Rites of Spring

On March 9, I accepted Michael Gull’s proposal for marriage. If you read his blog or have ever seen his stand-up comedy, and if you have ever read my column, you may be thinking “I bet they’re fun to watch the news with.” Or not. For those unfamiliar, we’re the new James Carville and Mary Matalin of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, with me in the role of Carville. I’ll be honest: I’m the last person I would have expected to see in a life partnership with someone whose political views are so opposed to my own. Or are they? Michael considers himself a “Reagan Republican” by way of explanation regarding his strong feelings that G.W. Bush has really fucked things up. This doesn’t clear up much for me, never having been a fan of trickle-down economics or presidents who star in movies with monkeys, but I always nod understandingly when it comes up. It’s not the point for me. I respect his conviction and appreciate that we can have lively conversations about our opinions that never turn pesonal. I’m also a little comforted by the fact that he’s pro-choice, pro-gay marriage and pro-education. It’s a start.

But at my age, “I do’s” come with more than a wedding cake and new pots and pans. When the ring slipped on my finger, I also received four stepkids and a big black cat. That’s six new members for the Tribe counting Michael himself. My sister and her partner just bought a house, which added an adult, two large dogs and a four-and-a-half foot iguana, plus a brother who rented Lucky’s old flat next door. That’s five more. My girl Joy recently got engaged and they also bought a house. He brought a cat. That’s two more, bringing the total of new “official lifetime” members to 13. If you count the original Tribe as me, my sisters (including Joy), and our kids and pets (yeah, we count the pets), we stood sixteen strong before. So now there’s 29 of us, but only 19 with thumbs, unless you count the iguana. Which also means we have way too many pets, and I didn’t even count the fish. I now live my life in a series of story problems.

Here’s one I practice a lot, though I still can’t figure out the equation:

A woman leaves her office on the East side at 5:25 and drives west at 25 mph. If she has 7 miles to travel in rush hour traffic, what is the possibility that she and her partner can feed the five kids, take one to soccer practice and another to work and still have time to do the dishes and a load of laundry before bed?

This is another favorite:

There will be 20 people for Sunday dinner in a typical bungalow. If six adults can sit at the dining table and six kids can sit on the striped picnic cloth on the floor, where in the hell is everybody else supposed to sit? Extra credit: What is the environmental impact of paper plates and cups as compared to the amount of dish soap it takes to clean up after 20 people?

I’m so happy for all of us, and at the same time a little sad that we’re starting to spread out – Joy’s new house is three blocks away and Lucky’s a heart-wrenching five – but it’s time to go all sons of Abraham up in here anyway, I imagine. When it was just the original mix of eight next door neighbors, eight bedrooms and three bathrooms seemed like enough. But now we have grown beyond our old borders and must go out into the world and take over new blocks on the east side of Tosa. Before we know it, there could be more children, and with the oldest being almost 18, there could even be grandkids in a decade or less. And once that ball gets rolling, who knows where everyone would sit?