Latest / My Playful Wife — A Tender Literary Love Story / My Playful Wife — Season 1, Episode 40: The Long Middle

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My Playful Wife — Season 1, Episode 40: The Long Middle · My Playful Wife — A Tender Literary Love Story

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Tired. I said. The only word. MM, she said. The
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only word back. And we left it there, the whole
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conversation, complete, because in the long middle
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of a marriage, the words get shorter and shorter,
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as the understanding gets longer and longer,
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until eventually... My Playful Wife. Episode
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40. The Long Middle. Written by Mia. With the
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color found, the work entered the part nobody
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ever describes, the part that is most of the
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work and most of everything, the long middle.
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There is no chapter written about the middle.
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Stories do not tell it. A story gives you the
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beginning, the meeting, the spark, the color
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found, the call to adventure. And then it gives
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you the end, the wedding, the show, the triumph,
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the death. And between them, it draws a discrete
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line, a chapter break, a few words like, and
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then for three months she worked and skips the
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three months entirely because the three months
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are not a story. Nothing happens in them. They
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are repetition. They are the same task done 400
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times with small variations. They are Saloni
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at the cutting table at the same hour every morning,
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turning the gray -green into garments one slow
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stitch at a time. And they are me at the kitchen
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table with the fifth notebook. And they are the
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dishes and the chai and the ordinary unremarkable
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days laid end -to -end with no drama in any of
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them. And they are, I have come to understand,
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the actual substance of a life. The part the
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story skips because the story has no use for
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it, which is precisely why the story is a liar.
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I do not blame the stories, exactly. The middle
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is genuinely hard to make into narrative. It
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resists the shapes we use to hold experience,
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having no arc, no turning point, no single scene
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that can stand in for the rest. But the cost
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of the omission is enormous, because we learn
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what life is supposed to feel like from the stories,
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and the stories have quietly taught us that the
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middle does not count, that it is the boring,
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connective tissue between the parts that matter.
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And so we treat the largest part of our own lives
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as a waiting room, a thing to be got through
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on the way to the next event, and we are forever
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somewhere else, leaning toward the next beginning
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or the next ending, absent from the enormous.
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middle where we actually almost entirely live.
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Because here is the arithmetic nobody does, and
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it changed how I see everything once I finally
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did it. A marriage, if you are lucky, is perhaps
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50 years long. The beginning, the falling in
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love, the courtship, the wedding, the part every
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film and song is about, is maybe two of those
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years. The end, whatever form it takes, is mercifully
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brief. And the middle is everything else. The
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middle is 45 years. The middle is 90 % of the
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whole thing. And it is the part no one prepares
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you for, no one celebrates, no one writes the
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songs about, because it cannot be made into a
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story. It is too long, too slow, too undramatic,
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too made of Tuesdays. We are sold the beginning
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and warned about the end and left entirely on
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our own for the vast middle that is the actual
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marriage, and then we are surprised. We are scandalized.
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When the beginning's fireworks fade, and we find
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ourselves in the long, quiet middle with a person
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we have stopped being able to see, and we think
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something has gone wrong, when in fact nothing
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has gone wrong at all, we have simply arrived
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in the main body of the thing, the 45 years,
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the part the songs lied to us by. omission about.
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And the cruelest part is the timing of the disappointment.
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It comes, almost always, just when a person should
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be settling into the deepest happiness available
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to them. A few years in, the fireworks spent,
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the real long marriage finally beginning. And
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instead of recognizing the quiet that follows
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the fireworks as the arrival of the main thing,
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they read it as a loss, a fading. a sign that
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the love itself is dying, and some of them panic
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and burn the whole thing down looking for a new
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beginning, never understanding that they were
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not at an ending at, all but on the threshold
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of the part that was supposed to last. I nearly
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did this myself, in a quieter way, not by fleeing
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the middle but by simply going to sleep inside
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it. The sleep and the flight are the same mistake.
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They are both ways of refusing the middle. And
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the whole project of the awake years, I understood
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this, watching Celonie work the long middle of
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her collection, is the project of learning to
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stay awake in the middle. That is all it is in
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the end. Anyone can be present for a beginning.
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Novelty does the work for you. The new thing
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holds your eyes open by force. Anyone can rise
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to an ending. The drama of a climax conscripts
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your attention. The entire difficulty, The whole
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of the discipline, the only thing that actually
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separates a life inhabited from a life slept
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through, is whether you can stay awake through
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the long, undramatic middle, the 90%, the part
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with no novelty and no climax to do your waking
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for you, the Tuesdays, the repetition, the duration.
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Because duration is the great anesthetic. It
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is not catastrophe that puts a marriage to sleep.
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It is the 45 years of Tuesdays, the sheer accumulated
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weight of the familiar, the slow erosion of attention
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by repetition, until one day you look up and
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realize you have been asleep at your own table
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for a decade and the unmapped country across
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from you has gone entirely unmapped again, not
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through any disaster, just through the quiet,
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relentless sanding down of the looking by time.
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This is the danger the fifth notebook exists
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to guard against, and it is so much harder to
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guard against than the dramatic dangers were,
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because it has no edge, no moment, no event you
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can point at and resist. The crises of the bad
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year at least gave me something to push against.
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You know when you are in a crisis, and the knowing
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keeps you sharp. The erosion of the middle gives
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you nothing to push against. It is not an event.
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It is the absence of events accumulating, and
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you cannot brace yourself against an absence.
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You can only, by daily deliberate effort, keep
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choosing to look and look and look again at a
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thing that is offering you no new reason to.
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So I made the middle my study those weeks the
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way I had made the beginning my study, and I
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found something I did not expect, which is that
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the middle paid attention to is not boring at
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all. It only looks boring from outside, to the
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part of you that is waiting for something to
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happen. Saloni at the cutting table on the 400th
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identical morning is not, if you actually watch,
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doing an identical thing. The cut is never quite
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the same cut. The cloth behaves a little differently
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each length. Her hands make a thousand micro
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-adjustments, no two of which repeat. The repetition
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is an illusion that only survives at a distance.
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Up close, paid the bias cut attention, the supposedly
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identical Tuesday turns out to be unrepeatable,
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a thing that has never happened before and will
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never happen again because she is a day older
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and the light is a day different and the cloth
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is a new length and the marriage is one day further
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along its unmappable course. There is no such
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thing as an identical day. There is only the
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failure to look closely enough to see the difference.
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Boredom. I have come to believe, is not a property
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of the world. It is a property of insufficient
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attention. The middle is not boring. The middle
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is infinitely detailed and we call it boring
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because we have stopped looking closely enough
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to see the detail and then we blame the middle
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for the dullness that is actually in our own
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dulled eyes. I find this oddly hopeful when I
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sit with it. If boredom were really in the world,
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in the marriage, in the middle itself, then there
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would be nothing to be done. The dullness would
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be a fact, and we would simply have to endure
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it. But if the dullness is in the eye and not
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the object, then it is curable, always, by the
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one thing entirely within my own power, which
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is to look harder. I cannot make my life more
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eventful. Very little of that is up to me. But
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I can, on any morning I choose, make it more
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vivid, simply by paying the attention it has
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been quietly deserving all along. The remedy
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for a dull life is not a more exciting life.
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It is closer attention to the one you already
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have. I tested this against my own life, against
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the supposedly identical mornings of my own marriage's
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middle. The chai made... the same chai, the same
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two cups, the same woman, the same light, and
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I found it held. The morning was not the same
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morning. It only looked the same to a lazy glance.
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Saloni reaching for the cup I had set at her
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right hand was not the same gesture she had made
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10 ,000 times. It was this gesture. This morning,
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this particular tilt of this particular hand
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a day older than yesterday's, and if I looked
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at it with the attention it deserved rather than
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the attention habit had reduced it to, it was
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as singular and as worth seeing as anything in
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the thrilling beginning had been. The middle
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had not gotten less interesting over the years.
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I had gotten less attentive, and the awake years
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were teaching me slowly, to give the long middle
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of my marriage the quality of looking I had once
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reserved only for its dramatic edges. It is slow
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work and it does not stay done. That is the thing
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about the discipline of the middle that sets
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it apart from every triumphant one -time conversion
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the self -help shelves promise. You do not learn
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it once and then possess it. You wake up and
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you drift back to sleep and you wake up again.
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Every single day, forever, because the gravity
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of the familiar never stops pulling, and the
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only counterweight is a daily renewed act of
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attention that has to be performed fresh each
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morning and cannot be stored against tomorrow.
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I will be learning to stay awake in the middle
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until the day I die. There is no graduation from
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it. There is only the practice, and the practice,
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I am coming to understand, is not preparation
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for the life. The practice is the life. There
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was an evening, deep in those grinding weeks,
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when she came out of the workroom with her shoulders
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aching from the long middle of her own making
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and sat down next to me on the sofa without a
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word and put her head on my shoulder and we sat
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there in the ordinary lamplight doing nothing,
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saying nothing, two people in the deep middle
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of a long marriage and it was, I want to record,
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not a lesser thing than the fireworks of the
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beginning. It was a different thing, and in many
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ways a larger one. The beginning's love is a
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spark, sudden, hot, involuntary, a thing that
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happens to you. The middle's love is a tending,
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chosen, daily, deliberate, a thing you do. The
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spark needs no skill. It arrives on its own and
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takes the credit. The tending is the actual craft
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of love. The part that has to be practiced, the
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keeping of a fire through 45 years of ordinary
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weather, and it is so much quieter than the spark
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that we mistake its quiet for its absence and
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go looking, some of us, for new sparks, never
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understanding that the spark was the easy part
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and the tending is the whole of the art. Her
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head on my shoulder in the lamplight, neither
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of us speaking, both of us tired from our separate
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long middles. That was not the absence of the
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fireworks. That was the thing the fireworks had
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been advertising all along. The deep, quiet,
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tended fire they were only ever the opening flare
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of, and I would not have traded that silent weight
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on my shoulder for all the sparks of the beginning,
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because I had finally learned which one was the
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easy thing, and which one was the real. People
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speak of the spark going out as though it were
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a tragedy, and I understand the fear, having
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felt it. But I have come to think the spark is
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supposed to go out the way the kindling is supposed
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to be consumed once the log is caught. The spark's
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whole job was to start the fire. It was never
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meant to be the fire. A couple still trying,
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20 years in, to feel the original spark are like
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someone standing over a good fire, blowing on
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a spent match. Let the spark go. Ten the fire
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it lit. The warmth of a long -tended fire is
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a deeper heat than any spark, and it is the only
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kind that can actually keep you through a winter.
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Tired, I said, the only word. MM, she said, the
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only word back. And we left it there, the whole
13:47
conversation, complete, because in the long middle
13:50
of a marriage, the words get shorter and shorter
13:53
as the understanding gets longer and longer,
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until eventually you can hold an entire exchange
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in two syllables and a weight against a shoulder,
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which is not the death of communication as the
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beginning people fear, but its final fluent form.
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The young version of us could not have done this.
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the two -syllable conversation, the whole understanding
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carried in a weight and a sound. We did not yet
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have the shared decades that a short word now
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points back to. In the beginning, everything
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had to be said in full because nothing could
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yet be assumed. The shortening of the words is
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not a poverty. It is a wealth so large it no
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longer needs to be itemized. Every mm between
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us now contains years, and we can both read all
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of them in it. And that legibility, that ability
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to fold an entire marriage into a single syllable
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and have it perfectly understood, is one of the
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few genuine compensations time pays you for the
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things it quietly takes. I had just written that
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down in the fifth notebook. In fact, the words
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get shorter as the understanding gets longer.
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When the phone went on the kitchen table late
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an unusual hour for it and Saloni reached over
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and looked at the screen and went still in a
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different way than the color had made her go
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still. It's an email, she said. She did not pick
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it up at once. She looked at it the way you look
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at a thing you have half wanted and half dreaded
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for a long time. The way the surface of a settled
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life looks at the first ripple of something that
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is going to change it. From the December show.
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From one of the buyers, the big one, the one
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Mira said was watching. She read it, her face
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doing something complicated, the lamplight on
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it, the long middle of an ordinary evening tilting,
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very slightly, on an axis I could not yet see.
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They want to talk, not about a piece, about something
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bigger. They're talking about, she stopped. She
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put the phone down on the table between us, screen
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up. the little glowing rectangle of a door that
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had just opened onto a larger and more dangerous
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room. They're talking about a lot. And I felt
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the long, quiet middle of our evening change
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its weather, felt the first faint pressure drop
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of something coming, not a catastrophe. The awake
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years do not deal in catastrophes, but a test
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of a different kind, the kind that arrives disguised
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as a gift. the kind that asks a settled and happy
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and hard -won life whether it is brave enough
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to be disturbed by its own success. I had thought,
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in some lazy corner of myself, that having survived
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the great rupture and built the good life beyond
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it, we had earned a kind of permanence, a long,
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untroubled middle whose only task was to keep
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paying attention to what we already had. The
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glowing phone on the table corrected me. There
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is no permanence. There is no part of the story
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where things stop changing. The changes simply
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stop being catastrophes and start being something
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subtler and, in their own way, just as testing.
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A settled life does not get to stay settled.
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It only gets to choose, again and again, how
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it will meet the next thing that comes to unsettle
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it. Don't answer it tonight, I said, not telling
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her what to do, just buying us the evening. The
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door will still be open in the morning. Let's
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finish being in the middle for one more night
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before we find out what the email wants. She
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looked at me and at the glowing phone and back
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at me and then she did the thing that told me
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whatever was coming, we would meet it the way
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we now met everything. Together, out loud, awake.
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She turned the phone face down. One more night
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in the middle. She said, and put her head back
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on my shoulder, and we sat in the lamplight a
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while longer, two people in the deep, ordinary
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middle of a marriage, with a door newly open
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in the dark and a morning coming that would ask
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us something, holding for one more quiet hour,
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the part of the story that no one ever writes,
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and that turns out to be the whole of the life.
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I wrote the last of it after she slept. The long
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middle. The colors found and now the grind. The
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part stories skip. The and then for three months.
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The 90%. A marriage is 50 years and the beginning
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is two of them. The middle is 45 and no one prepares
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you for it. No song is about it. And we panic
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when the fireworks fade and find ourselves in
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it. Thinking something's wrong. When we've only
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arrived in the main body of the thing. The whole
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project of the awake years equals staying awake
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in the middle. Anyone's awake for a beginning,
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novelty does it, or an ending, drama does it.
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The discipline is the duration, the Tuesdays,
19:04
the anesthetic of the familiar. And the middle
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paid attention to isn't boring. Boredom is a
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property of insufficient attention, not of the
19:14
world. No two mornings are identical. We just
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stop looking close enough to see the difference.
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The middle's love is a tending, not a spark.
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The spark's the easy part. The tending's the
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whole art. The words get shorter as the understanding
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gets longer. And then, tonight, the email, the
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big buyer from December, something bigger a lot.
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A door opened in the dark, not a catastrophe.
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The other kind of test, the one disguised as
19:44
a gift. We turned the phone face down. One more
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night in the middle first. To be continued in
20:03
was episode 40 of My Playful Wife. If this story
20:07
is staying with you... The next episode is already
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waiting. Subscribe so you don't miss it. The
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plus bonus chapters are on my Patreon. Links
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are in the description. Thank you for listening.