The Challenge

It wasn't an unlikely match at first. I was a TA at a prominent university near DC; Regina was just finishing her teaching degree at the same university. I kept running into her on campus, though perhaps it was my subconscious stalking her, and finally got the nerve to ask her out. She seemed unsure at first, but I convinced her to say yes, and she allowed me to escort her to a very public place - a basketball game. Basketball at this university was always like a religion, and both of us worshiped. I couldn't believe my luck. A pretty and smart girl who actually wanted to go to a basketball game? It had to be too good to be true.

And in a way, it was, though neither of us realized until much later. I proposed only a few months later, and again, I convinced her to say yes. On my wedding day, I was the happiest man alive and couldn't wait for the honeymoon. Neither of us were poor but we certainly weren't rich so we chose Mexico over Hawaii as our honeymoon destination. Frankly, I didn't really care where we went as long as I had the beach, happy hour and my new wife.

It was on this honeymoon that we discovered our most profound difference. It turns out Regina did care where we went. When she suggested Hawaii, I assumed it had more to do with the romantic beaches than anything else. When that was too expensive, I threw out Mexico since I knew it would be cheaper and still have the romantic beaches. She agreed, I figured I had gotten it right and packed swim shorts and not a whole lot else.

That week was not what I expected. As soon as we got on the plane, she had her nose in a guide to Mexico while I slept off the remains of our wedding celebration. A few hours later, I woke up in Cancun, my wife's nose still in her book. I thought it was cute, but in the back of my mind, I didn't understand why she needed a guide to tell her how to lounge on the beach. We checked into our hotel, and the planning began. She wanted to see EVERYTHING: the ruins, the cultures, the local towns. I wanted to lay on the beach and drink margaritas. That week, we spent more time apart than we had in our entire courtship. At the end of our honeymoon, that's when it hit me: I had married a history buff!

Sure, I knew our academic interests were different. Though very intelligent, she couldn't add two numbers together without counting on her fingers, and my brain was like a human calculator. She was forever correcting my grammar, and the only shared publication we read was the sports section in the newspaper. So yes, I had already realized we were an unlikely match, but hey, opposites attract, right? But I never realized that despite her decision to teach high school English classes, she was harboring a secret affection for History. And me? Well, the only history I felt I needed to know was my own.

When we got back to our apartment in suburban Maryland, the vibe between us had changed ever so slightly. On our first night back as we were getting ready for bed, I looked at her and said, "We'll always have basketball." She smiled and then she laughed, and then I laughed, and then we couldn't stop laughing even though we were only just then realizing we had committed ourselves to a lifetime together without having anything but an appreciation for basketball in common.

A year later, we discovered another thing we had in common: our love for our son Michael. And just over a year after that, we welcomed a third thing in common in the form of our daughter Kelly. For the next eighteen years, we managed very well on these three common factors. During family vacations, she would take the kids to museums while I would relax, and I would take them to amusement parks while she explored places less enjoyable for children. And we did spend time together. Usually, I would splash around in the pool with the kids, while she would dispense sunscreen during occasional breaks from her novel-reading under the nearby umbrella.

Since I was now a professor at the local university, and she taught high school, we had the summers off. Once the kids reached a certain age, we sent them to camp for a summer and tried to take a romantic trip together, but it turned out to be a mirror image of our honeymoon. We each stayed in our safety zones and those paths didn't cross as often as we liked. We decided sending kids to camp was for parents who didn't love their children, and we selfishly kept them to ourselves so our trips would contain our common interests: them.

I will insist that we were still very happy, as happy as could be probably for a couple who had been married almost two decades. Having some form of independence was healthy, our friends insisted. But still, I think we both fretted that we were missing out on experiences with each other. It wasn't quite the same when she would tell me what amazing painting she saw from the Boring Era (I know, I know, I'm terrible), and I couldn't quite express the excitement I had when I was learning to surf.

So it happened a few years ago...I guess the other shoe finally dropped. Our kids were both attending school at my university and no longer needed us to take them on trips. They had internships, spring breaks with friends (not something I was thrilled about, especially for my daughter, and especially being a professor at the same college), and out-of-state friends to visit. Suddenly, their weekends and summers and breaks from school were filled with everything but their parents, and I think that's when it hit Regina: for the rest of our lives, most of our trips would be the same as our honeymoon, with no common factor like the kids to detract us from the fact that we have nothing else in common.

And that's when she delivered her challenge. It was early May, right when the kids were about to finish up their semesters. Michael had an internship with a DC newspaper, and Kelly was interning on Wall Street in New York. Faced with an upcoming repeat of our honeymoon, Regina calmly told me over dinner that she wanted a divorce.

My stomach flipped inside out, and I thought I would lose my pot roast all over the white lacy tablecloth (impractical, I told her).

Then she started laughing, and I swear, I hated her in that moment. How can she joke about such a thing?

Seeing my facial expression, she quickly sobered and said, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I just had to make sure that you were still as much into this marriage as I am."

Clearly, I was.

"Listen," she told me sternly, in what I referred to as her teacher voice. "I don't want to live separate lives on our vacations. And I'm tired of us accepting that we just like different things. Enough is enough. My looks and energy are fading fast, and I need to make sure you won't leave me for some twinkie TA."

I told her she was being ridiculous and in truth, she was. All those years of reading under the umbrella instead of frolicking in the pool with the kids and me had spared her skin the extra years mine seemed to put on as a result of the sun. She was a healthy eater and did yoga regularly, so her body was still very shapely, while I was unable to kick my love of southern bbq and my belly was starting to show it, despite frequent jogs. And perhaps I spied an occasional gray hair on her, but at least her hair didn't seem to be running away from her head and down towards her back like mine was. So if anyone had to worry about the other running off with a "twinkie", it was me.

When I told her as much, she laughed that adorable laugh of hers (one thing that certainly hadn't changed in all the years I had known her) and said, "Well then, you had best listen to my challenge and listen well: every trip we take from here on in, we do everything in reverse. That means you go to national monuments while I drink at happy hour. No more going into our comfort zone. 'A road well traveled leaves no surprises'. Well, I don't want to be that road! I want to understand more about why you love what you do, and I want you to appreciate the things I do."

I was honestly still so relieved that she didn't want to actually divorce me that I hastily agreed, with the caveat that we still go to the bathroom in our comfort zone. She rolled her eyes good-naturedly, but the challenge was on!

So my purpose here is to open up to other people - outsiders from all walks of life who can point me in directions that will appease my wife's sense of history and my sense of relaxing in the here and now. I will write about some of the trips we have taken together in more stories, but I hope to receive good suggestions on more places to go so I can keep on writing. Hopefully, being married to an English teacher has greatly improved my grammar, and it will be more amusing than painful to hear about our exploits.