A Toast to Thirty Years

Thirty years ago, on Memorial Day weekend, I met the love of my life.

I had just graduated from the University of Iowa and was home for the summer. I needed to make a little money and save a little money for grad school in the fall. I didn't hide the fact that I had a bit of heartburn over coming back to Shelby County. The heartburn went away in a hurry. As it turned out, Doug Kramer was my Tums.

Two grown children, two dogs, and an abundance of cats later, I look back on these past thirty years with wonder. How did we do it? How did we manage to be a couple that still talks to each other? To be fair, our talking ratio is usually 70/30, with me doing the lion share. But it's been that way since day one. It works for us.

Anyone who's married knows that it's not all sunshine. This realization actually comes as a shock when you fall in love and you're certain your partner can do no wrong. I distinctly remember my mother telling me something to this effect before our wedding day. I nodded, but smiled to myself thinking, but doesn't she realize I'm marrying Doug Kramer?

Through a few ups and downs, with the downs basically surrounding cow incidents, we now find ourselves in that state of "I'm so glad I ended up with you." I've been thinking about this and boiled down the keys to our happy marriage to five primary tactics. For what it's worth, here they are:

1. Do nice things for each other. A no-brainer, heh? You'd think! But it's pretty easy to rely on only birthdays and anniversaries to do this. And when kids come along, most of the giving energy is focused on them, if you intend to spoil them like most parents. But nice gestures don't have to be big. The smallest of gestures are like little happiness pills. For example,
   
   I'm going to the kitchen, can I fill your water?  Or
   I'm going to the liquor store, do you need anything? (Doug loves buying me alcohol as much as he likes buying it for himself.) Or
   I'm going shopping, can I pick you up some new shoes? (I love buying Doug shoes as much as I like buying shoes for myself. Almost.)
   
   
2. Be willing. I'm not talking about sex, entirely. But we certainly would've missed out on experiences if we wouldn't have melded our lives together. I never would've understood the powerful feeling of driving a tractor, like I did that one time. And he never would've realized the joy of having a cat who likes to eat chips off the counter. Beyond tractors and cats, I truly have a fondness for sports. And sometimes, just sometimes, Doug will be the first to crawl into bed and open a book.
3. Remember why you fell in love. Modesty, cuteness and sense of humor.  Whenever we get a little snippy with each other, I force myself to remember those things that made me fall in love with him. I also do something else. This might sound a little strange, but I don't think about Doug being my husband. I think about him as someone I'm getting to know better and a child of God. I realize that he has his own fears and vulnerabilities. It makes my love for him grow deeper.
4. Consider the tone. Jerry Seinfeld once said, "I didn't know I would be discussing the tone of my voice with my wife. I thought it was a marriage. Apparently, it's a musical." For some reason, it's easy to be condescending to the people we love most. It's never right, but a spouse and a child always seem to be fair game. And it's toxic! So, I tell Doug to call me on it if my tone becomes impatient with his computer questions. And he understands that he might need to muster up the happiest tone he can while repeating directions to a cornfield five times to a person who's directionally challenged.
5. Movie Night. Obviously, this  is probably the most important aspect to our happy marriage. Doug and I have fairly different preferences when it comes to cinema genres. If we could find a movie that stars Steven Segal as an 18th Century poet, we might have a consensus. But that movie hasn't been made yet. So, we rotate. Thanks to Alex, we now have a new method in which we draw a random actor out of a hat and choose a movie that actor has been in. Not that there aren't a few sighs after a movie has been selected, but for the most part we see a nice variety of killing and poetry.

So, that's it! I love who I ended up. I love the children we created and raised. And I love the home and lives we made together. To the next thirty years...and beyond.

Summer of 1991. Happy Doug.

Summer of 1991. Happy Stef

In Centerfield

Softball. Baseball.

Those were the only youth sports when I was young, that I remember anyway. When I asked Mom if I could go out for softball, she convinced me, in that loving tone of hers, that softball was probably not my sport. As it turned out, "my sport" ended up being piano. With my father being a motorcycle guy, and a mother who had her fill of chasing older brothers' fly balls her entire childhood, I grew up knowing very little about America's pastime. 

Then I met Doug. He told me he played town team ball. I said, "Oh! I'd love to come and watch you play softball sometime!" He was quick to set me straight. "Baseball. Not softball. Baseball." 

Now, I wasn't completely clueless. I had attended a few high school games. But the summer of 1991 was my first real education of the sport. Admittedly it started off as an excuse to watch my cute new boyfriend in his uniform. I'd drag my high school buddy, Jill, along. (Her Mom did not talk her out of playing softball.) Jill taught me terms like "warning track" and "tag up" and "full count" and "cleanup hitter." I learned a lot that summer! Most notably? How a slice of lime completely enhances the taste of Bud Light.

Fast forward a few years, beyond Doug's town team baseball days. Doug taught me more as we watched and attended MLB games where concessions of hot dogs, popcorn and nachos trumped all the Michelin restaurants of the world. By the time we signed our kids up for tee-ball, I knew important things about the sport. Like the Yankees were the devil. 

Little League was our first foray into "extra-curricular" activities for our children. It didn't take me long to adopt the mindset of every parent who watches their kid play a sport for the first time. You know the mentality: "My six-year-old clearly has talent! Is it too early for colleges to be scouting?" By Middle School, both of our kids were done with summer ball. They had other pursuits. 

But we remained a baseball family. Every year, we religiously watch baseball classics: Fever Pitch, Major League, Bull Durham, Moneyball, 42, Trouble with the Curve. (There are more we don't catch every year, for all you Field of Dreams fans.) The baseball formula works beautifully in cinema. It's sooooo feel-good! And it provides us a plethora of lines that speak to life itself. "Careful kid, they'll break your heart." or "How can you not be romantic about baseball?" 

Some of my favorite family memories took place in Kaufmann Stadium (Kansas City), Target Field (Minneapolis), Busch Stadium (St. Louis), and at the stadium of stadiums: Fenway Park in Boston. The Green Monster where the soundtrack of the Dropkick Murphy's doesn't leave your brain and fans loiter to celebrate well after the game has been won. 

There are many things to love about this game. Some say it's too long. Too slow. Too boring. But the pace of the game and the patience required to watch is one of the best things about it. For a person who can rarely sit still and has five million things jumping around in her brain, baseball is the best. Watching and waiting for a hitter to smash the ball out of the park forces me to do something I rarely do: be present and live in the moment. 

During harvest, when Doug is in the fields and the kids are gone, I turn on the TV to listen to a baseball game. There's something soothing about the dull roar of the crowd and the smooth voice of the broadcaster announcing "the 2 and 2 pitch." And when there's a perfect catch, a strikeout ,or a grand slam, I cheer with delight! Because we all need something to cheer for that's not political or divisive, even if you happen to cheer for those damn Yankees.