Minnesota Thaw

“There’s a fine line between home and a trap.”--Mira Kirschenbaum


It’s 13 degrees outside. My husband, in his navy-blue fleece-lined jacket, is bent over the barbecue grill outside. He is warming his gloved hands over the flame. My son is in the front yard, bundled in wads of polyester-filled, parachute-lined gortex. He’s getting wet, making an arsenal of snowballs. It’s the middle of winter and we are barbecuing chicken. Who ever heard of such a thing?

Living in Minnesota has been so bizarre. Before I married Jim, I’d seen snow only once, on a trip to visit a college boyfriend. He was waiting for me in the parking lot of the hotel, and as we embraced, white flakes of snow started falling from the sky, all around us, in our hair, on the shoulders of our jackets. I was surprised by how flaky it was, how small and insignificant, how dusty it seemed, how dry, like dandruff. It laced the sidewalk and the benches in the park. That was so long ago.

Here, the snowflakes are big and wet. Winter lasts so long that people pretend like its summer. Last week, for dinner, we ate hotdogs and baked beans.

I love my husband, Jim. I try to remember all the ways I love Jim. I loved Jim when I met him, two years after I got out of college. I was working my first “real” job for the university tv station. He was the cute grip who controlled the dangling microphones. He would always direct the microphone toward me, as if I had something brilliant to say. A group of us would sometimes go out together after work and sit at the Tiki Lounge, sipping mimosas on the outdoor patio. I wouldn’t let him buy me drinks. “That’s really sweet, but you don’t have to,” I would say. He would order them anyways. The sunsets were pink and orange and warm. He had this way of looking at me like it was his mission to make me happy.

Jim has small eyes, but they’re the kind of eyes that love to smile. They wink up, small, in his head when he’s laughing. He always finds reasons to laugh. Jim is tall and skinny, with cute, perky cheeks. He has thick, shiny black hair that he cuts very short. He has a cowlick over his left temple. He wears bright, Hawaiian shirts that used to annoy me. He wears funny ties. You always know what is on Jim’s mind, because he is very direct and straightforward. He doesn’t hide anything about himself.

When we first started dating, he would make me laugh. He would draw goofy pictures on white pieces of paper and tape them to the microphone. When it swung over my head on a fundraising drive, I would barely be able to contain my smile. The audience must have wondered why it sometimes looked like I was rolling my eyes. He would write, “AMY--Will you go out with me tonight?” and “Amy rox my sox!” He would draw charactitures of the funny things we saw on our dates, the things that we did, and leave them in my work mailbox. Nobody in the program minded, because they all loved Jim. He had that effect on people. Nobody thought that he was unprofessional. They liked his Hawaiian shirts and funny ties, his puppy-dog infatuation with the young tv journalist.

I love Jim because laughter comes so easily for him. I love Jim because so many people love him. No matter where he goes, he’s the office favorite. He has the personality of a salesman. He gets invited to play golf with the boss, and the boss pays. People just fall in love with him. He’s so utterly open, a book with its pages shuffling before you.

He’s knocking on the window, pantomiming for some tongs. Tongs and barbecue sauce, I realize, after a few minutes of watching him do bizarre motions with his hands. “Okay, okay,” I say, laughing. He lingers. I mouth him a kiss. He grins, a puff of frosty air shooting from his nose. He runs and tackles our son. They start wrestling in the snow.

I should be happy. I love my husband and I love my son. But do I love my husband for the right reasons? Is there a right reason to love someone?

Some nights we lie in bed and I want to tell him about the things that I’m feeling. He listens, like a good husband should, but I know it makes him uncomfortable. Jim doesn’t understand. He doesn’t understand my feelings because he’s never had them. Jim doesn’t understand feelings. I tell him he’s repressed.

“Don’t you ever think about these things?” I ask.

“No.”

“Why not? Don’t you worry about atomic weapons, or the absurdity and emptiness of our commercialistic society, or how we’re over here living our own little lives in St. Paul, Minnesota while half of the people in the world are starving and dying?” I want to know.

“See, that’s what I love about you,” he says, and plants a kiss on my forehead. He fondles my breast and starts kissing my neck. “You’re such a deep thinker.”

I press him. I want to know. So he tries. “I took a philosophy class once. It was boring. A bunch of whiners.”

“This isn’t philosophy, Jim,” I say. “This is ethics.”

“Ethics smethics,” he says, rolling on top of me. “Why drive yourself crazy living for everyone else? You can’t solve any one else’s problems, only your own. You'll go insane if you think about it too much.” He kisses my nose. The attraction between Jim and I is like wildfire. I open my mouth and he kisses me, ferociously. Sex with Jim is incredible. I drop the topic and we roll around in bed. After, he strokes my stomach with his finger and says, “We sure are lucky, aren’t we, Amy?”

Jim is a neat-freak, unlike the other men I dated in college. Chris and I had had great sex, and even great philosophy, but Chris was a total slob and a bit of an alcoholic to boot. Jim likes to keep things clean. He vacuums twice a day, always fixes the fringe on the carpet if it isn’t laying straight, mops the kitchen, wipes the appliances, organizes the garage. I love this about Jim. He’ll come up behind me when I’m loading the dishwasher, wrap his arms around me, and say, “Let me do that, honey. You go sit down and read a book or something.”

Sometimes I wonder how well I know my husband. Sometimes I am filled with an incredible urge to climb inside his skin, inside his body, and experience the world from his point of view for a day.

The only time I feel close to Jim these days is right before or right after we make love, when he touches me.

The thing about Jim is that he has so much energy. He arrives at work, Goodmorning,Minnesota!, every morning at four. He goes to every single one of Jason’s baseball games and practices. He cooks, he cleans, he runs errands for me. He has tons of hobbies, and never leaves a project unfinished. The garage is filled with model airplanes, fastidiously painted and decaled, ships inside of bottles, a hobby car that he and Jason are remodeling. He plays golf once a week and has poker night with the boys, each Wednesday, in the basement. He never forgets. Two days after our mini-conversation, he brings it up again.

“Honey, are you still depressed about the condition of the world?” he asks while I peel onions, as he sorts through the mail.

“Huh?” I say, processing, then remembering our short conversation. “Oh, um, I guess not.”

“What changed?” At least he’s interested.

“I don’t know.” I can’t argue with him. I can’t convince him that there is something to be worried about, upset about, uncomfortable with. Jim was born comfortable. It doesn’t matter what happens to him or where he ends up, he will always be comfortable. I swear, you couldn’t make this man unhappy.

I saw Jim cry once. The day his dad died. Unexpected; it was a heart attack. He cried on the phone briefly with his mom when the news came, then with his family in the parlor before the funeral, then a little at the funeral, and a little afterwards when everyone was just hanging around in our living room, eating. At first they were big tears, then later, throughout the days, just little circle of wetness in his eyes. Later in the week, he came to me from the bathroom, in his robe, after brushing his teeth, and said, “Honey, I really miss my dad. He was so awesome. I really loved him. I’m so sad.” I put my arms around him and held him tight, while he sobbed into my chest. I kissed his head and his shiny black hair. I haven’t seen Jim cry since.

Sometimes I cry when no one is around. I don’t know why, really. It just comes over me when I am alone and I don’t know what to do with it. I usually just sit on the toilet seat, using toilet paper as tissue. I stare at the tub and wonder why I’m crying.

Jim is a good person. He is a gentle husband and a good dad, a fun friend and a good employee. He’s loves me and I don’t ask why. I’m well taken care of; I don’t have to work, but I can if I want to. Jim almost doubled his salary when we moved to St. Paul. We bought a house with four bedrooms. Jim wants to have another baby.

Jim is madly in love with me and I don’t ask why. I don’t want to know why; I don’t need to know why. Why is a stupid question. He loves me because I’m beautiful and I’m smart and I’m funny. He loves me because we have good chemistry and good pillow talk. He loves me because I don’t ask why. He loves me because I love him.

I’m not sure what Jim wants out of life. No, I’m exactly sure what Jim wants. He wants to pay off the mortgage on this house and then move into an even bigger one. He wants to buy me a Lexus, so that I can have a really nice vehicle with heated leather seats. He wants to take us on a ski vacation in the Rockies for two weeks every year, and two weeks at the beach in St. Petersburg, Florida. He wants to take Jason camping more, and he wants to get Jason involved in the boy scouts, so he can really learn to appreciate and function in nature, the way a man should. He wants to have the latest gadgets and gizmos, he wants to play golf with the guys each week, he wants to watch his children grow and he wants to be able to afford the best ivy-league schools for them. He wants to have the latest model SUV with a GPS navigation device. He wants to be able to afford to give me horseback riding lessons—“You look so beautiful on a horse,” he says. “And those riding boots and that crop, whoa, they really give me a thrill.” He wants a daughter, a little girl to spoil and fret over, to buy pink, frilly dresses and horseback riding lessons and piano lessons for.

Sometimes I wonder what we have in common, really. It’s as though there is a whole other me inside that Jim doesn’t even know. Oh yeah, he thinks, my wife is so sweet. She’s concerned about world poverty and the injustices of the IMF. But he doesn’t have an opinion, doesn’t really care, so what fun is it to discuss? He tells me we can make a Christmas donation each year to a charity, or something like that. Why don’t I stop complaining and just accept the blessings of the good life? Don’t I appreciate how hard he works?

After helping peel potatoes, he picks up the keys off the table and swats me on the butt with a rolled up newspaper. “I’m taking the boy to practice, now,” he says. Sometimes I feel like my husband is just a really good friend with whom I have sex. Are our souls really intertwined? Are we spiritually bonded? Is this as good as it gets? Is this what its all about—you just settle down, have a kid, eat barbecue chicken and make love five times a week? I kiss him goodbye and watch him go out the door with longing eyes.