‘Threshold moments’—like the dreaded broken condom—can send a couple into a black-ice panic.
It’s night time. Children’s homework, baths, and tuck-ins are complete; sippy cups rest next to pillows, the last bedtime stories are spun. Finally alone, husband and wife relax, laugh, and talk by themselves, eventually retiring to the old Posturepedic, where things take a romantic turn.
But later, while basking in conjugal afterglow, wife whispers, “Honey, something’s wrong down there.” Peeking under the sheet, my receding hair becomes even whiter as I notice that the Super-Ultra-Sensitive-Tropical-Colored-Power-Dotted-for-Her-Pleasure-Extra-Extra-Thin impulse purchase from the drug store has somehow undergone what Janet Jackson called a “wardrobe malfunction.”
My, um, personal part looks less like a shrink-wrapped power boat and more like a Fisher Price man in a poncho. Threshold moments like this can send a couple into black-ice panic, sliding toward an abyss of “for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer.”
My thoughts zigzag:
Will we have a baby in 10 months? How do we tell my … I can’t retire early, I can’t ever retire … Didn’t we throw out the infant car seat, the stroller, the baby pajamas … I’ll be wearing Depends at the kid’s high-school graduation!
Suddenly, my annual whiny, knee-scrunching protest against a vasectomy to save my “original equipment” seems as prudent as passing on that chance to buy Cape Cod oceanfront land at $25,000.
♦◊♦
Sure, we’d hashed over the idea of a fourth child years before this moment, but we could never feel peaceful about it. My smoldering desire for one more child clashed with my wife’s concerns about taking on too much. Finally, I asked an elderly monk I know for advice. He sat silently for a long time before saying the question reminded him of his favorite Clint Eastwood movie, wherein a bewhiskered Clint squints and says, “A man’s got to know his limitations.” After that, I happily put the idea behind me and moved on—or so I thought.
Now, after nearly waking the neighbors with frenzied, panicked shrieks, I lay astride my betrothed under the covers, holding hands, thankful for an accident.
Was I crazy? We’re no strangers to the pregnancy game. One child with a serious birth defect, another was stillborn—the risks increase with each passing year. What was I thinking?
Who knows? Maybe these kinds of unscripted marital moments—whether in the bedroom or emergency room—are miniature life prisms, taking ordinary events and refracting them into a spectral array of deeper meaning we would otherwise overlook.
Why not just relax, step out on the porch for a glimpse, if for no other reason than to pause and reflect on life, on being together. As Victor Hugo said, “Winter is upon my head but eternal spring is in my heart.”
♦◊♦
Turns out my wife didn’t become pregnant. Bittersweet. But that night we did give birth to something deeper in our marriage. A no-holds-barred conversation in the face of the unknown—an understanding that no matter what was before us, we still had each other.
Surprise events in marriage have a way of untangling couples from the macramé of the mundane: emails, stacks of laundry, unpaid bills. Suddenly, what really matters is knowing that our lives are short and there’s no telling what might happen next.
This time, it was the possibility of an unplanned pregnancy; another time, maybe a grim medical diagnosis or a devastating layoff. The hashing out of these threshold moments so often unfolds in the wee small hours together upon the marital bed, where we confess our fears to one another with a candor we might not have expressed in years.
These are conversations that deepen beyond measure the vows taken years before and open us to futures we didn’t think possible. Best of all, we don’t need all the answers. We just need to feel safe laughing, crying, or praying together as we dare to peek under the sheets of life and take a glimpse at the new thing that may be in store for us.
Was I crazy? We’re no strangers to the pregnancy game. One child with a serious birth defect, another was stillborn—the risks increase with each passing year. What was I thinking?
Hmmm, crazy….check!
Literate…….check!
UTP
@Student
The morning-after pill is not 100% accurate – they could still have been facing another child, perhaps that is what this article is addressing?
As for back-ups like hormones for his wife – women shouldn’t take hormones all their sexually active lives, they can have both severe and minor side affects. I heard eight to ten years is the safe limit.
A vasectomy really would seem to be the best back-up, after you’ver had all your kids.
The love you share with your spouse is touching. However, I am disturbed by the way this article romanticizes ignorance of birth control methods. Why didn’t your wife just go the pharmacy and get emergency contraception pills? In fact, if you were using nothing but condoms for contraception, why didn’t you have emergency contraception pills waiting on your nightstand in case of just such an accident? (Surely I’m not the only person who’s thought of that trick?) Why didn’t you two have a back-up method–spermicides, hormones for the wife, non-hormonal IUD for the wife, etc? Unlike layoffs and disease diagnoses,… Read more »
Well written, and dead-on to boot.
I was working on a post for my own blog about these types of moments and how the silver lining is exactly as you described. At the very least we open up to one another and have a frank discussion. And that is never a bad thing.
You really captured the moment with this one.
This is an excellent piece—elegantly written and beautifully revealing. But it made me wonder if Homer’s lingering desire for a fourth child had something to do with the accident. I mean, today you rarely hear of condoms breaking, even as a result of hyper-vigorous thrusting. So maybe the tear was the result of something spiritual rather than something physical or an actual flaw. We’ll never know, I guess. Moral? Be careful what you wish for—or don’t wish for!
Thank you Homer for reminding me of the gift of marriage, the commitment to love, and the grace of the unexpected as life unfolds.