Groovy Kind

est. 23OCT2003

The soundtrack for this letter. Please listen while you read. If it ends before you’re done, just hit replay.

I recently read the following truth:

“It’s a miracle that anyone would ever fall in love with someone else and—of all the people in the world— that person loves them back. Like if you fell off a building and landed in a pillow truck somehow.”¹

From the time Sean and I met and then married, four months had passed. But we knew after three weeks. Who does that? I never thought I would. I never thought I’d even meet someone I wanted to hang out with longer than a few hours at a time, let alone for all the rest of it.

I wasn’t one to have boyfriends for very long/hardly at all. I always knew it wasn’t it and I’m not one who can pretend very easily. Getting married wasn’t even a goal because I just couldn’t picture the person, and finding the right person (theoretically) was crucial to me. I wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t exactly it. That was me.

I remember seriously debating whether I wanted to be with someone who was sporty or artsy. Like, which was more important to me. Which I now find very funny because I cannot now see how they could compare. When we met, he had already been accepted to art school and did not have “wife” on his “to pack” list. Little did he know. I don’t remember meeting Sean and thinking, An artist?? I’ve found him! He fits my conscious requirement! But maybe subconsciously? When he told me his plans I remember thinking, Yes. That sounds about right.

And I am incomprehensibly grateful when I imagine how much he’s enriched my life in this capacity, something I couldn’t quantify if I tried, so much is woven in.

We spent our entire engagement apart. Like olden times, we wrote letters and chatted on gchat a lot. For six weeks I put together a wedding and mailed him boxes of my stuff while he started fall semester at Pratt and scavenged for housewares in Brooklyn. Until one day he flew back to Utah so we could wed, and then, using a one-way ticket, I joined him on the return flight. It’s weird how we knew how special these circumstances of starting out would be for us twenty years down the road. So much so, I would strongly advise all newly marrieds to immediately embark on a grand adventure, living far away from family in a new place.

Just married, in our bedroom that barely fit a bed in an apartment painted pumpkin orange on Vanderbilt Avenue, I remember waking up many times from the same nightmare: That I had gotten married to someone else. Who it was varied from dream to dream. I probably knew some of them and cannot recall details now. But each of them shared one horrifying commonality: WRONG. And when I woke up in terror and remembered who I’d actually married, relief always swept over me and I relaxed into the comfort of having made possibly the single perfect decision of my life.

I often marvel at the risk we took, knowing so little about one another but at the same time, knowing everything that mattered? Maybe we threw the dice. Maybe we were idiots. Or maybe a different kind of knowing met his knowing, and that made it easy. We felt our likeness, checking off subconscious lists we each were carrying cerebrally, cardiovascularly, dermally, and—I cannot think of how to make it an adverb— gut-centered. Because after we were wed, we went on to discover our own compatibility in myriad ways.

Like how I started out cooking because I foolishly felt the pressure of really stupid gender roles. And then the swap we made when he later discovered his love and natural knack for it, telling me stories of cooking shows he watched as a child. I helped like I helped my mother when I was young, by “entertaining everyone” by playing the piano (sorry, mom) or, more likely, chatting or quizzing him and generally challenging him intellectually I’d like to think.

But really, I think it was finding out how it actually looked to care about each other. How, if you care about someone, that means you care about what they care about, and what a big deal that actually is.

Example: I’ve always loved the sky and recently started a new Instagram account for my pictures. One night I was out in the backyard looking skyward, spinning around awkwardly, trying to see it all at once as I do, knowing/loving how fleeting it is, desperately wishing I had my phone but not able to leave to get it, when out of nowhere, Julian appeared with it. Because Sean had seen me and said, “Hurry and take Mom’s phone out to her!”

Or like when I mention I’d like to listen to a podcast to prep for the Itzhak Perlman concert we were all going to and had been waiting a year for. How later, when I’m sitting alone, searching for it in my podcast library when I receive a text from him with a link to the very podcast. I mean, is there anything better than messages of, “Remember when you were talking? I was listening. And I thought of it again later and now here you go.”

And then remember how our car automatically syncs up to someone’s phone and we never know which it will be? A while later, I got in the car and turned on the ignition just as I hit “play” on the Itzhak podcast. Imagine my many-second confusion when I heard it playing on the car speaker, assuming it had auto-connected using my bluetooth, but not understanding why the audio was being weird and not sounding right until I finally realized it was connected to Sean’s bluetooth, as he was also listening to the very same podcast.

Things like this are what really screams MFEO. Things like this are pure love, and I feel it strike like lightning into the gut-centered place of knowing. It’s not just that we were initially designed this way with shared interests + the fluke of meeting, but more that we have re-compatibilized our relationship along the way by saying Hi, I still like you, I want to change and grow too, the things that matter to you matter to me. That one of our shared interests, among the many, is our relationship, and who we are in it. To make sure it is always something to return to and fall into like a pillow truck. To take the fluke and make it deliberate, yet flexible, always keeping our heart’s eye on each other. I’d call that fundamental. And one of the many ways we continually choose each other and co-create our compatibility.

When we first met, Sean introduced me to bands like Radiohead and Flaming Lips. They always remind me of the early days and hold a prominent place in my sentimental memory. We even decided one particularly depressing Radiohead song was “our song” which I love and makes me laugh.

Over the years we heard and made a lot of music together. A lot of songs were added to our unique repertoire, Jen & Sean’s Infinite Playlist. And discoveries are always being made, randomly, seemingly innocuous, perhaps stumblingly, perhaps in synchrony.

Like the time we were listening to Phil Collins as one does, and Sean and I laughed and made fun of what a big deal he was back in the day, and then as we listened, quietly and simultaneously realized it was for good reason, as we both admitted we loved him.

Wouldn’t you agree? Baby, you and me, we gotta a groovy kind of love.

Happy anniversary, SeanMo.

1. Nayeri, D. (2020) Everything Sad is Untrue. Levine Querido.