behindtheax

life with greg

Ups and downs. Highs and lows. I guess I could be thinking about anything but I am thinking about marriage/relationships this morning and how like everything else they work on a pivot. Oscillating back and forth from points of extreme love to flinging plates at the wall in frustration (well I only did that twice). Right now we’re on the upswing and it feels wonderful. It is not even like we have to say anything. It just hovers between us like something solid and lasting and real. We are not the same people. Not even close to being the same. He is so full of ideas and is always trying to bring them to life, which keeps our lives far from dull but has me at times pulling at my hair. I sometimes try to approach his ideas with a voice of logic but it often comes off sounding more like I’m a pessimist/ a giant squashier of dreams. Believe me I don’t like this role and I try hard not to play it. It is just that I’m not always comfortable taking chances and when he pulls out his small black book where he writes his to-do-lists and asks me if I have a moment to go over a few ideas he has, my first reaction comes off as a bit of a cringe. What are we doing now?

The first time he did this to me was twenty years ago. We were in Northern New Brunswick. I was working as a nurse; he was a geologist back then. It was summer and I had the day off and so he had invited me to spend the day with him, out in the woods, as he did some fieldwork. It was one of those clear sweet days where I thought I knew exactly what I held and where I was headed and I happily followed him through the woods as he tapped away at outcrops and did his geology thing. We stopped at a pretty little brook to eat lunch and as I was opening my can of cola he said, “I am not happy.”

I first thought, oh no, here it comes.

But instead he said, “I am not happy as a geologist, I can’t envision doing this for the rest of my life. What I really want to be doing is acting and I am thinking about applying to the School of dramatic arts in New York City.

Now, this is not a bad dream to have, since moving to Toronto I have met many people in this profession but at the time my whole world was New Brunswick and back then in N.B. actors were mystical creatures. He may as well have said he wanted to be a unicorn from the reaction he got from me. It was just that the moment took me completely by surprise. I had no idea up to that point that this was a dream of his. And I’m thinking as I am looking through this curtain of black flies at him, Buddy you got a knapsack full of rocks and you are wearing a Heath Steel mining cap, where is this acting thing coming from?

However I was not about to tread on anyone’s dreams especially his so I gave him my blessing. He enrolled and spent a year in New York, came home the next summer, asked me to marry him and because there just wasn’t a whole lot of work for an actor in New Brunswick, he asked me to move to Toronto with him.

I said yes, so here we are. I am glad I came, except at times I do miss New Brunswick, the ocean, and my family. But I also think it was important for me to grow and I think I was able to accomplish that with a partner like Greg. I would never have been brave enough to tackle all these past adventures on my own.

So, anyway, we are sitting around Saturday night, I am on my second glass of wine, feeling pretty comfy; we are listening to Counting Crows and the Lowest of the Low. And Greg pulls out his black book and ask if he could go over a few things and he starts explaining this wonderful and complex plan he has of getting this computer application that he is developing up and running. Yes, he is still an actor but he also became a complete computer geek over the last fifteen years. And I don’t know if it was the wine or that I am just getting so use to him potentially upsetting the apple cart every time we seem to get on some solid ground - or that his ideas are becoming such a common occurrence that it is just life with Greg? - I said sure, sounds wonderful. I never said the word “but” once.

posted by mary j. @ 10:26 AM