This is Us at 20 Years

This is us at the beginning: Sunday, July 27, 1997, Morris Chapel, Niles, Michigan

Today Babs and I celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary.  It doesn't feel "unbelievable".  It doesn't feel like a long time, or a short time. It just feels like life as we were meant to live it. Our shared journey feels timeless, like a classic song that never feels out of date.

This is us at 10 years: July 28, 2007, Waikiki Beach, Oahu, Hawaii

The past ten years have had a different tenor than the first ten.  It's hard to explain; obviously a lot changed since the last "big milestone" in our marriage.  It's no longer "just the two of us", we have a family now, two young boys we made together and who we now struggle together to raise right. Our life is less "big" now, the days of travel to exotic places, going and doing as we pleased (or at least as our budget allowed) have ended.  But it is a life fuller and richer than it was in the first decade.

But that's the funny thing about wealth; the more you gain, the more you stand to lose.  Within the last decade we've experienced the first of the close losses that inevitably will mount as the years ago by.  I've developed more of a sense of the fragility of "normal life", the reality of pain, and the remarkable beauty that can be found in sharing the struggle  and the joy with a life partner.

I can tell you that 20 years in, I still feel incredibly lucky.  I hear all the time that marriage is a miserable struggle sapped of joy, sex, and appreciation and yet I can't relate to any of that.  We've had our share of difficulties--there are underlying "issues" that we both have had since the say we said "I do" that still aren't resolved. And yet, there is this bedrock of mutual respect, appreciation, attraction, and friendship that holds steady and grows deeper as the years go by.

Twenty years ago I married the most beautiful girl in the world and my best friend. To me, she is still those things.

Herewith a recap:

Years 1-10 can be found here in this 2007 entry commemorating our first ten years.

Year 11:  The Babymoon
The first year of our second decade was our last without children.  That year was the year of the babymoon.  The first half dedicated to trying to make one; the second half devoted to getting ready for our child soon to come.  Looking back we should have probably been going out to dinner three times a week, relishing sleeping through the night and sleeping in, soaking in the pleasure of peace and quiet, knowing that the only demands made on us would be the mild ones of childless marriage. But, we worked, lived our lives oblivious to extent of the tremendous change bearing down on us.  We did make an effort at a last hurrah in the summer of 2008. For the first time in nine years we stayed in Saipan for the summer, as Babs was too pregnant to fly.  We took beach trips to Managaha, went to the Mandi (even stayed overnight at the Marianas Resort), took a dinner cruise.   It was a beautiful time, just the two of us, a time that by God's grace we will never return to.  We had been a couple for 11 years. Now we were about to be come a family.

Our 11th Anniversary, Sunday, July 27, 2008, Saipan, Northern Marianas Islands. The last anniversary dinner we had for which a sitter was not required.

Year 12: Parenthood
A month and four days into our twelfth year, our oldest son Elijah came into our world.  This was a year of massive change for us.  Between one anniversary and the next our family went from two to three, we moved to the other side of the world, and began a new chapter in our lives.  Most of the struggles of being new parents have receded into memory now. It was hard, I know but the difficulty is mostly forgotten.  All except those first three weeks after Elijah was born.  That time I still remember vividly. I don't think I've ever felt so much worry and love as I did as we felt the tremendous weight of keeping this little child of ours alive.  He had trouble breastfeeding at first and those weeks were a blur of sleeplessness, tears on all our parts, jury rigged feeding, anxious phone calls to lactation experts.  The unexpected blessing was the deep sense of connection I felt with my wife during that time.  We were in this together.  And it's still true.  The types of parenting struggles may have changed. We are still often short on sleep, there are still tears on all our part,s jury rigged parenting strategies made up on the fly, anxious google searches on what to do about the latest preposterous thing our children have perpetrated.  But, we're still in this together.

This is us on July 26, 2009, San Francisco, California. I had just completed the San Francisco Marathon. I spent the next day, our 12th anniversary taking the Praxis exam towards getting my  Ohio teaching certification.

Year 13: Here in America
We settled into ordinary life in suburban Ohio. For the first seven months of our new life, we lived with Barbara's parents in Dayton and I commuted daily to Columbus to work. Despite the three hour round-trip drive, this is one of my favorite times in our life.  When you live that far from where you work, when you leave work, you really leave. The Leens house felt like a cocoon, a comfortable oasis.  I loved driving into the garage and seeing Babs and Elijah waiting at the screen door to welcome me.  This was the one time in our lives as parents when we were able to have a weekly date night.  Every Saturday night we'd go to the movies. We'd go to the cheap theater and literally watch whatever was showing.    We analyzed the good ones and laughed about the bad ones.  It wasn't about the movie, it was about being together.

In February 2010 we moved into our apartment in New Albany, where we've lived since, and Barbara started working part-time at Stepping Stones pre-school, still spending most of each day with our young son.  We made a few trips in our thirteenth year of marriage, to Oregon for Thanksgiving 2009, to Florida in the summer of 2010. The biggest trip of all was a return trip to Saipan in the spring of 2010.  The trips were great, but the best part was that we took them together.

This is us after the Mat Kearney concert. Saturday, July 10, 2010, St. Alban's West Virginia

Year 14, 15:  The Quiet Years
These two years aren't particularly memorable and what a blessing! As I've gotten older, I've come to understand the wisdom of the old curse "May you live in interesting times."  The most compelling stories, the ones that we find most interesting often come with a heavy dose of pain.  These times were blissfully uninteresting. We finally brought our dog, Kimo, home from Saipan.  We left Elijah overnight for the first time in 2011, when I took Barbara to her first U2 concert in Chicago. We stayed the night at the Fairmont, the same hotel that we'd spent the first two nights of our honeymoon in 14 years earlier. We traveled to Oregon several more times, the last trip, in the summer of 2012.  By that time Barbara was pregnant with our second son.  Our lives were about to shift again, our hearts to enlarge again.

This is us at the Fairmont in downtown Chicago a few weeks before our 14th wedding anniversary.  This was the same hotel we spent the first two nights of our honeymoon. July 5, 2011, Chicago, Illinois

At a baby shower thrown by my mom and sister.  July 11, 2012, Apopka, Florida.

Year 16:  Family Focus
At the start of our 16th year of marriage, we made a big decision.  Babs decided she wanted to further reduce her half-time work schedule so that she could spend the majority of her time with our boys.  So in August 2012, she quit her job at Stepping Stones, brought Elijah home from daily daycare, and focused on being a full-time mom (save a day and half a week teaching art).  I gladly shouldered extra jobs at Kroger, tutoring, and running a morning latchkey program.  In November, our second son Ezra joined our family and we once again embarked on the adventure of parenting an infant (this time with a four year old in tow!).  This year our focus was all on the family .  Babs focused on being with our kids, and I focused on providing for them.  It wasn't always easy, but I never regretted it for a moment.  Every time, I was working a shift at Kroger or grading papers at school, and  Babs would text me a photo of some fun thing she and the boys were doing, it brought me such joy. Those photos made all the extra work more than worth it.

This is us in July a week or two before our  17th anniversary, July 2013. Anna Maria Island, Florida.

Year 17:  Precious Moments
In hindsight our seventeenth year was filled with precious moments, times we didn't realize were passing for the final time.  Babs was able to spend a lot of time with her parents, partly because I traveled a lot that year.  We took one epic trip together as a family, a return trip to Saipan where I was the week of prayer speaker, but beyond that I had several long trips.  There was my annual three or four day teachers retreat in August 2013 but also a class trip to Hawaii in 2014 and a week long trip to California for a conference in June 2014.  During these trips, Babs would take the boys and go stay with her parents.  I missed her a lot on those trips, wished she could have been with me, but in hindsight I'm glad that my absence gave her more time to spend with her dad.  The summer of 2014 was a truly precious moment of father-daughter time for them, and giving her that time (even it was by  my absence) is a gift I'm so glad I could give.

This is us July 27, 2014, our 17th anniversary.  We celebrated with a simple dinner and a movie I think near Universal Studios? Or was it Disney?  Orlando, Florida.

Year 18:  Loss
Our 18th year together was marked by loss.  On November 5th 2014, my grandmother died and I rushed to Florida to mourn with my family.  Exactly three weeks later, the day before Thanksgiving, we got the phone call no one ever wants to get.  Barbara's father had died unexpectedly.  And so began a new and painful journey as my wife entered into the Great Sadness, the deepest loss of her life. In the weeks and month after Dad passed, I felt so separate from her.  In days around his funeral, I was literally in another car as we went from funeral home to church to house to cemetery.  Babs rode with her sister and her mother and her sister's husband in one car while I followed in our car with the boys.  But it was fine. She needed to be with her first family then, and I was honored to step up with the boys, do what I could to give her space to grieve.  It's one of the things they don't tell you about marriage: that sometimes being there for your spouse means letting her be away for a bit.

In time, our connection reappeared and in the first half of 2015 we contemplated together what our shared world would like now that Dad was no longer in it.

This is us celebrating our 18th anniversary, July 27, 2015.  We enjoyed wandering around old Winter Garden and had a nice dinner.  Winter Garden, Florida.

Year 19: Double Income
In our 19th year, losing Dad continued to shape our life together in new ways.  We realized that the time had come for us to gain a stronger financial footing.  We felt keenly the need to be able to provide for our remaining parents should the need arise.  After years of letting the folks help us out when an emergency struck, it was time to position ourselves to be the helpers instead.  So as Elijah began first grade, Ezra started pre-school, and Barbara went back to full-time teaching.  In short order we doubled our income, but seemingly halved our time.  Both of us were now full-time workers and full time parents. It's been no easy task.  But like everything else in our lives, it's been nice to do it together.

In October of 2015, we went back to Berrien Springs, Michigan to commemorate the 20th anniversary of when we first met.  This is the approximate location of our first kiss. Back then this grassy lawn was the site of Barbara's apartment. I kissed her on her couch in her living room.

This is us about a week before our 19th anniversary. July, 2016. Ocoee, Florida

Year 20:  This is Us
And so here we are.  Twenty years in.  This is us: Shaped by grief and gratitude.  Worn in (and often worn out) by parenting.  Our marriage isn't perfect, but let me tell you, it's still pretty darn amazing that I get to wake up with this beautiful woman, this gorgeous soul, this dearest of friends, every morning and go to sleep next to her every night.  I love sharing life with her, even with all it' heartache and frustration and worry.  She makes the good times better and the tough times easier to bear.  These days I tend not to look forward so much as I simply try to be present more, to try to enjoy each moment with the love of my life.

Happy Anniversary, love.  I love you!

Cousins: Finding My Family

A bunch of cousins from two different generations.  The Benson-Maycock family reunion, July 2, 2017. In orange from left to right, Autumn Poole standing next to her husband my cousin Andy, cousin Lena who did an outstanding job organizing the reunion, cousin Denny and his girlfriend Michelle, Andy's son AJ, cousin Jason, and a family friend whose name escapes me.  The children are Denny's two and Elijah.

Cousins are a wonderful thing.  At least in my family.

As a kid our cousins were a highlight in our lives.  Close at hand were our cousins Nicole and Landon.  We saw them almost every day and, even though they were both significantly younger, just having them around made everything more fun.  And then there were the highly anticipated visits of our cousins from Michigan--Nabih, William, and Yvette Saliba.  They came down from the North once or twice a year, every year at Christmas and sometimes in the summer too.  Nabih is three years older than me and for a kid that felt like a decade older.  The difference between say a 12 and a 15 year old was huge.  But he deigned to hang out with us from time to time and it was always great.  William is only two months older than me and he was Vince and I's partner in crime.  Whether it was daring each other to jump off the roof of his house in Michigan, trading Transformers, or playing "Sneak" at night where we'd try to creep out of our room and spy on the grown-ups without getting caught, we always had the most fun.  As for Yvette, we didn't pay much attention to her as she was five years younger than me (and a girl, to boot), but I know she and my sister were grateful for the annual camaraderie of being the little to sisters to boorish older brothers.

And now my own children are the latter day Salibas coming down from the North once or twice a year to spend time with my sister's kids in their Florida paradise.  Those visits are the highlights of my kids year, and I wager the same is true of their cousins.

Cousins. You just can't beat em.

But here's the thing. . .I have a whole lot more cousins than I've truly realized until recently.  You see, I've never known my father's side of the family very well.  My parents got divorced when I was seven, and we moved first to the U.S. Virgin Islands and then to Florida, on the other side of the country from where my father lived.  I saw Papa, I think twice during my post-divorce childhood.  Once, in 1984 and again in 1989.  As for his family--my aunts, uncles, cousins, as well as my grandparents, I saw even less of them.  And I'll be honest here: I was really okay with that. I had no ill will towards any of them. I just didn't know them.  God bless them--they did make efforts; efforts I can only now begin to appreciate but that I often found baffling at the time. I remember Aunt Adrienne coming up from West Palm Beach to visit us in Orlando when she lived there.  I'm sure cousin Lena was with her, but truthfully, I can't really remember.  My grandmother always remembered my birthday and sent a card with a few dollars in it every year without fail.

When I was in college my brother and Vince and I made a pilgrimage up to Ionia, Michigan to see my grandparents and the stories of that visit--stories of my grandfather's wild but true stories and the story of my unfortunate decision to bring a novel along for the trip--are the stuff of legend. (Old-School Adventist Maycocks are very anti-fiction, as I learned ad nauseum on that visit!)  Barbara and I visited again a few years later and there were other family members there too, but I can't remember who.  And when we got married Uncle Antoine brought my grandmother and my two cousins Adam and Jason up for the ceremony.  There were other occasions where various Maycock's reached across the gap created by divorce and distance but I always found it hard to understand.  Why do they bother, I would wonder.  Why would they care who I am? They don't know me.  I was a little embarrassed that I got the relatives confused, that I wouldn't recognize  most of them on sight, that I didn't know their names.  Surely they must find my ignorance irritating. The concept of reaching out simply because we were family. . .I just didn't get it.

In the end , it was the cousins that brought me around and helped me find a great blessing in my life: my family.

Jason and Adam were relentlessly friendly.  My polite but non-committal responses to their overtures never seemed to faze them.  Karnice, Melanie, Jacqueline, Joe all friended me on Facebook and I dutifully accepted their friendship. Melanie even donated the final $300 one of my students needed to be able to go on his 8th grade class trip!  My cousin Denny (who goes by Dee on Facebook) I connected with in particular. I'm not sure why--maybe that like me he'd lived outside the U.S. mainland for years.  Something about these cousins of mine, somehow clicked for me.  Maybe it was feeling that they weren't so bound up in the austere version of Adventist Christianity that my father's generation represented to me.  I don't know.  What I do know is that in the end, my cousins were may way back in to the family I'd never really known.

This journey back to the Maycocks culminated in our decision to attend the Benson-Maycock family reunion and celebration of my grandmother's 100th birthday at the end of June.  The entire weekend was such a blessing and I'm so glad I attended.  You know that line from the Cheers theme: "where everybody knows your name and they're always glad you came."  It was like that.

With Grandmother

I was genuinely touched by the welcoming warmth we experienced from everyone all weekend long.  It began the moment we pulled up at my cousin Lena's house Friday night, where I was welcomed by one familiar face--Papa's--and many more long-lost kin that would soon become familiar by the weekend's end.  True, I often found myself referring to the family tree in our reunion booklet to figure out who various awesome people were that I'd been chatting with, but I still felt like I knew my family whole lot better by the time we headed for home early Monday morning.

Me and Papa

I spent a lot of time talking with my father of course, but in addition many of my favorite memories of that weekend revolved around--you guessed it...my cousins--first cousins of course but also the grandchildren of my grandfather's seven siblings.  One Sabbath morning we ate the complimentary hotel breakfast in the downstairs common area and noticed a couple of vaguely familiar looking faces.  It turned out to be my cousin Jennifer (my great-uncle Harold's granddaughter) and her family.  Her son Josh would be the first of several fast friends Elijah would make over the weekend.  Then walking back to my hotel room after the family had gone up, I heard the exited voices of children emanating from our end of the hall.  I groaned inwardly that my boys were likely getting loud and disturbing the other guests.  Imagine my relief (that it wasn't my wild ones for once) and pleasant surprise that my cousin Denny had the room right next door to ours.  Elijah and Ezra would quickly bond with his two children and they were practically inseparable the rest of the weekend.  The boys--especially Elijah--were in heaven all weekend.  I think they were amazed that so many people were their family.  Elijah went around with a notebook throughout the weekend asking people to write their names, addresses, and phone numbers. And it touched my heart to hear him address my father as "Grandpa" without a second thought.

Elijah with cousins Josh and Ras on Sabbath

Elijah with his cousins on Sunday.  He had such a blast!

Other great memories included, chatting with cousin Melanie before the Sabbath afternoon potluck, sharing a lane with my cousin Adam, his wife Khadja and their little girls at the reunion bowling event Saturday night; hanging out in the hotel lobby post-bowling talking with cousins Joe, Andy, Denny, Tim, and others until two in the  morning; talking to Jason and Tiffany and Ethan at the reunion BBQ on Sunday.

We had originally planned to leave sometime Sunday afternoon and get back to Ohio late Sunday night.  But I was exhausted from staying up late Saturday night and I dreaded the thought of the long drive on so little sleep.  Plus the party was still going strong and I found I wasn't really ready to leave just yet.  But we only had the hotel for two nights and I didn't have the budget to extend for a third night. But before I could even ask, Tim Byrd (grandson of my great-aunt Mary)--as soon as he heard me say we'd be leaving Sunday afternoon-- was already offering. .. nay insisting that we stay at his mom Lolita's condo right around the corner.  We took him up on his and his mother's offer and headed their way after the BBQ wrapped up.  The boys swam in the pool, Babs took a nap, and I spent time getting to know still more family.  It was a little surreal to be meeting all these great new people--nice folks, you know and then have the realization hit you that these weren't just nice folks--these fast friends were my family, my actual flesh and blood relatives!

Cousin Tim and his wife at the Sabbath afternoon potluck, July 1, 2017

The weekend wrapped up on a high note, a joyful celebration at my Uncle Antoine and Aunt Connie's place on Sunday night. I talked to Papa for hours while the kids ran under the stars and cousin Jason's fireworks display.  It was perfect.  An evening of conversation, laughter, and good feeling among friends who had I had finally come to appreciate as family.

Aunt Connie and Uncle Antoine, my father's younger brother

At Aunt Connie and Uncle Antione's house, Sunday night, July 2, 2017

Our family is just like any family.  There's a dark side too.  Terrible tragedies, divorces, family drama.  Like most families there is a legacy of pain.  I know how that legacy touches me personally, but I'm sure there is much I don't know.  But that's okay.  I'm still grateful to have the chance even this late in life to get to know the Maycock side of my family.  I was blessed by the welcoming heart of every person I met all the way from Grandmother and Aunt Audrey  (who at 98 is the last surviving sibling of my grandfather and thus is the oldest living Maycock) down to the new batch of cousins my boys befriended.  I am grateful.

Cousins: My father's genreation

Cousins: My son's generation