Five Years with This Guy

It’s been five years living with this guy and we’re still happy. Our pandemic cohabitation experiment was successful. Together we’ve made it through five years of sharing a living space, a bed and meals, dogs, Netflix and ginger beer. That’s the essence of cohabitation. Ordinary life. Ho hum pedestrian plebian joe blow ordinary. It’s pretty fabulous. And we know we’re lucky to be here. We’re a good news story in a bad news world. Aging takes some getting used to. There’s a lot to whine about, so I want to put a pin in this moment and remember it. 

You know how the world is right now with so much change breaking up lines in the sand drawn by our parents and grandparents. The world we learned about as children in school doesn’t exist anymore, and the new world has yet to be born. It’s unsettling. Sometimes fearsome. We’re mid haboob and we have no idea what planet we’ll be living on when the dust settles. Having a cohabitant makes it less frightening. Hugging reminds us that reality has layers. We are keeping our feet on the ground and following our hearts.

Aging is different than we expected, but better than we thought it would be half a century ago when we looked at our grandparents. We’re in better physical shape than they were. Our bodies are still capable of the life we want. We’re not rock climbing or pearl diving. We don’t have extravagant tastes. Our ambitions are flexible. We’re busy, but not too busy. We’re informed, but we limit our exposure to negative messaging. We try not to stress out over things beyond our control. You could call it wisdom. Maybe it’s complacency. But we’re keeping it real. 

Movement seems to be key to our satisfaction. We walk in the morning. Then we walk some more in the afternoon. Then we walk again before we go to bed at night. It’s not just for the dog. We talk. We stroll through our neighborhood in the dark, inhaling the mist from lawn sprinklers and smelling flowers. We remember things, we have stories to tell, our conversation meanders, minds undirected, freely associating. We listen to each other. We’re curious. We’re still learning how to weave our emotional safety net.

We’re not married. No plans for that. Both of us had a wedding, a spouse and a dream house, matching dishes, joint bank accounts and a mortgage. We’re not doing that again. Our relationship is simpler than that. We collaborate on home making and dog ownership. We share expenses. But each of us enjoys alone time. Him fishing, me reading and writing. We make plans together to be alone separately. The silence is clarifying. We could live our lives alone, as we both did for many years, but we choose not to; we choose to cohabitate, we choose to share our life with another person. I choose him. But we balance our couplehood with alone time. 

When we’re together our life is organized around food. I think of it as a kitchen centered life. I stock our pantry, schedule and prepare our meals. Cooking and eating a few times a day is critical to me. It’s how I center myself, keep my blood sugar steady, control my cravings and allow time for inspiration. We eat breakfast and dinner together in the kitchen facing each other. Really. I pack him a lunch on weekdays. These habits keep us in sync, on the same clock, tuned into the sky and the weather, aware of the passing seasons. He does not cook. My foodways come from farming and growing my own food. Having a kitchen centered life connects me to my biology, my microbiome, and my boyfriend. I need this to feel whole.

We are both black sheep, born and raised in the Midwest, lived in the suburbs outside Chicago, watched the same TV shows, listened to the same music, rebelled against our conservative Christian roots. From childhood we were trained by our families to be materialists. Clocks and China teacups, tablecloths and framed photos were passed down from one generation to the next. We were expected to care for the possessions of our ancestors and give them to our children. Materialism is the American dream. Married life is the performance of materialism. With our spouses we accumulated stuff, filled our homes, piled boxes in closets and the attic, hoarded Christmas decorations and old tools. Our life was defined by the stuff we owned. 

Not anymore. We’re minimalists now. We’ve pared down our material load and dispatched most of what we owned as married people. As we face the uncertainty of climate change, we choose to travel light, keep our household nimble, let go of unnecessary possessions, and Voila! Minimalism creates open space in our home and in our minds. I couldn’t live with a materialist. After a lifetime of over exposure, I have an allergy to stuff. Lucky for me, my cohabitant is not a fine furniture guy, so minimalism isn’t much of a sacrifice for him as long as he can keep his fishing lures. Fortunately, they’re small. 

Five years ago, our hook-up was propelled by the pandemic. Living together was safer than living apart. Our compatibility was an accident. Happenstance delivered us to each other ready to experiment with a lifestyle unlike anything we had experienced before. And here we are, all grown up, grey haired and dovetailed for a perfect fit. Impossible to imagine and yet just in time. We have fishing lures, chemistry and a poodle. For now, that’s enough.