It was an arranged marriage. I hardly knew her, and I didn’t particularly like her. She was something of a compromise. Most certainly, it was not ‘love at first sight.’
Pagosa Springs, I mean. The town I live in.
My wife Clarissa had become pregnant with our third child, and wanted a home birth. (She wanted other things as well, but for now we’ll focus on the pregnancy.) Alaska was somewhat supportive of midwife-led births back in 1987, and we’d had a home birth with our second child, Lily. The experience has been, for Clarissa, far superior to the hospital birth with Kahlil, our first-born. But the midwife we’d had for Lily’s birth no longer lived in Juneau.
Clarissa was pregnant, and wanted to find a midwife. (I mentioned that there were other things she wanted. But… well, I already mentioned that.) Clarissa understood that New Mexico was at the forefront of the home birth movement in America, and one day she said to me, “I want to have the baby in New Mexico. We’re moving to Santa Fe.”
Clarissa had never, in her 30 years, lived anywhere but Juneau, Alaska. This was going to be something of an adventure for our family of four-soon-to-be-five.
I hated Santa Fe. I won’t go into all the reasons; they’re not important. Clarissa, meanwhile — living in a new town with a new baby — absolutely blossomed. I think she could have stayed in Santa Fe for the rest of her life. But after two years, I’d had enough, and we packed up the truck and drove back to Alaska.
During the two years in Santa Fe, however, we’d made two visits to a little town in Colorado, to soak in the hot springs. Cute little town. Very “working class.”
For the next four years, Clarissa plotted to get us back to Santa Fe, even though she knew how much I’d hated the place. It was something to argue about, and married couples need things to argue about. And to compromise on.
One day, Clarissa brought up the idea of Pagosa Springs. That cute little town with the hot springs. Close to Santa Fe, but not Santa Fe. A compromise. (The story is much more complicated than this, but that part will be published after I’m dead.) I relented. Yes, I would be willing to try our Pagosa Springs for maybe five years. See how we like it. But after five years, I told her, we’re moving back to Alaska. Pagosa is not my hometown.
“Five years.” That’s what I told her.
I had often told people that moving from California to Alaska was like down-shifting from fourth gear down into second gear.
The move to Pagosa was like shifting into first gear.
But the five years have now become 25 years. 25 years, driving in first gear. I can’t, at this point, imagine calling any other place, “My hometown.”
My father, who spent his entire life married to the same woman, once told me, “There are three stages of love. At first, you’re so infatuated that you can’t see her faults. Then you reach the next stage of love, where your love is mature enough so you can overlook her faults.
“In the third stage, you love even her faults.”
I think I’m getting to that third stage.