it comes to rest, you will do well to slow down, experience your inner depths, and focus on completion.

Freedom will exist when you accept the limitations of the present moment. Remember that envisioning something is not the same as manifesting it. True freedom comes with commitment and hard work—not from having unlimited options.

When I responded well to her decision to end the relationship (my therapist deserves a lot of credit here—I didn't know I had it in me), Ma'ikwe thought long and hard about whether to stay in the relationship longer, to see where additional work could get us. In the end though, she agreed and here we are.


Time on the Couch
Since last July, I've had 15 appointments with our therapist and couples counselor in Quincy IL (60 miles away). Sometimes Ma'ikwe and I went together; sometimes I went alone.

I've been working on my reactivity, clarifying what I want from the partnership, and delving into the murkiness of my sexual response. In turn, Ma'ikwe has been working on her tendency to withhold what she's thinking about, and to stop imagining that I'm upset with her whenever she catches me talking to myself (which I do a lot).

Recently we've been working on how to handle the situation when we both feel solid in our positions yet they don't match up. While this doesn't happen a lot (whew), it's not rare, and we've been learning how to accept occasional non-agreement without jeopardizing the partnership. The essential point is that we don't have to work through everything.

We have also been working on protecting intimate time together on a regular basis, and the primacy of consulting with one another before making major commitments. Slowly, we've been learning how to be better partners.

The Fork in the Road
It became clear to me last summer (in a way that I was loathe to face before Ma'ikwe's announcement last July 14) that I was going to have to choose between my marriage and my community, Sandhill Farm. This was not something I'd bargained for when we said "I do" seven years ago, and I had been resisting it even as Ma'ikwe was asking for more time together (after all, she had the option of moving to Sandhill; why did I have to be the one who gave up my home?).

But you only have to hit my on the head with a 2x4 once, so Ma'ikwe's divorce announcement got my attention. Facing the certainty of losing one, I was able to let go of my home and stick with the marriage—if Ma'ikwe would have me. (If she turned me down—a distinct possibility—then I still had my home of 40 years.)

I took a leave of absence from Sandhill right after Thanksgiving and have been living with Ma'ikwe since then at Moon Lodge, her house at Dancing Rabbit. While there have continued to be some things that go bump in the night (and sometimes during the day as well), we're mostly doing quite well. Well enough, in fact, for Ma'ikwe to put her seven-year itch behind her and recommit to the marriage.

Tomorrow, as we purposefully resew the threads of our commitment to one another—and begin wearing our rings again for the first time in a year—I'll be thinking of it as our Seven-Year Stitch.

Six Years Ago

Last Wednesday, Ma'ikwe and I visited Sky Island, the rambling three-story housing complex of Anthony & Lydia Allen in the foothills of the Sandia Mountains overlooking Albuquerque. It's a place filled with special memories because six years ago Ma'ikwe and I got married in that house.

It was my first time back since the wedding and the house was both the same and different. There had been a lot of repainting of interior walls in the interim and Anthony had gone wild with glass beads and glue gun, but the bones of the house remained the same.

As there were only two adults and three children on hand for our visit, it was a sharp contrast with the 175 celebrants packed into the upstairs great room for the main ceremony back in '07… but it was fun trying. There was a flood of images evoked by specific locations in the house:

o  In the back of the upstairs great room I had stood before Ma'ikwe's and my blood relatives at a Friday afternoon luncheon and toasted the memory of my mother with a jar of pickled beets.

o  In the outdoor plaza that same afternoon, my son, Ceilee, ran the outdoor bar with equal parts elan and insouciance (shaken, not stirred) while the crowd mingled in Brownian motion. It was unique mix of people I saw regularly; people I hadn't seen in a more than a decade; and people I'd never laid eyes on before (Ma'ikwe's friends)—yet there were welcoming tamales and homemade black currant wine for all.

o  In the second-story great room Friday evening, Ma'ikwe & I sat on raised chairs and were roasted in place. We never knew from speaker to speaker whether the forthcoming stories would be tender, embarrassing, or both. (I don't think I've ever laughed so hard in my life).

o  Awakening Saturday morning we discovered immediately that our plans for an outdoor 11 am ceremony were not going to work. Instead, we were greeted with the weather gods' idea of a cosmic joke: a brooding sky, chill temperatures, and gusty winds. Luckily, the bride and groom were professional facilitators and used to improvising when presented with unexpected roadblocks—we promptly moved the entire ceremony indoors and rewrote the choreography to accommodate the shifting set.

o  In the main kitchen I have an enduring image of my daughter, Jo, bustling efficiently as she orchestrated the preparation and delivery of the wedding banquet. 

o  I pictured Ma'ikwe ascending the spiral staircase, glowing in her red dress, about to join me and our officiant (Elph Morgan) for the wedding vows. The image to the right was captured by Marty Klaif just at that moment. Sitting at my feet, out of view of the camera, was my granddog, Zeus, stoically tolerating being trussed up in a tux for the occasion (an indignity I don't believe he's been asked to endure since).

o  In the breakfast nook on the south side of the kitchen I enjoyed a quiet post-ceremony moment with Beth Arnone, where my Italian friend told me of the magic of Cinque Terre—five small villages clumped along the rugged Italian Riviera that became one of the highlights of Ma'ikwe's and my honeymoon.
o  Standing on the outside of the great room along the north parapet, the newlyweds had their picture taken in a sudden spring snow shower.

The best part, though, was wandering outside the house and finding the site of our sweat lodge amidst the scrub brush and prickly pear. Ma'ikwe and I, you see, had conceived of a four-day wedding (both to prolong this singular occasion and to enhance the chances of having actual conversations with the special people who had traveled cross country to be with us). 

While the crescendo was the Saturday ceremony, with Ma'ikwe and me dressed in ritual attire, the wedding "officially" opened at dawn Wednesday morning, with Ma'ikwe and I emerging from a sweat lodge in our birthday suits.

I had built the lodge on Monday with the help of Robert Griffin and Ann Shrader. Tuesday night was a new moon and Ceilee & MaryLou Singleton (a dear friend of Ma'ikwe's) accompanied us to Sky Island where the four of us settled in for an all-night vigil of fire tending, getting a representative assortment of Missouri firebricks & New Mexico chunks of scrap iron gradually heated to cherry red.

Toward dawn Jeffrey Harris & Cecil Scheib joined our circle and were on hand to witness Ma'ikwe & I enter our small hut and emerge 30 minutes later as steaming, cleansed lobsters to greet the day—and the beginning of our wedding.

Six years later there was not trace remaining of the wood-framed lodge, yet we had no trouble identifying the location because the fire ring remained, and lying nearby were all 10 of the firebricks I'd hauled from Missouri.

As we reconnected with the energy of that site, it suddenly occurred to us that we were there on April 17—the exact sixth anniversary of the day we arrived to begin our wedding. With the circuit completed, the energy of union surged through us… again.