Chapter 5: Onions, Singin' Screamin and Cabbage Patch kids

It's funny to see what makes people tick. My sister Corrie? She's definitely a gloriously whimsical individual. She thrives off of anything musical. Well, really my whole family is that way. I'm not sure what makes us so obssessive about it. But Corrie now, she's the one that might have a cardiac arrest if there isn't music in her head. We drove together a lot last week when she was visiting Dallas. She's notoriously a spacy driver, tending to cut people off unintentionally and then wave real friendly-like. She knows they're probably muttering cusswords under their breath, but she has so many other ideas and inventions rattling in her brain that she doesn't pay attention to a random driver. Meanwhile, I'm sinking as low as possible in my seat, hoping no one recognizes me. Put her in a city where she has no idea where she's going, and add me, the sister who gives worse directions, and you have a little bit of Disney's "Herbie" on wheels. I'd never noticed before this last visit, but when she makes a particularly harrowing turn, she tends to SING her "Ahhh!" The first time I heard it, I couldn't believe it.

"You just sang."
"What?"
"You just sang your scream."
"Oh that. I always do that. It's just IN me."
"No, but Corrie, you SANG. No one sings when they're yelping in surprise."
"What can I say, I'm a musician."

So she said... as if this explains everything. She is probably the one person in the world who doesn't get embarassed when you tell her she has food in her teeth. She gets mad. It's as if you hit a switch that turns her from a "whatever goes" mentality to "YOU'RE CENSORING ME!" mentality. Her reaction is volatile at best and nuclear towards the bad end of things. Let's just say I take a whole lotta blame that is only half my due.

For Corrie, there's nothin worse than censoring. She'd rather be poor in a dirt hut with haggis for every meal than be censored. Corrie's the sister who lived in Russia. I used to say Russia gave her the beatnik qualities that make her Corrie. But now I know these colorful patches of her identity were all just a little dormant...Russia just bombed her deep waters and they all came to the surface. It was pretty crazy to watch. She went to Russia as a little classical music lover, full of depth and quirkiness but firmly ensconced in propriety. She came back like a hippy Medusa, ready to embalm you in death-beckoning insults if you were to question some of her more odd qualities.

Now put her in a kayak with nature or on a sweaty, blisteringly heated hike, and well, she starts vomiting pithy bits of wicked-awesome wisdom like they are simply fruit loops she had for breakfast. Or put her in an art museum or some place that has contact with any kind of art form, and she flows with that happy energy that comes from being in love. The switch is kinda' ridiculous: From singin' screamin' to trigger-happy sensor-hating to intoxicating-yoda embodiment of all that is good and pure and holy. I sometimes get whiplash. At one moment she's my trigger-happy, bossy older sister and the next she's my good-vibes flowing favorite person in the world. I don't think she's like that with other people. Just her younger, push-her-buttons sister.

I once dated a fella with trigger points just as severe.

I would say, "I'm thinking kids in a coupla' years AFTER I get married. I want to smell like my favorite perfume during our first coupla' years of honeymoon, not my spawn's vomit. Plus, there's really a whole lotta' stress that comes from having a little human as your responsibility."

Josh would say, "I think Scripture is clear that we are supposed to
bear fruit and multiply. Multiply. Part of being married is having kids."

"That doesn't necessarily we have to multiply NOW. Couldn't we wait
for a coupla' years? Get our feet underneath us, a rhythm to our
marriage? I mean, just two years ago I was saying I hated kids...I
can't imagine birthing one quite so soon."

"I'm just saying, when I marry, Lord willing we're going to have kids right away. It's Scriptural."

And so the conversation always ended. There's no arguing with people who won't budge. And whenever this topic was brought up, sullen silence ensued. We both knew we were RIGHT. And we both knew the other was WRONG. Weird how you can be right when someone else's right is so the opposite.

In the end, we just wanted different things from life. Josh wanted to have kids and live in Pleasantville the rest of his life. I wanted to travel the world and live in a tour bus with my kids. He wanted to live near his family. I wanted to live as far away as possible. Compromise wasn't an issue on the front end - but it catalyzed THE issue at the very end.

When I was six, I loved my Cabbage Patch doll fiercely. Then when I was seven, Dad made me get rid of her because of some scare about the word Xavier being on her bottom. Folks were saying they were used by Satan to get into our homes. I thought that was the stupidest grown-up thing I'd ever heard. I mean, a doll was a tool of Satan? Seriously? Especially my beloved red-yarn-haired Patty? No way. Adults were weird. Sometimes, I'd be minding my own business, playing, and my younger sister, Betsie, would get an itching to play with my dolls. Something about the fun I was having made her want to play. Mom would come downstairs after my sister complained that I wasn't letting her play with MY dolls. I'd get "five more minutes" to play and then have to turn it over to my sister. Sucked. For her and for me. Bets would watch in agony while I savored the last five minutes of play. Then I had to sit in skin-itching rage and watch her play (with far less excitement) with MY dolls. She didn't even like playing with dolls! Oooo...I hated it. At the end of our time, neither one of us felt satisfied. Rather, I was just on edge with that particular sister for the rest of the day. Drove me nuts.


Compromise. A gift. Impossible. Infuriating. Beautiful. At whatever age. Whether it's debating who gets to play with the doll or who gets to have kids when they want them, compromise is about giving parts of yourself away. It's kinda' like the green technicolor Shrek likes to say, "People are like onions with all sorts of layers." If the compromise is about something on one of the more surface layers, no biggie, it's easily attainable - "Oh honey, let's do Chinese food tonight, we did Mexican yesterday." It doesn't require a whole lotta' "give" on either person's side. The surface layers of people are easily compromised, especially if they learned to share when they were younger! And it's even a joy to compromise when you love someone. It means you get to give something to the person you love. It's really a beautiful thing.

But at other times, when it comes to a deeper layer of your onion, compromise asks you to alienate your very DNA, abandoning your created being for another's dream - "Of course I'll wait to have kids. Even though it's my biblical conviction, I really love you. I'll wait as long as you say."

I'm really not bitter. I just look back and realize, we were oh-so-very-different at our core. Josh's and my views on childbearing were stamped on our souls...or washed on our brain. Asking Josh to change would be like asking Corrie to quit singing...to start caring about lettuce on her teeth at every moment...to never kayak again. All these things are part of her genetic makeup. Whether it's tabula rosa (she was raised to be this way) or it's innate, I don't know. But I do know that I adore Corrie the way she is now. Asking her to be different than she is would make her less "Corrie," less wonderfully colorful; Less alive. The same is true for Josh. And the same is true for me. At the end of the day he and I realized we would never work, no matter how much love we had for each other.

For us, it was much more than a give-n-take in sharing toys. It was even more than a little personality clash. Josh and I were onions with opposite cores. We were each created for someone else. We were not going to work.

p.s. Please let me know what you think! I'm working on putting together a book about relationships...I'd LOVE your input! OR even your frustrations with relationships! Might be fodder for book material! :)