Sweat rolled down his face as he clenched his teeth in vexation. His left knee balanced him, his right foot extended in front as his fingers tangled. "Good enough," he ground out as his laces already began to loosen. "One more time," I said, as though instructing a student one time more through his scales. "Put your foot in the same direction as mine. There you go. Now pull your laces tight. Cross them like this. Now loop the right lace while holding the left tight…" As the laces dissolved once again, my husband got up and stalked off in frustration.
We are very different people. My husband was born in India, raised in Thailand and educated in America. He grew up with the unconditional love of a mother who would do anything to make his life easier, a woman who, without a murmur of complaint, sacrificed her entire life to the care of her family. My husband’s father worked endlessly to ensure that my husband and his sister could pursue higher education anywhere in the world. And so, my husband found his way to Chicago. He can’t change lightbulbs, he is useless in the kitchen, he is not one for hanging pictures or painting walls, and he has trouble with shoelaces. But if one has a physical injury, he is the man to help. (though he may later imagine himself to have the same injury..)
I grew up in a small cornfield town outside of Chicago. My father has yet to tell his other daughters that I exist and my mother believed in the school of hard knocks. So if there was something that I needed or wanted, I had to build it, cook it, create it, imagine it. I had incredible role models in my foster parents and friends families, but my reality resided in the abilities of my own two hands.
After four years of marriage, my husband and I realized that we were not partners. We had not combined strengths but rather pulled at each other with weaknesses. I lacked respect for him and his ease of life while he despised my impatience and my inability to bend. We had come together with wildly different expectations of what our marriage was to be. He waited for me to work less, care more for him and the house, and I waited for him to embrace adventure, to occasionally run away with me to foreign lands. He obsessed over saving for retirement while I obsessed over spending less money so that we would have more freedom. Neither of us won and our marriage became merely a passing of days. I went off on adventures alone, while he lamented his longing for a traditional wife.
We reached a point where we realized that we needed a common goal. He wanted time with me and I wanted to show him the intoxication of this beautiful world. And so, we sat with maps and books and together we chose our path to Santiago. In three days, I begin walking from Irun Spain and he will join me in Oviedo. Together we will refrain from pushing the other off a mountain, or tripping each other up in streams. I will warn the other pilgrims in hostels of his freakish snoring and he will warn them of my inherent pissiness. Together we will sweat, swear, swim, eat, wash clothes, taste new wine, and reach the end of the world. Together.
After drinking an angry glass of water, my husband returned to one knee, his shoe extended, his fingers tangled in the knot of laces. As he looped one lace and wrapped the other, I knew that even as they fell apart, he would try again…
This summer, my husband and I will be walking countless steps on the Camino de Santiago in order to learn how to come together from vastly different backgrounds, to form a partnership. As we walk, we will be raising funds to help enable other young women to learn, to grow, and to revel in their own beautiful power.
"GirlForward empowers refugee girls because through girls, we can strengthen entire communities. GirlForward serves refugee girls ages 12-21 who have been resettled in Chicago from war-torn countries around the world, and who are now building new lives for themselves and their families in the United States." http://www.girlforward.org
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