Thank God for School

By James M. Lang

When I was a graduate student, I worked part time at a used bookstore on the north side of Chicago. A married couple owned the store, and the two of them worked together every day from before the store's opening at noon until 5 p.m., when they handed the reins over to the part-time staff. Then the owners went home.

I used to wonder how they did it. If my wife and I had to spend that much time together, I remember thinking, we'd kill each other by the end of the first month.

Even though my wife was an elementary-school teacher and I was in graduate school then, we never approached that level of togetherness time, even during the summer. I was studying for exams or working on my dissertation -- both solitary pursuits, with no real break for summer -- and we were poor enough that my wife, Anne, had to take on a second job during her summer vacation.

Eight years later, Anne still teaches elementary school full time. We no longer need her to work that second job, even though we are now supporting three children. I have a tenure-track job that makes me very happy, and I have vowed never to teach or advise during the summer, devoting all my free time to my writing instead.

In these changed circumstances, I can now say with complete confidence that my wife and I have learned to spend not just one, but three whole months out of the year together without killing each other.

But just barely.

With two summers of full-time togetherness now nearly packed away under our belts, I have come to see the summer as a deep valley, one covered with grassy meadows and spotted with beautiful wildflowers. As we stand on the edge of it, gazing down after a long year of teaching, it looks so enticing. We could skip through those daisies for the rest of our lives.

So we race down the slope, holding hands and picking flowers, happy in our love and our leisure. At the bottom, strolling through the heart of the valley, we realize that it's pretty much grass and flowers all the way across; at that point we also notice the mosquitoes. Then we have to start trudging up the other side. We're hot, tired, irritated, and snapping at one another -- whose idea was it to run down the stupid hill in the first place?

And so it goes with our summers. When Anne's school lets out in June -- usually a few weeks or so after I am finished for the spring semester -- we spend a couple of weeks just enjoying it. The kids play in the back yard, we sit on the porch and drink lemonade, and lie on the couch at night watching reruns of all the Law and Order episodes we missed during the year.

Eventually I try to establish a working schedule, carving four hours out of each weekday to write. Our plans and routines don't always stick, of course. This summer we declared Friday beach day. We also had a new infant to take care of, so we both spent less time on our separate pursuits than usual. Still, we had fun.

Until about mid-July. At some point during the third week of July -- I'm still trying to nail down the precise number of days into summer vacation that the worm begins to turn -- things start to break down a bit. Those little habits that annoy you about your spouse suddenly loom larger than they do during the school year, since you are confronted with them more frequently.

I mean, she's the only one who uses the ice, right, so shouldn't she be the one to fill the trays? I am perfectly happy to drink refrigerator-cold water, but she needs to add ice to her already-cold beverages, which I find endlessly annoying. And then, when I happen to want ice for something, which happens about once a week, the trays are all empty.

Of course the empty bottles from the beer I drank last Thursday have been sitting behind the television on the kitchen counter for five days, waiting patiently for me to take them downstairs to the recycling bin. And I go down the basement steps only like a thousand times a day.

At this point in our summer time together, two important things usually happen, both of which are essential to the survival of our marriage.

First, we usually take a vacation or two. Last summer we road-tripped throughout the Midwest for three weeks; this summer we spent a week in Cape Cod, and another week in the Adirondack Mountains, followed by a trip to St. Louis for a wedding. These vacations always involve traveling or gathering with other members of our immediate families, who create buffer spaces between us. We also have to direct more energy toward managing our children through car trips, hotels, and various vacation activities, so we have less energy to direct into arguing with each other.

Second, we really begin looking forward to the start of the school year.

I mean really look forward to it.

By the time the second or third week of August rolls around, we are more than ready to be back in our classrooms, back among our professional colleagues, back away from each other and our children for a reasonable amount of time every day. And as absence makes the heart grow fonder, slowly we return to that level of loving companionship that characterizes the best moments of our marriage.

Before I finish this article, I know that I have to acknowledge that my wife and I should consider ourselves blessed to have this time to spend with each other, and with our children, for three months out of every year. If I don't make this acknowledgment, I will receive many e-mails from people who don't share this privilege, telling me to stop complaining and appreciate my good fortune.

And I do appreciate my good fortune. Really. We both do. But, you see, it's a hot August day as I write this, and I just went looking for some ice cubes for my lemonade. And there were none in the tray, as usual.

And I have just one thing to say about that.

Thank God for school.