Billy Joel once sang: “Don’t go changing” and “I love you just the way you are.” Who ARE we kidding? We chose our partners in business and life because we DO want to change them and do we really love them just the way they are?
My criteria for dating after my divorce was simple: a woman who accepted the fact I had a child, was on a career path and looked great in a mini skirt-all reasonable in the litmus test of love. Two out of the three are mature. Hopes’ were a bit less discriminating. Hers was: what are your goals in life, what keeps you awake at night, and do you think disco will live forever?
Ok. Neither of us was perfect and to think maybe, Hope fell in love with me because I worked at a cool job, had all my hair, a fancy NYC duplex, and gave her wonderful (and romantic) gifts.
This was the perfect combination: steak and sizzle, her being the obvious heat, and substance, me being the obvious oily one, cooking in the pan. And from the day we met in 1990, we have each spent the last 32 years trying to bring the other around to our way of thinking.
In fact, when she buys clay pots and furniture, she brings them home only to faux paint them to the style she likes. My question is “Why buy it in the first place?”
Hope is an accomplished former long-distance marathon runner (3:29:44!), now an avid hiker, and Peletonite. To me that is exercise and I hate exercise. But golf? That’s fun without the sweat. Hope will often say: “you don’t want to go hike with me, do you?” I always say: “if you already know the answer, why ask the question?”
Hope likes hotels that have five stars for ambiance and zero stars for cuisine. I’m just the opposite. I like a dump in the worst part of town with a meal to be remembered for eternity. i like to cook amazing dinners but when I’m out or out of town, she’s content with a bowl of popcorn and a case..uh I mean a bottle.. of a fine chardonnay. She thinks it’s more important to look good than to feel good and with myself one year away from 70, I am listening very intently to her arguments.
I look at glasses as half-full. She looks at the glasses and says “you know these glasses are so last year and don’t match anything we have. It’s time we bought some new ones.”
And somehow, over the years, we have each given up some ground but have not abandoned our positions. I now love shopping for clothes for myself. There was a time decades ago, that I didn’t know an Oscar de la Renta from an Oscar de la Hoya but now I can tell a Zegna from a Zorro, a Joseph Abboud from a Bud Abbott, a Robert Graham from a Billy Graham, and a Jhane Barnes from a Barnaby Jones.
And as far as Hope goes, she now appreciates I can do things around the house without calling down to the super..which we left 30 years ago in New York. She has also learned that there were indeed six Three Stooges, Moe, Larry, Curly, Shemp, Curly Joe, and Joe DeRita but still thinks musicals are not real, people don’t break into song while walking down the street, and that the quickest way to a man’s heart is through his chest.
While we hold our ground, she does sometimes surprise me and..ahem, change my way of thinking. I affectionately call her Hurricane Hope, altering everything in her path from its often-staid environment. But I realize it sometimes takes a hurricane to change your life, shake your foundation, and challenge everything you thought was right but, while not being wrong, may have needed to be shaken up. Hope is that hurricane and my life has been torn loose from its moorings ever since, on a new kind of journey, all positive at the end of the day. But I’ll never give her the satisfaction of hearing me say it!
That was funny and beautiful! What a great life partnership you have! You are both good people and deserve all good things, especially the special love you have for each other!
Thank you. It was a joy, and lots of fun writing it