12: < two weeks

It is official. Long distance no longer describes our relationship. Instead, Joe will spend the next two weeks sleeping on the floor of my parents' living room. He pulled in on Friday after six hours in the hot hot heat, driving in a truck with no A/C (the island of an honest man).

We spent the weekend making place cards, talking about wedding plans, figuring out where he'd sleep the night of the wedding and drinking milkshakes with my family. The highlight of the weekend: finalizing all of the wedding details and reading with the deacon that will marry us, one of the most naturally happy people I've come into contact with, followed by a two-hour lunch at Lucky Steer, one of the most typical restaurants for small towns.

The diner-esque coffee is what keeps us coming back. The restaurant, with homestyle specials daily and a fun salad bar with my favorites (sunflower seeds and coleslaw--no, not together! gross!) has been our stop in Wapak when we're feeling a bit emotional.

It was our final stop on Joe's visits to Ohio during the first summer of our relationship, when I moved home and he stayed at school. It was our first stop when we told the church we wanted to get married. Now, it's the first restaurant we've been to as almost married people.

And I mean almost married. We went to the Probate Court today, which seems like an odd place for such a happy occasion. We held up our right hands, swore we didn't have syphilis and promised we weren't already married. We weren't drunk. We weren't pretending to be someone else. Things were going good. We were congratulated and given our marriage certificate. It was packed away for the wedding rehearsal.

Then I call Social Security, to see about this name-changing biz-nass. And they, like everyone else I've talked to, suggested that maybe legally changing my name without time to get a new passport, visa & driver's license (and SS card, which wouldn't arrive for, oh, a month minimum) was perhaps not my best idea. Customs would be confused. I could be held in the airport.

My heart sank a little. I have been inching my toes toward that finish line, the time when Joe and I could be the Betz family, for the past year. It means so much to him. I plopped my head onto his shoulder, into the bowl between shoulder blade and pec (a bowl I think I've worn into him). I explained. We were both disappointed, but we started making plans to make the switch post-France.


"But will you call yourself Megan Betz?" he asked.

Of course I will. And my students will call me Mrs. Betz. And we will be The Betzes. The Betz Family. Mr. & Mrs. Betz. For everyone but Social Security. 

There were other, more successful errands run today. Like picking up my borrowed item, my grandma's silver bracelet, and my old item, her pewter candle sticks for the unity candles. Like getting season one of Mad Men, to make Joe understand how important it is. Like getting Jillian's kick-your-ass yoga video, which I hope to purchase for Joe & myself if we enjoy the rented trial run of it. Like showing Joe where the printer is, so that he can start running errands in Wapak and feeling like he owns the place.

Like ordering flowers for the moms during the sign of peace and getting really excited about bringing our two families together. Like falling asleep on the bedroom floor while on hold with Social Security and realizing that we will never wake up in separate states again.

29: the distance

It really don't matter if this guy opens my head, either. 'Cause all I wanna do is go the distance.  -Rocky Balboa

The other day, I received a wedding card and a check to help us start our life together. I went to the bank, ready to cash the check and add it to our post-wedding fund envelop. I pulled up to the bank. I put the check and my driver's license in the tube. I said, "Cash, please."

The woman's smiling teeth, her horse mouth distorted by the small camera that put her on the television next to the tube. "We need both signatures," she said. If it had said "or," she explained, things would be different. "But it's that 'and' in there."

Megan Veit and Robert Betz.

I nod to the woman. Yes, I understand that these things are supposed to be done together. We're supposed to be moving through these growing rapids together–navigating.

Lately, the water's been rushing and whipping over my head. I'm drowning.

This has not made me the easiest person to live with. To talk to on the phone at night. It has not made it easy to eat. It has made it easy to buy cookies "for the family to share," and snack on them throughout the day when no one seems to be looking.

This isn't the story we thought we'd be telling, and now that we're less than a month away all we can do is wait and hope my sanity goes the distance. Now, I worry that this anxiety has already marred our wedding memories. I worry that my increased sensitivity and unbelievable sadness at times will be what we look back on when we think of the time leading up to our wedding.

It took twelve years after a dog attacked me to look in the mirror and not examine the scars–make a fish face and see the tissue pucker, watch the constellation of puncture wounds turn white when surrounded my sunburn. Will it take twelve years to be look back on this?

I leave Sunday, will pull into St. Louis when half are celebrating a World Cup victory and half are drowning their loss in another pint. Things will be different, always are when the states between us are removed–which says good things about the two weeks leading up to the wedding.

He'll be in Wapak, pulling in when things are in order to say, "See, that was simple! We're happy." He'll be right, in a way. And we'll be happy.

82

We woke up in a much different mood this morning. My alarm rang at 7:15. I crawled out from the comforter at 7:20. Egg, tomato and avocado sandwiches were on the table at 7:40, with a side of strawberries and pan-fried oatmeal granola. Joe crawled out from the comforter and sat across from me at his café table at 7:45.

There wasn't much talking. There wasn't much kissing or smiling. We were morose, and since then the feeling has gotten heavier. Joe sits next to me at Crêpes: etc. once again. His nose is deep in training materials for his summer teaching job. I thought I'd be driving to Ohio at this point, but I got in an extra hour or two so that he could use my computer to finish his assessments before the real training starts on Wednesday.

His stress levels are rising, and I'm worried that he'll have a panic attack like he did while working three jobs and finishing up his thesis this past semester. I worry that he won't sleep, won't eat enough vegetables or drink enough water to counteract the coffee he'll be drinking. He's worried that I'll hit rush hour traffic multiple times on my drive from St. Louis to Wapakoneta, Ohio. He's worried that I'll think too much about the wedding or making money or the amount I'm able to write. He's write.

We keep patting each others' knee, reminding us that for at least the next hour, we're here. We're together. When we tried to put a calendar together for the summer, we realized how many holes there still are–how many aspects are completely out of our control. This means there is no way of knowing when we'll be driving toward each other again. For now, the days (months?) will pass, metaphorically driving us toward each other and the wedding and times when we don't wake up sorry that a week has passed without our realizing it.

The music is loud. An accordion and tinny piano are blasting French feelings over the woven chairs and displays of gelato. The feeling is familiar–because of the mornings we've spent here and the places like this we hope to spend many mornings over the next year. But it's not comfortable. It's distracting. It's a constant reminder that this isn't real right now. We're hiding away from an overcast sky and a long day of driving. We're tricking ourselves, and it's made us both very tired.

At least this countdown has moved down to 82. At least I'm driving home to family, to hugs and help and employment and homemade food and movies on Saturday nights after evening Mass. At least it's summer, and this rain is dying. At least there's a veggie hot dog to buy and walk home eating while we sip cherry soda, one more moment of city living before pretending that we're not crying a little.

one hundred twenty-one

Look in my heart and let love keep us together.

Over the weekend, I was lucky enough to spend three hours in the car with my dad. It was without doubt the highlight of having a massive oil leak in my car and getting picked up and taken home for Easter.

We listened to oldie the whole way back, and Dad was a bit said to realize that they were the songs he grew up with. I resisted making jokes about his pending 50th birthday. We rocked out, waited to long for coffee in the McDonald's drive-through, talked about beer, talked about the coming year and got a bit teary-eyed talking about the wedding. (Ok, I did. He will. You just wait.)

When Captain and Tennille came on, I imagined my family dancing at the wedding reception. I'm living for those moments now, when all of the build up turns into a day of happiness, a day where we can forget everything else– the money, the stress over invitations, the mess over inviting people.

There are days when the thought of leaving and not having my dad to drive me home or fix my car get overwhelming. I stop wanting to leave, start feeling like I can't. More frequently, I've been needing to remind myself that the drive back home with Dad felt so perfect because it doesn't happen very often, because it almost felt new and in that way reminded us how much we love each other.

So as the distance grows and shrinks and changes over the next year, just like C & T said, love will keep us together. I forget sometimes how lucky we are to live in this age, when being across the ocean is not only possible, but does not limit the ways that we can communicate.

The idea of distance have been playing with my mind a lot lately. France may be no different than living in Washington state, really... except for the cost of a ticket. But the e-mails will sound the same and the voice on the Skype line will sound the same and the coming home will feel the same.

Joe is attending AWP, a writing conference, in Denver this week. I had originally planned to join his carpool of University of Missouri students, then realized missing a week of school when I'm not even an creative writing student (yet?) was not my best decision.

Having him leave on Friday evening, pack and head even further West was strange. I know that it shouldn't be, that we'll talk on the phone just the same. I know that he's safe in a hotel with a thousand other writers. I know that we'll go together in other years, but they're something a bit uncomfortable about having him outside of my world. I can't picture Denver. I can't understand the mass of people at AWP. I don't know the people he's traveling with. I don't know if he's eating balance meals. He could be on the moon.

My family has been living with distance, a small one (1.5 hours), for four years. My new family, with Joe, has been living with a solid distance for two years. We're getting good at this. So if absence can make the heart grow fonder, then absence and nicely scheduled visits and good communication can make some really amazing memories and a new kind of family dependence.

Ballroom Blitz also played and we both about went crazy. Despite the dancing, we stayed on the road... but now this song keeps finding its way into my foot and making it bounce through class. I'd never heard it, and I worry that you haven't either.

one hundred ninety-five

What's making this work, what's really holding it together, are the snapshots, the candids, the annual pictures we know are only a few months away. Now that we can see it, the date written on a calendar of this current year, we can see what follows. So when I wake up and eat breakfast alone at my desk and think of him at the bookstore, saving those dollars for Euros to get us through those first days away, I know that it's all worth it, this time apart.

We have long since grown tired of people saying that absence makes the heart grow fonder. We are fonder, and each day when we say I love you we are fonder still. It is not the absence, but the knowledge that being able to stand this absence implies that eventually, it will not exist. So I'm focusing on the death of absence, on those first days of true marriage.

But this then becomes abstract, because our year-long honeymoon cannot be marked as our beginnings of real marriage. The surreality of being away and alone but not at all alone because for the first time we're truly together, without an end point, makes me push past this. This is my daydream, the snapshot I hold in my head, but what seems most real to me is that first apartment in the days after France, when we are in a university town, sharing a one-room apartment that we have painted with walls we have covered in our mismatch art and photos and cards and precariously hung shelves.

What I think about:

Photos taken from Design to Inspire & Design*Sponge