Peter and I have a weekly ritual. It usually occurs on
Thursday nights, when my mom comes to visit her grandchildren and we have a
free babysitter. But it started even before we had kids, when we moved into a
dorm with thirty boys and realized that we had to get away from the incessant
knocks on the door and phone calls and so forth. We go out to dinner and talk. It
is a refuge, a sacred time, a time, in Peter’s words, where it feels like we
can accomplish anything.

We have another weekly ritual. At least, it’s supposed to
happen weekly, on Tuesday nights. We call it a family meeting. I keep a running
list of all the stuff we need to talk about–scheduling, tasks, refinancing our
house, signing Penny up for swimming lessons, replacing the plywood kitchen
table with one made out of wood, signing up for electronic billing. It was
designed to help us. Rather than spending dinner conversation on tasks and
requests, rather than me feeling like a nag every time I ask about a project,
we have a set time to discuss all that stuff that keeps a household going. And
yet, family meeting time is a time when the world comes crashing down upon us,
when the tension builds with every item on the list, a time, in Peter’s words,
where it feels like we can accomplish nothing.

On date nights, time stands still. On family meeting nights,
there is never enough time.

I keep hoping there’s a way to change it. Abandon family
meetings and pretend the porch doesn’t need sweeping, the kids don’t need
doctor appointments, we don’t need to buy a minivan.  Or somehow come up with the money to hire someone to deal
with it all. Or somehow become more gracious with each other, or devote more
time throughout the week to household responsibilities, or let go of some
unnecessary image of our lives.

But at the end of the day, perhaps this is what marriage is
all about. Soaring and sinking. Together. Slogging through bills and weariness
and grocery lists and then getting to talk about politics and literature and
fears for the future and hopes for our children. Having a weekly reminder of
our very real and human limitations, and a weekly experience of possibility.