The Elixir of Love

Denise Said


The opera is over. There’s always such a flurry of rehearsals close to tech-week, and preparations (buying shoes, make-up, figuring out hair styles, dinners made ahead, getting MORE gas in the car, who’s going to watch Stephen?) and then the final excitement of the performances, that it’s a little shocking to have stopped all of that today- the day after.  As I sit and process the past few weeks, ending with our daughters’ final show last night, I’m in awe that we made this experience happen for them once again. One of the life-lessons for me is the driving has become one of the best aspects of this experience with the kids. I’ve had to overcome my fear of driving on major highways for one, and the kids sing together, tell riddles, and laugh, making the trip to Scotch Plains and Cranford feel shorter and shorter each time. (Obviously we had help with the long drive from Mary and Luke and we couldn’t do it without them.) Our education choices are not for the faint of heart and I am grateful to have a cohort in Mary who doesn’t mind being in the middle of her children’s educations either. Mary told me when Maddy got her first lead role last year in The Magic Flute, “All the driving will be worth it when you see Maddy on that stage.” And she was so right. It was magical and emotional to hear Maddy sing the Queen of the Night’s songs last year and even better this time because Maddy was on stage most of the opera and we got to hear her more.


The Elixir of Love was simply a delightful opera and all the kids were extremely talented and the leads amazing!  I felt a little like the mother of the bride (I guess I kind of was….Maddy was the bride in Act 2) as our family and friends came to see the show and I was a ball of nerves and I couldn’t breathe (could have been the tight dress I wore too.) My fears were put aside as the caliber of talent came through with each song. (You never know what to expect when anyone sings – could be awful.) The cast was a strong one. The guys totally nailed their songs and roles. The trio with Maddy and two of the male leads, one of my favorite parts, was wonderful! Miranda looked very sweet in her mop cap and red dress. She smiled and sang happily with the ensemble. Maddie and Cole Nasta are very animated and just fun to watch. (Especially Cole’s moving eyebrows!)  Maddy, as the female lead Adina, looked beautiful in her two costumes and curly brown wig, and sang like an opera singer. What else can I say? She was incredible. She’s like a super-hero.  Mild-mannered Maddy Evarts wearing glasses one minute, Opera Woman on stage, without glasses, singing up a storm of notes the next! She was an elixir for me. Sheer joy! My father, who rarely gives out compliments, even said it was amazing and he only those kinds of words, amazing that is, to describe natural rock formations out west.


This idea of elixirs (although the Elixir in the opera is really a cheap bottle of wine being sold as a love potion) and their healing powers, or magical powers as in the opera, is interesting. Our children are certainly elixirs of love for us and always have been since they’ve joined our family.  And music is certainly a strong elixir.  It soothes, it inspires, it makes us feel happy, it’s joyous, it makes us smile.  Put the two together, children and music (both important to our family too) and the title is very appropriate. I am a little sad to be done with this opera, yet there will be another in the fall and we’ll be rested and ready to take on the next musical elixir.

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Max Said


Very true my love, I am so very grateful that you have kept your love of making music alive and found ways to instill this in our kids.

Don’t really have too much more to say about The Elixir being over, you have said it all very well.  But I do want to brag on Maddy a bit more :)  She is truly an amazing singer, blessed with natural talent and beautiful voice and also dedicated to mastering her technique.  For me Maddy’s vocal accomplishments are a wonderful example of what is working in our approach to learning.  Maddy excels at singing because she loves it, and because she has been given the space and encouragement to pursue it.  As soon as she finds out what opera the company will be doing next, she immerses herself in it – listening to it hundreds of times, finding different recordings and DVDs of it, researching it on the internet to learn about the composer and history of the opera, etc.  She shines on stage not only because of her voice and musical ability but also because she knows the story inside out and can connect with her character’s motivations and moods.

Equally important though is that because Maddy is driven to excel as an opera singer purely by her love for the art form, she remains throughout the humble and beautiful spirit that she is at the core.  Several parents from the opera company commented on this and how this contrasted to other kids who have been in the lead roles and put on airs of superiority.  I am not completely sure what brings this attitude out in kids who get the lead roles in things, but I think it has something to do with the fact that they may be driven more by the need for recognition, for the limelight, then a pure love of the music and the process.

Anyway, Brava to my lovely diva Maddy!  And thanks once more to you for sharing your elixir of music with our kids.

Happy Anniversary With Gratitude

Max Said

23 years of marriage…  Well that’s the official number, but I think we’ve been married at the soul level for more like 25.  Anyway, wow!

This has been a powerful week for us as a couple and I am mostly just overwhelmed with gratitude for having had you in my life for all of these years.  It feels like we are always learning new things about one another and the relationship that we share.  We never stop growing, as individuals and as a couple.

I think one of the most profound lessons that has come to the surface in a new way for me this week is the importance of gratitude.  For reasons that I have talked about in previous blog posts, we, as a culture, tend to spend a good portion of our energy on wanting.  Wanting things, wanting experiences, wanting new relationships, wanting our partners to change to better suit our needs, etc.  The problem here is that in the end we inevitably end up wanting something that is out of our reach and therefore live with the feeling that something is missing, that we cannot truly be happy and satisfied.

Gratitude shifts this whole paradigm.  When we stop and consciously take inventory of all the many blessings that we are showered with in our lives and say “Thank You” for these blessings, we are magically transported to true happiness with where and who we are.  Because gratitude is a conscious choice in terms of interpreting the same circumstances that we could also find wanting, it is the secret key to inner-directed happiness.

And that is the other drawback with the wanting way of being.  It depends on external things, people or circumstances for happiness.  All of these are necessarily transient and often fleeting.  How many times do you witness yourself or others obtaining some coveted thing or circumstance only to realize that it was not exactly what we thought it would be, or quickly grow bored of it and move on to the next want.

With unconditional gratitude the nexus of our happiness is shifted inwards.  When we make the choice to be grateful, we are on the path of inner happiness.

So let me say, on this day to celebrate our amazing marriage, with the deepest sincerity and emotion, that I am grateful for you my love.  I am grateful for your smile, your spirit, your unconditional love, your laughter, and the laughter you bring to me, for your unparalleled mothering, for your passionate nature, for your love of flowers, and beauty of all kinds, from the domestic to the rare, for the loving care you shape our home with, and for your acceptance of all that I am over all these years…  I am grateful for so many more things that I cannot begin to list here.

I truly love you Denise.  Thanks for another year of your love.

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Denise Said



Happy Anniversary Maxwell! The years go by quickly (we realized today that it’s been two years already and the van has to be inspected again) and sometimes they mingle together that I can’t remember one year from another.  This anniversary will always have a signpost next to it in my memory though as the year we went to Longwood Gardens by ourselves and meandered through the delightful gardens on a hot and sunny day.  It was the same kind of weather as our wedding day actually and the day even felt like a renewal of vows in a simple way. I felt grateful to walk hand in hand, finding surprises at every turn:  The Pierre DuPont Building courtyard took my breath away as I entered the room, the Italian fountain garden transported us to Italy for a while, the tunnel of rose arbors in full pink bloom where we asked someone to take our photo, the Copper  Beeches we sat under to take a break from the sun, the overwhelming fragrance of the lilies in the lily extravaganza room, the majesty of the topiaries, and reflections in the water lily ponds. Then to come home to a tasty grilled chicken picnic dinner the kids made for us with homemade crème brulee for dessert made me even more thankful for what we’ve created together in our life with our family. I feel no need of want.

The shadows, the colors, the smells, the tastes, the heat, the sun, wove a beautiful tapestry of gratitude for me on this our 23rd married year together.  Thank you for being my devoted and dear husband in this life. As you said to me in your card, “I think we’re getting the hang of it.” I love you too.

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The Original Quickie

Denise Said

It seems I still have a lot to learn about the nuances of marriage and it’s something that needs tending every day. I hope you will forgive me for bringing up our late-night conversation again, but I think it bears documentation.  What else does a late night drawn-out conversation involve other than love making? While it was difficult to hear that you feel “bankrupt” with nothing left to give and that sometimes a quickie is really what you want, and not having to take care of me sexually, I was proud of you telling me how you felt. This seems like a huge step for both of us, since I’m the one usually doing the talking.  Part of the reason I love to be with you is that you are a wonderful sensitive lover and you play me like an instrument.  But sometimes I think you’ve created a monster in me too, in that I have such high expectations and I know what you are capable of creating between us. That’s a lot of upkeep and sometimes quickies would be perfect, I totally understand. (I do actually like quickies.)  I have nothing against any of your requests and we both acknowledged that our life is extremely complicated right now which in general is adding to our angst in lack of time for sex.

This made me think about the evolutionary differences in men and women and a realationship call I listened in on with Alison Armstrong . Alison spoke about the physical differences in the male and female eyes. Men have eyes that see more like a predator out for the kill – straight ahead - and women have eyes that see as both predator, and the prey, using also peripheral vision.  This is very apparent in driving. A man is driving. His wife is in the passenger seat. She screams out that he’s going to hit something along the side of the road, and from her point of view it looks like that. He on the other hand thinks that his wife doesn’t trust him. Trust is a huge thing with men. They want to know they are trusted totally. Anyway a ping-pong argument usually starts simply because of physical difference in the way men and women see the world.

After our talk last night I woke up thinking more about these differences. What if our dilemma sexually is also simply a physical one and not something to take so personally and make into a long and drawn out discussion about?  I started to think along the lines of Leonard Shlain. In his book Sex Time and Power : How Women’s Sexuality Shaped Human Evolution he talks about  how there are no female mammals besides human females that have orgasms (there seem to be some monkey species that enjoy sex and that is a research project for another day for me to dig back into that book.)   This got me thinking.  Most of the male species mount the female and get their procreation business over within seconds, afterwards leaving the female to continue on with whatever task she was doing.  The original quickie. It’s evolutionally in men to Wham Bam Thank You Mam!

Shlain’s argument gets more complicated when he gets into the nitty gritty early makings of the idea of caveman marriage when the early female of our species started to piece together how babies were made,  and then the women did something drastically new…… they said NO to sex.  Men now had to do a song and dance and court women to get them to have sex with them. And the women now wanted the men to prove that if they got their way with them, the men would stick around and help care for any children created and also help feed her and them, since she now was in the role of caregiver. Shlain’s theory gets more and more intricate and I could not do justice to his careful research and his quite amazing insights, but I do think there is something to his thoughts in how we evolved as male and female. We did arrive at the conclusion that quickies have their place, as do long-drawn out I’m-here-to-stay sexual encounters.  It’s that Ying and Yang thing again.  XO

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Max Said


I definitely agree that we have learned a few valuable lessons about relating over the last week…
I think you have illuminated one of them very well.  Men and women just plain have different wiring when it comes to sex.  If we don’t recognize, embrace and celebrate these differences, then we are missing something important.  Vive la différence!

The other thing is more about uncovering a part of my personality.  I have a hard time asking for what I want.  I am happy to give to you selflessly and leave my own needs out of the picture.  When it comes time for putting my wants and desires out there, I’d just as soon pass.  So it was a big step for me to tell what I was feeling about sex.  I know it was all my own doing that I was not getting my quickie quota :)

And finally, after a week of swinging the pendulum pretty far over to the quickie side, the final thing that I have learned is that balance is good.  While I am the most satisfied in our intimacy when both of us are fully engaged and we share a perfect moment of transcendent rapture, the occasional wham-bam is a good thing as well.  It keeps us balanced, and it keeps us connected.

We Are the Architects of Our Passions

Denise Said


I have so much to say. Where to start? I’ll just dive in and start blabbing. This week’s Facebook thread of a status update that I made several days ago is still going on. I made a comment about how I had overheard an argument between a man and a woman in town and the man couldn’t get a word in edgewise because the woman was cursing him out. I didn’t stay to listen but left feeling sad that I hear these kinds of one-sided fights so often. The whole thing felt yucky for the man who sat and just took what was dealt to him. So in my Born-on-the-Day-of-the-Outspoken-Spokesperson-May 8th frame of mind, which comes easily to me, I made the comment on Facebook saying that women need to lay off men and appreciate their good qualities instead. There was no response at first except from Fred wishing I had a sister who wasn’t taken. I didn’t check Facebook for a couple days being away in Selinsgrove for Grandma’s 90th birthday. When I did, what a lot of responses were in the thread! Some women got my point, some didn’t, and probably won’t. Some were very adamant about how wrong I was and wrote several times. I was wishing as I read the responses that I had a brilliant anecdote to share from Alison Armstrong’s relationship call that Karen and I went on a couple weeks ago. Alison Armstrong, relationship guru, talked about how a couple still can be on their honeymoon after many years of marriage, how many women are Frog Farmers and turn Princes into Frogs, and how men are just great! When I went on a website of hers and read an article she wrote I was blown away by something a friend of hers told her when she was starting her journey of balancing the feminine and masculine within herself. The friend said, “I'm not asking this for you. I'm asking you to stop castrating men because I believe when women stop castrating men, men will give us everything we ever wanted. Including peace and the end of hunger."

I have within myself this yearning to make the world a better place and many passions in which to do that: my passion for family, my passion for homeschooling, my passion of childbirth, my passion of creating a home, and most importantly my passion for you and our marriage. I have so much to share about my passion for you, and how we created a happy marriage. I just don’t know always how to go about sharing it verbally and sometimes it comes out all wrong.

All the hard work I’ve done to change how I am in the marriage came into play Saturday morning when you said you couldn’t go to Selingsgrove to see Grandma. The work emergency that kept you up all night Friday still needed you. When you said you couldn’t go it was so hard for me and I was instantly reminded of my post. “Ok Denise you better live your post and appreciate your man and not start reaming him out.” I thought of Cora and how she has been sharing her need to be a grown-up in her marriage. I too haven’t always been so grown up, wanting you to do my bidding, like a child. So I said “Okay. I’m going by myself, with Miranda and Stephen. I‘ve gotta see my brother” and got into Cape Cod mom-mode and drove the three hours on the highways with little sleep to Grandma’s house. (Uncle Dave was truly surprised that I even did it, he said.) I thought of how I can really be more than I sometimes think I can. I kept telling myself to Let it Go. Let it Be. I started to transform as I said the words and I did it and enjoyed my time with family and just let it be without trying to control every aspect. We can be the architect of our passions and our lives by getting clear about our vision, letting go of what it will look like, and taking action. Along the way the sweetest hugs and kisses are there waiting for us.

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Max Said


What you say is powerful, inspiring and wise, my love. I know it seems that writing this blog dialogue seems like a small thing and it is not always clear where it is going, but it forces me to take the time to step back and process things. I just won’t get to doing this without some form of discipline to keep me on track. I know I have been negligent recently, and I think this has been a mistake – yeah, I know things have been crazy and it has just seemed impossible, but I see the benefit to both of us in just moving forward one blog at a time.

I read some little silly quip tacked on to the end of someone’s e-mail that said, “The New Busy think 9 to 5 is a cute idea.” This really pissed me off. I have long suspected that the pressure to work more and more is part of the plot to keep the people complacent and separated. If we spend all of our time at work, we do not have any time or energy to really step back and consider why we are spending all of our time at work, who is really benefitting from our labor, and why we are not really moving anywhere in our lives. I bring this up because it has been kind of true for me over the last couple of weeks. With the extra work put into dealing with an extended crisis at work, I was left feeling drained and constantly feeling like I needed to do more work, that I was not getting it done, etc. And not taking even the small amount time out to step back and write this blog, which seems trivial, took a toll.

The other drawback to not having the time to reflect is that it makes the first step in your three step plan for being the architects of our own passions very hard. Without clarity on our vision, it’s very hard to take the next steps. That clarity can only come from finding quiet time to look within. I guess it’s important to still take some steps in the general direction of where you feel lead to go, and that’s where letting go of how you think it should look comes in to play, but it does make it harder to not have the space to get in touch with your inner guidance system.

Also, working on our relationship takes time and energy. It is time and energy that I very much want to spend with you, or doing things for you. It makes me frustrated and sad when I come up empty at the end of a particularly stressful work week.

Hmm, I guess this blog entry is basically turning into a gripe session :) Not really what I had intended.

What I do know is that I am truly grateful for you my darling wife, best friend, soul-mate, miraculous mother of our children, lover, playmate and all around favorite person in the whole world! Thank you from the bottom of my heart for being who you are.

Life Has Seasons

Max Said

Life has seasons. I am not sure where this concept came from, something we read at some point, but I am mindful of this idea as we come into spring this year. The key point that this metaphor highlights is that things are always changing. When we are at a challenging point in our lives and things seem overwhelming, it is a comfort to remember that it is the natural course of things to change. And it is my belief that focusing on positive things and growth shapes this change in a positive direction. Also, when things are wonderful, it is OK to let go of the exact details of the moment and allow for something even more incredible to come into our lives. Often by clinging to the recreation of some happy time in our lives we stifle our own growth and limit the possibilities.

We have been through quite a few seasons together and that is nice thing to have in common. We had our courtship season full of all the sweet newness of getting to know one another, our newlywed season, our growing up together season, our new parents season, our parents of two season, our parents of three season, and now I think we are in our self-rediscovery season. It is a bit of challenge, I think for us to be moving into this new season of reconnecting with ourselves while still very much being in the parents of three season. But it’s a season and it will change, and it has its own wonder and joy to be savored as well.

It is in the acceptance and enjoyment of each season as it is happening that contentment lies. Looking back at previous seasons, we often feel nostalgic for that simpler time, or some aspect of that past time. However, when in the midst of the past season we may have felt restless, frustrated and ready to move out of the season. So, although it is not always easy and I am not always able to maintain a completely positive outlook, I think it is really important to enjoy the season we are in and savor its own type of sweetness and to look at what it has to teach us. For it is out of this optimistic and grateful space that we can create the next seasons to be what will be best for our happiness and growth.

I also like this metaphor because it ties our lives to the natural world that cycles through its stunning transformations year after year. Getting out into our little backyard and taking care of it little by little, year after year is very gratifying each spring when it bursts into life a bit more beautiful for our tending and nurturing – much like our relationship and our family life.

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Denise Said


The little bit by little bit part is an idea that I’ve been mulling over lately. Only I’ve been calling it brick by brick. I remember thinking in the newlywed season that we were building a foundation for our marriage to stand upon. My figuratively-speaking vision of our marriage was to build a strong foundation. Some of the bricks were strong, and the correct brick shape, and some had cracks that we needed to either cement together again, or just take out of the foundation and replace with a new brick finally after trying things that didn’t work. The phrase “Rome wasn’t built in a day” is true. It was a process building it a little bit at a time.

As we continue to build each day, I like the seasonal reminders to see how far we’ve come. Eighteen years ago around the middle of April we conceived our first baby. When the daffodils open (or tax day arrives) this seasonal reminder of “Look how far we’ve come” or “Look at what we’ve built” emerges with those blossoms. It also reminds me of how grateful I am to not be pregnant and nauseous too, yet I have to say that even through those really difficult months tremendous growth happened for me, for us. It was a major change of season. There’s always upheaval around a season of change and it often doesn’t feel good. That’s the metamorphosis process. Sometimes it’s nice to look back from where’ve been to the here and take stock how much we’ve built brick-by-brick, little bit by little bit.

Max, it does make me happy that you are making a conscious effort to enjoy the season you are in right now, although it might be one of your more challenging ones. So much shifts in ourselves with acceptance and we enjoy the season we are in all the more.

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Partners vs Cowboys

Denise Said

I hate it when we fight, not that our stressed moment was a full blown fight like in yesteryear. Of course this tense, curt moment was about the same thing – money. I feel better, a little, knowing that money is the number one issue couples fight over. (Oprah Magazine said so anyway.) I am happy to say we have moved forward in our arguing technique and recognized its pattern and stop ourselves from going too deep into the throes of blame, yelling, and stomping off. We have been trying hard to not go into our same old pattern and I knew when I started this little fight I shouldn’t have been talking about this issue in 1) the dark 2 )lying in bed, or 3) when we’re tired. We both agreed a couple of years ago to discuss finances 1) sitting up 2) not in our bedroom, and 3) emotions checked at the door.

The next morning I was still annoyed and got up quickly and left the room. You went into your office. We had taken our corners. I sat downstairs for a while in the quiet and thought. I just let the quiet seep into me, and re-thought about my issues. I decided I needed to communicate in some way with you so I made you a cup of tea, my usual white flag, and brought it upstairs to you, said, “Good Morning. We’ll talk later.” You smiled an appreciative smile and I left, starting to feel the healing happening between us already.

We talked later that day, or else the next morning, it’s all a blur now, but we were sitting up and downstairs. I was able to say what I needed to say without blame or emotions blocking my words. You heard me and we felt like partners again instead of cowboys ready for high noon wondering who was going to be gunned down first.

Later I was reminded of something helpful that Liz Gilbert wrote in her new book Committed. She, and her then fiancé, Jose, were traveling around Bali. He was under great stress about being deported and they were awaiting news when he could come back into the States so they could get married. They started arguing on a bus and shortly into the argument Jose, a seasoned man in his 50s, said something like this to Liz. “Let’s be very careful what we say in the next few minutes. Let’s not say anything we’ll regret.” The quiet power of saying less. It gives our emotions time to settle down and our mind silence to regroup our thoughts, and reconsider what’s really important - being right or accepting each other.

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Max Said

I think our tiff is yet another great example of how we shape our own reality. On the one hand when we attempted to discuss the financial issue in front of us with charged emotions and from a perspective of being right, it was an extremely negative, divisive moment that left us both feeling isolated, misunderstood and underappreciated. When we were able to let things sit, remove the emotion and come a place of mutual acceptance, we supported each other to move through the issue and grow. The issue did not change, but our thoughts and way of being around it certainly did.

I am coming to understand that making these shifts in perspective, and coming from a place of gratitude and acceptance are at the core of a successful relationships. Indeed, these tools are also an important part of having a fulfilled and happy life. I think that when you care deeply about another person and have built the foundation of trust, gently nudging each other through these paradigm shifts is what makes a relationship not only functional but an engine for positive growth for both partners. We are blessed to have reached this point and to have this benefit.

Without a loving life partner, I would think it would be much harder to see outside one’s personal box at times. Without the mirror of your words and reactions, I would not have easily seen how I was playing out a self-sabotaging script around money. We will go much further as partners than we would as lone cowboys :)

On Being an Only Child

Max Said

We went to a baby shower for Amirah today, the latest baby addition on the Goodale side who came into the world a little on the early side. It was a small family gathering with a few additional close friends. Andy, the father, was also an only child and hearing him talk about the importance of family to him and how grateful he was to have been accepted into the Goodale clan got me to thinking about my own only-childhood.

It is indeed a bit of a lonely path being an only child. There are limits to how far a parent can fill the non-stop play needs of a young child. My mom certainly was, and still is with Stephen, one of the most accommodating and patient playmates one could imagine. But nonetheless a sibling connection is something completely different. Here is another person who can completely relate to all the same things you do and who is close enough to your age level to get into the same things you do. Especially for our family where we have created a loving and nurturing place for our kids to be happy together with sleep-sharing and just general emotional wholeness. Our kids genuinely love each other and enthusiastically relate with real interest for the others well-being. I believe school, with its emphasis on age segregation, can weaken these sibling bonds, but that’s another topic.

So not having that sibling connection as a young boy has I think left me with a certain paradoxical tendency to crave human connection, and yet also at the same to fear it. The little boy that found solace taking lengthy showers and escaping into his own little world there still sometimes comes out and keeps me in my comfort zone of isolating.

Seeing how our children relate and interact with each other makes me very happy that we did not stop with one. While each of them needs time to themselves and their own space at time, as a rule, they seek each other out for company and connection. I think this is a much healthier default way of being – to find solace, joy and happiness in connecting with another human being. The well-developed and happy sibling relationship provides the perfect proving ground for figuring out how to relate in a healthy way. It is a safe place to try things out. Often the kids’ play involves role-playing, acting out different scenarios. I think this is part of the process of practicing different kinds of human interaction as well.

Anyway, the main connection that I am coming away here for today is that my being an only child is a possible root cause for my reluctance to reach out and connect. I have never had a large group of friends. Basically, I was more or less alone with occasional play dates and one good friend that I can remember, John Thompson, until I met Fred who became a surrogate brother from 13 until 18 when I met you. From there forward, you have been my best friend.

Not sure where to go with this realization, but somehow it sheds light into my soul and makes this part of me a bit less mysterious. I am extremely grateful for my deep connection to you – our relationship has the history that makes it feel like you are the sister I never had.

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Denise Said

Let me catch my breath. I didn’t see that coming and it went directly to my heart and I am crying. A sister. You know what that means to me I am sure. Raising loving, kind children - two sisters and a brother - and watching them interact on a daily basis, and caring for them on a daily basis, has practically been my life for the past 17 years and to compare our children’s relationship as siblings to ourselves means the world to me. I take great pride in my role as mother and the choices I’ve made regarding attachment parenting. To be put into the role as a sister for a few moments given the high value I place on child-rearing is stunningly beautiful and loving. Thank you.

As we read daily about Gretchen and Jon’s struggle this past week with Gretchen’s serious illness and hospital stay, I felt there was an element of brotherly and sisterly love hovering over them as Jon never left the hospital. Sure they were acting like spouses too, yet to be so deeply connected to someone and to care for them feels more like kin.

I’m happy we decided to have more than one child too. Two women years ago warned me to not have just one, it was too lonely they both told me. There were days after we had two kids, and then three kids, that I had my doubts that this might just be the hardest thing a person ever had to do, but those doubts were short lived as watched our children dance (Stephen’s moves are crazy), laugh their loud belly laughs when they are sharing a sibling moment about the hamster or White Northern Beans that we don’t get at all, and sing to their heart’s content from Meet Me in St. Louis or Pirates of Penzance. These years are golden moments etched upon my heart and I cling to them not knowing when they might end.


I did like having a brother and sister to grow up with. To share a history with. Someone to get your life when you were a kid. Someone to share camaraderie with when parents fought. I think I took having siblings for granted though a little now reading your thoughts. They were just there. They just showed up one day. I love my siblings and when you called me your sister, deep feelings poured out of me from perhaps missing them because we now live far apart, and not under the same roof.


You and I have the history of siblings. I like that and am sorry I didn’t see it until now. I get to live with you as my best friend, be silly with you like a brother, and go to sleep with you every night as my husband for as long as we live –under the same roof.

Psychology of March

Denise Said

It’s half-past March. The Ides of March gone by and it’s officially spring as of yesterday. So far so good. I’ve had wobbly moments this month where I could have sunk into my usual late winter blues. This year I was determined though to approach the month , not fiercely dreading it, but looking forward to it, realizing it’s always been a creative time for me, despite illnesses and depressions of the past that always seemed to strike me at this time. I decided to think of myself like the earth in its last moments of winter, building up energy before bursting in bloom.

I can’t say it’s been a highly creative month except for making a few of my greeting cards and running another series of girls fertility/cycle classes (which I LOVED doing), however I have felt very healthy and happy. This week especially I felt a shift, a calmness, and a real gratitude for my life and my life with you Max. Maybe it was the 70 degree weather and sunshine and my taking the time to sit read an engrossing book, maybe it’s from being in a progesterone state of mind, maybe it was the loud, absolutely breathe-taking opera music I was listening to while driving home at night, maybe it was a peaceful moment reading to Stephen about dinosaurs and really feeling our placement on this planet in time, maybe it was from a deliciously quiet moment in a new library where I just sat and read a couple magazines. Maybe it was just my new approach to March.

The library moment gave me what I needed for today’s blog and another reason to feel grateful. When I walked into the Scotch Plains Library I wandered a little bit until I strongly felt a magnetic force pulling me to the magazine section. The first magazine I noticed, and not one that I have ever read or picked up before was Psychology Today (March/April 2010). The cover had a man and woman wearing comfy close-fitting beige underclothes doing a sort of swing embrace with the man lifting the woman in the air Fred Astaire-style - with the title The Love Fix in bold black catching my eye. I perused the magazine shelf a little more checking for Mothering Magazine, and my article, but it wasn’t there. (What’s wrong with that library? Ah…actually it might have been in the kids’ section.) So I kept perusing and found myself drawn back to the Psychology Today. I picked it up, found a cozy little odd chair and sat. I looked around me. No one was stopping me from sitting and enjoying myself. At one point a child came near and I panicked and thought “Oh no! She’s senses I’m a mother and needs my help!” But no she was just wandering my way.

I started in on the article, entitled The Expectations Trap by Hara Estroff Marano, and saw immediately why this article had found me. It was saying exactly the same things that we have been saying in our blog. Excitement struck through me! Holy Toledo! We are on the right track in our thinking about our marriage ideas. All our ideas were right there in black in white and so nicely written out by a professional writer. Max, I might let you go into more of the details, if you feel so inclined, since I think you would a better job of explaining the main points in the article. (I went out and bought the magazine two days later.) The entire ten-page article should be read by anyone in a marriage or thinking of getting married. And the photos! I loved the photos of the cover couple throughout the article stretching and twisting in different dance/yoga/gymnastic-like poses, which I think illustrated so beautifully the different aspects of the marriage dance. Sometimes we’re walking on the other person. Sometimes we’re flying out the door. Sometimes we’re in a most intimate embrace. The quote that struck me the most was this one: “Important as it is to chose the right partner, it’s probably more important to be the right partner. We focus on changing the wrong person.”

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Max Said

Unfortunately, it appears that March is messing with me instead this year :) I don’t really think this, but I am fighting some combination of a head cold and mild heat stroke I guess. Just the sudden heat and a push to finish building Stephen’s “Family Pond” I suppose. All this is to say that I a bit groggy as I sit down to write this entry.

I am very happy that you have found a different way to approach March this year. It really is true that anything in our lives is what we make it. I think your new outlook on this month is a sign of the shift you have made towards just taking ownership of your own happiness.

The Psychology Today article is a truly uncanny thing. That you would be drawn to even pick this magazine up out of the blue is enough to convince me that the universe has some plan going on here. But then to read the article and find that just about every major point in the article was mirrored by one of the blog posts we have made over the last few months sealed it for me. There are two things that I find extremely exciting and positive about these remarkable overlaps. First of all, it makes me realize that what you and I have distilled from our 20+ years of learning from and about our relationship are fundamental and universal truths about long-term committed relationships. The second is that these truths are being spoken intelligently and cogently in a major US publication.

The bottom-line conclusions that both the author of this article and we ourselves have independently reached are that having a successful relationship means dealing with our own issues and becoming conscious of the cultural messages that do not serve us so that we can make choices driven by our inner guidance systems. I believe that both of these conclusions apply to just about anything. Even March :)

I echo your excitement about the Pysch Today article and am going to recommend this as required reading to anyone that I know who is in or looking at entering a long-term committed relationship.

I am going to go before I have another sneezing fit.

Holistic Relationships

Max Said

It occurred to me recently that what you and I are good at is the maintenance of a healthy relationship. Often when I am asked for advice on relationships it is because the relationship is in crisis and I am always a bit uncertain on what to say. I can offer some pretty sound advice on what to do in order to keep yourself and your woman happy in a functional long-term relationship, but when the dishes are flying and divorce is a topic of conversation, I am not so sure of my ability to offer anything helpful.

But this line of thinking started me making connections to other areas of our lives. We approach our health in a holistic way. And at core what this means to me is that we have a great deal of faith in our bodies’ natural healing powers. We take care of the whole body with good diet, plenty of sleep, happiness and exercise (well not so much exercise over the winter :) But in addition to this there is a basic underlying assumption of wellness being our natural state. If we contrast this approach to the typical allopathic one, I think the difference is pretty striking. Medical school teaches health practitioners to search for and treat pathologies. If one approaches the body from this perspective, one is almost certain find something wrong. The myopic focus of the highly-specialized medicine that is the rule I think also contributes to this find-something-to-fix brand of health care (or sickness care really.) If some indicator related to the heart is outside of normal parameters, then it needs to be fixed regardless of how the patient feels overall. Treating this one symptom perhaps means taking a drug that has a negative effect on the patient’s –they get headaches – so this then becomes another problem to fix, and so on…

Then there is our approach to learning. On our best days, we feel relaxed and confident about just letting our kids learn what they want how they want to learn it. Again, it is a “nothing is broken” approach to things. We trust that the human animal is imbued with a natural love of learning and we just do our best to facilitate this for our kids and stay out of their way. Taking as the obvious contrasting option to this approach, let’s look at public schools. Here testing, measurement and conformity rule the day. Students battle math problems, teachers call out behavior problems, kids are medicated because they have problems concentrating, etc… More of the find-something-to-fix mindset.

So, how does this all tie into relationships? Well, I guess what I am trying to say is that maybe what really needs to be shifted here is the way we look at things. Perhaps we are creating problems by looking for them? Maybe nothing is broken? There were certainly plenty of times in our relationship’s history when things did not seem overly rosy. We had bad fights; we did not see eye-to-eye on important things and probably each thought (at least briefly) about leaving. But we have always had that core of certainty to fall back on and over time that has developed into a nothing-is-broken philosophy in our relationship. This philosophy makes everything just flow. Sure we still hit bumps, lose our tempers, have moments of despair, but they just seem to roll off pretty easily.

But, as evidenced from the couple of examples listed above, much of our culture encourages us to look at things from a problem-oriented perspective. So then the bumps, anger and despair become symptoms of a relationship that is fundamentally flawed and on its death bed. So I guess what can say to those who are having problems in their relationship is to stop looking the problems and start looking at what is good and what is working. Use the salve of gratitude for the good things to heal the discontent. Realize that we are trained and influenced by our culture to focus on the negative and with that knowledge make a different choice.

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Denise Said

Once again I amazed at your insightful and well-written post. It’s very true Max. We are a problem-oriented society. We focus on what isn’t working instead of what is. I would add also: Why not work with what you’ve already worked on so many years in a marriage relationship? I think we make the same mistakes over and over, even with another partner, unless we shift our thinking to a healthier outlook and look within ourselves to see what needs adjusting and get the right help so that both husband and wife feel empowered in the marriage.

After I did my Sterling’s Women’s Weekend and when I was involved in the Family of Women in NYC during many of the meetings the leader would always say, “If you want a healthy relationship, find a woman in a healthy relationship and do everything she says to do. Don’t question her wisdom; just do it.” Many women approached me, (yikes!)one even took me out for a drink at 3am near Gramercy Park during one of our sleep-over events to pump me for information. I never knew what to say. I was just starting to heal our marriage relationship. I was unsure of myself and my advice. My advice seemed archaic and old-fashioned and honestly from the 50s. One group leader said to me when I told her I don’t have any special magic to offer women, “What you do Denise is just a part of you. It comes easily.”

But I had learned very specific things to do in my relationship at that point and was working to implement those changes, I just wasn’t so sure of myself and whether these specific things were really going to work. But I had/have a good man, and one willing to do the dance with me of being a happily married couple. We had the initial vision of being together and enough history to stay together. So what those women were seeing in those meetings was a very new Denise, one that was teetering on stepping stones in a stream. I couldn’t really verbalize then what I was doing.

I had my sister Karen and my good friend Cora, who I spoke with often, and who were both also working on their marriage relationships and their relationships in general. These two women were the people I went to, to work out aspects in my marriage relationship that I needed help with. They told me straight what I was doing wrong and how to shift things. And I did the same for them. I now know what I’d say to someone seeking my advice because I’ve been doing it for years. It is archaic and relatively simple, and not very sleek and glamorous. Max you’ve allowed me to heal our relationship and we’ve been honest through the process. I am lucky. I am lucky in that you chose to always be willing to forgive me when I fell off the wagon and made a big mistake, like telling you you fucked up something. (Rule #1 to women – Don’t ever tell your husband they fucked up!) There’s always a better way to communicate, but it takes practice and a knowing that relationships can be healthy and holistic. We don’t have to fall into the trap that it just gets worse after the honeymoon – as several people told me on my wedding day. No broken dishes here – not on purpose anyway. xo

Tag! You're It!

Denise Said

Sex is extremely important in marriage, I believe, yet it goes through changes as the marriage evolves over time. In the beginning of a relationship, married or not, sex is very exciting, romantic, can last for hours, frequent, spontaneous, adventurous; it's new. It's exciting to get to know someone in such an intimate way. Happiness is usually part of this early sex picture too and when we put together these emotions - happiness and excitement - with sex and we mix them all up - we create a lovely imprint upon ourselves of what we expect it to always be. A joyful fun time. The imprint, while a wonderful memory, I think, hinders us and sometimes keeps us from moving forward in the ever-evolving relationship of marriage. We're expecting sex to be like it was in the beginning. The great part about being married for so long is if we work through the lulls, upsets, miscommunications, sex can get better and better and even move to a spiritual level, and not just get worse or a become a thing of the past. We've found this to be true in our marriage.

Although we've got different appetites for love making, how frequently we have it is the one aspect that we've always had to communicate about the most. The other morning, after making love late one night, (the only time for it now) I woke up and said, "Tag! You're it!" With the busy-ness of our days and life now with our kids most evenings we're so tired to do anything but give each other a goodnight kiss, if we're lucky. Through the years when we've gotten too busy to get to sex we've had to make appointments to make love. Usually we'd say to the other, "Okay by Sunday night have to get to it." Sometimes this works, but what we've found is many times we're both tired and neither of us wants to initiate love making. Who's responsible for starting all that energy? And also so late at night there isn't much left to give. However, letting it go and not making love for over a week starts to affect us and we become irritated and annoyed with the other. We get "backed up" as an old friend used to call it. We had the idea then that we should try taking turns. Whose ever turn is was had to initiate sex within the time limit agreed upon by both of us. That helped tremendously making it less of a responsibility for one of us all the time. Taking turns initiating sex keeps an element of playfulness in our marriage - like that imprint that I have from the early days. Tag, you're it honey!

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Max Said

I am always extremely grateful that we have kept our sex spark alive. It certainly has evolved into a truly amazing and fulfilling part of our relationship. A joyful and spiritual physical manifestation of the dance of balance between the masculine and feminine that a happy marriage can, and should, be.

I remain a bit puzzled about the physiological quirkiness of the male and female sex drive trajectories. When I was at my testosterone peak and fairly preoccupied with sex, I did not really have the best outlets for it. Even though we started having a physical relationship while I was at this energized age, we unfortunately had guilt about what we were doing because of our religious beliefs at the time. It took some time for me to work those negative sex associations out. And now, here we are with all the wonderful, but sometimes exhausting, commitments of parenthood in a house that feels a bit small when it comes time for us find an intimate space to make love, and you are pretty much raring to go :)

I have always been a bit self-conscious about the fact that you have tended to want to have sex more often than I did. It never seemed to jibe with most of the stories I heard from other men where the tables were pretty much always turned the other way. But I think that part of what is behind other men's obsession with sex, or their complaints about not having enough, is what you touched on - they are expecting it to be like the first blush intimacy. When things start to evolve into something different neither partner is completely sure what do to with it. The pressures of life set in and because sex is no longer the thrillingly motivating force that it was in the early days, it gets dropped out. Since we did not let this happen, largely due to your relationship management instincts and skills, I have never felt like sex was scarce and have therefore never felt the need pursue it all that aggressively.

But of course the dilemma is that you want very much to be pursued by your lover. When we have the time and space, this comes pretty naturally for me (see the Quiet Time blog post :) At home with the day-to-day busy goings on and the proximity of our close-knit family, it is a bit more of a challenge. But, as you often do, you have hit on the pragmatic answer to this with our alternating initiation roles.

Well, it's getting late, and I'm it, so signing off from the blogosphere for now.

Happiness Through Marketing Detox

Max Said

Throughout the last few months I feel like we have both been making steps towards being happier people. We just find that we are more content with where we are and are focused on being grateful for what we have, instead of wanting something else. This has been a very positive shift for obvious reasons and I feel it has freed up a great deal of energy that was previously directed to things that were not helping us grow.

You have specifically pointed out that I have made a noticeable shift in this area of late and that this shift helped you to follow suit. And I of course feel the shift as well and this has made me wonder where it came from. I guess there are probably a few reasons for the shift, one simply being that it feels better to chose to be happy and positive vs being angry and sullen :) But thinking more about the shift and why I previously "chose" to fall into darker emotions at times, it occurred to me that perhaps it has something to do with the fact that I have finally detoxified from the years of being plugged into the mass media and its constant companion, the great marketing engine.

I was far from a couch potato in terms of the level of my TV consumption, but we had network / cable TV available to us up until about 8 years ago. And of course, just living in NYC with literally stories-tall marketing messages bludgeoning your senses from every direction probably amounted to hundreds of marketing impressions a day. It was not until we just shut off the cable feed, and then a few years after this moved out to small-town Milford that I completely unplugged.

And any student of marketing will tell you that in order to sell product, you have to create a sense of need. To motivate the consumer to find happiness in the acquisition of your particular service, product or experience. And the underlying darker side of the this message is that one cannot really be happy and fulfilled without the item for sale. It is that want that really drives people, unfortunately, and therefore this is the tool of choice for the marketing folks who want to do their jobs effectively. The Rolling Stones song, (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction, came to mind as I was thinking of this:

When I'm drivin' in my car
and that man comes on the radio
and he's tellin' me more and more
about some useless information
supposed to fire my imagination.
I can't get no, oh no no no.
Hey hey hey, that's what I say.

I can't get no satisfaction,
I can't get no satisfaction.
'Cause I try and I try and I try and I try.
I can't get no, I can't get no.

When I'm watchin' my TV
and that man comes on to tell me
how white my shirts can be.
Well he can't be a man 'cause he doesn't smoke
the same cigarettes as me.
I can't get no, oh no no no.
Hey hey hey, that's what I say.

Somehow this seems to me like an anthem of our consumer culture and precisely where the great marketing engine wants us all to be.

Of course, each little ad or message is not really a big deal, but taken as a whole, as a constant, persistent and often unconscious liturgy of want that comes at us from every angle and nearly from birth, I think it's not unreasonable to make some connection between marketing and a general feeling of dissatisfaction with life. Isn't a person being truly content where one is and with what one has the marketing agency's nightmare? What if that spread?! :)

So, here's to being happily unplugged!

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Denise Said

This past week we both have made more shifts in our thought processes, almost an avalanche of great thoughts, than it seems we've made in a long time. I wonder if happiness has a snowball effect? (We have had quite a bit of snow this season - but no puns intended.) My first new thought this week was about fun and expecting that one day fun will come along and hit me over the head, and damn it, I would know it was fun! Fun will happen only in the future and when I'm having fun at that point, I will know it. I've been saving a few dollars for future fun and now I need to spend it on something I wasn't expecting to have to spend money on. We were in the tub the other night and I was sharing my disheartening feelings about spending this money on something other than fun. And you said to me, "Well, isn't going to Colorado fun?" (We're planning on visiting my sister in her new Colorado home this summer.) Your statement hit me over the head like a ton a bricks. Fun is right now. Fun can happen all the time. Fun is a perception. Yes, going to Colorado is fun. I have these expectations of how I think things are supposed to be and fun is one of them. I would tie this belief into the mass media also effecting me. The American Dream: I bought it.

The other interesting thing I learned this week, besides that according to Stephen The Beatles wrote a song entitled, "Waiting For My Ham", is something I read from Elizabeth Gilbert's new book Committed. Actually I debated long and hard whether to read her new book about marriage and finally decided to hop off my high-ego horse (I've been married for 22 years! Who does she think she is writing a book on marriage?) and give her book a try. I've put it down a few times and argued with it honestly, but was fascinated by one part towards the beginning about a culture she visited in Vietnam - the Hmong people. She interviewed the women about how they felt about marriage. She asked many of the usual questions one would think - "Where did you meet your husband? Did you know he was special right away? What do you believe is the secret of a happy marriage? Is your husband a good husband?" The grandmother and the other women just looked at Liz and didn't understand what she meant. They even laughed at these questions. (And this was not a translation issue) There was no great romantic story of how the Hmong women met their husbands. The men have their activities, the women theirs and their marriages just are. It was so simple. They didn't have expectations in their marriages. They were never taught that their husbands/wives were supposed to make each other blissfully happy. This struck me deeply. For so many years I've expected the fairy tale of Prince Charming sweeping me off my feet, feeding me chocolate, and whisking me away to some exciting place - and I have to say you did all that - chocolate Haagen Daz and New York City, but I continued to always except more and sometimes things that I couldn't even explain, but I expected you to know.

Well, I look forward to the creativity of March....it's started already my dear! (btw - Happy Birthday!)

Quiet Time

Denise Said

This weekend we snuck away for 36 hours for some quiet time - just the two of us. Two nights away are a must, you have said, so that we have all day on Saturday to decompress. Thirty-six hours is a short time but I do feel more like my old self again and that’s a treat. (I’m glad we squeezed it in before opera rehearsals start.) A French dinner out, two yummy breakfasts out, a sunny walk across Center Bridge, lunch from the farmer’s market back at the room - and no dishes, all makes me feel like a queen again – your queen. My energy is back for a while.

I love the place you chose and thank you for making the arrangements. Stockton was the perfect close-to-home-get-away. You chose Stockton and the inn there because a friend mentioned the farmer’s market in Stockton on weekends selling lots of locally-made products. I knew this would be a weekend of good food. One of your favorite things.

At the farmer’s market you were attracted to the chocolate table almost instantly. The hot chocolate (like European drinking chocolate the man said) was the best! It reminded me of your yummy chocolate custards. You had a few tastes of free chocolate nibbles and we bought a hot chocolate mix and some truffles for your birthday, which is next week. While you wandered around to peruse the many tables of delectable cheese, Rise bread, fresh meat, really amazing mushrooms, handmade alpaca socks, and greenhouse grown produce, I went and looked around at the beautiful art in the gallery next door.

It’s funny I didn’t know what to do with myself with no schedule. Free time is not a common thing right now for us. But in the middle of the quietness on Saturday I felt a great love for the life that we have created, even in all its complexities. I love our children, I love our marriage, I love our home, I love the things we do with our family. I knew the kids were fine and having a good time. I never worried about them. I missed them a little I have to admit.

We had a fireplace in our room, a first for us. You were very attracted to the fireplace, like the chocolate. Fire is an element we need more of in our life. You love to make fires in the back yard and sit a bask in the heat, you love to make a fire on the grill and cook meat. It was wonderful to feel the fire (even if it was made from one of those fake pine logs) and just sit in front of it and just be. The quiet time was wonderful. Thank you.

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Max Said

Having these quiet times are the equivalent of meditating for our relationship. In gives us the time to step back and gain perspective on where we are in our journey together, to take stock of the things that are truly important to us and to make some choices on where to put our energies so that we move toward the future we want.

Neither of us are all that good at making time for individual meditation - just does not seem like there is enough space in all the chaos and clamor that is our day-to-day life with three vibrant kids at three wonderfully different stages in their lives. Or perhaps we just don't know how to start? I am glad that we, as we usually do, make our relationship enough of a priority to at least take these little retreats for some relationship-level meditation. I think, however, each of us carving out time to pull back and find quiet on our own on a regular basis would be a worthy pursuit.

It's interesting how these times away have shifted for us over the years. Early on, they were largely focused on sex. We would have elaborate games planned, try new and experimental things, etc... But now, while the intimacy is still important and, I think, sweeter than ever, the time spent just being and soaking in each other's presence in silence is the most precious part. Being able to complete a conversation or thought, even a series of thoughts, without interruption and all the special, simple things about being just a couple again for a brief time are what nourish me the most.

And fire, yes, that is a missing element in our lives at this point. As clichéd as it sounds, these little getaways are at some level about keeping the spark in our relationship. So it seems appropriate that our little faux fires this weekend were so attractive to us. Just basking in the modest heat and watching the flames dance was both restorative and energizing. Metaphorically as well, having a bit more fire in our way of being, both individually and in our relationship would be a good thing. I think we both have smoldering desires and passions that need to get some oxygen and burst out into the world a bit more. Let's get some more candles and keep them burning to remind us!

I love you deeply and am so very grateful for our quiet time this past weekend. Let's do it again, sooner!

Un-Valentine's Day

Max Said

At some point in our history together, we sort of grew out of most of the "Hallmark" holidays.  Valentine's Day certainly qualifies as one of these, but it's heart is in the right place, as it were :)

I certainly have no issues with a holiday that celebrates love, but I guess what worries me is that it is only one day.  It places a lot of pressure on couples to create a perfect romantic moment on demand, while fighting for dinner reservations and paying inflated prices for roses.

It seems far more sensible to celebrate love every day and to allow romantic moments to happen organically.  Surprising you with a beautiful bouquet out of the blue always seems more fun and meaningful.  The very rare moment when we find ourselves actually alone at home for a few moments.  Planning a weekend trip away for just the two of us.  These are the ongoing things that we do to keep the flame burning.

I am woefully uninspired in the blogging arena tonight, so I am going make this one short.

I do love you tremendously and am glad that you are my eternal Valentine.

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Denise Said

We outgrew it, yes, but I still like it. What can I say I'm a hopeless romantic. I've always liked the idea of Valentine's Day, however as you said, I think it puts too much pressure on people to create a magical TV moment or something saccharine. I know I've fallen for it. There have been years that I was very upset because you weren't into it and then I started putting up reminder notices (on the back of the toilet) that Valentine's Day was 2 weeks away....1 week away.....2 days away....It was supposed to be funny of course, but I wonder if that it just made you feel bad. You work your best romantically without being under pressure. Isn't that true of creativity in general?

We were just talking about this today. Creativity thrives in a relaxed quiet place. What about our lives right now is relaxed and quiet -except midnight when we're exhausted? I know there will be a time again when the kids are grown when the creativity in our marriage can resume. Right now we are focused primarily on the children, our family, our work, and we squeeze us in here and there. I'm glad we've had so many years together to hold us over. You always tell me, when I worry the romance is gone, that you never worry about that and that it's always there - it just needs space and time. You're always right.

Will you be my Valentine?

The Balance

Denise Said

This weekend feels very balancing after a busy week…. or two. Yesterday’s snowstorm, finding a great sledding spot at the park, making beef stew, a splendid sunset at the mall - just the two of us (how romantic), then today sledding in the sunshine with the whole family, coming home and making apple cottage cheese pancakes served with hot chocolate, then lying down for a nap with you, all make me feel grounded, happy and balanced. The icing on the cake for me is you feeling happy and relaxed after your work week. I would love more days to be like this weekend. Can I feel this way everyday if I try to think about my days differently?

Being balanced. Finding balance. Being in balance. Balancing act. Surrendering to balance. Many days I feel out of balance from doing too much of one thing or another: juggling family activities, the house, work, the dishes, meal planning. Then there will be a day or two of rest and fun when we have time together as a family or time together alone and the scales tilt back to equal. I always feel more in balance after spending time happy time with you alone, especially at least a few hours. You are the yin to my yang.

“The Chinese yin/yang symbol portrays the equality and complementarity of the two sexes. Consisting of two fluid teardrops nestled head to heel, each half extends deep into the hemispheric territory of the other. In the head of each half is a small circle composed of the essence of its opposite; each side contains within it the seed of its reciprocal.” – Leonard Shlain from The Alphabet Versus the Goddess.

I love Schlain’s description of the yin/yang - two fluid teardrops nestled head to heel and just a dab of the other’s essence in ourselves. Male and female qualities naturally go together if we are in balance with each other. I draw upon that “essence” maleness at certain times, like when driving on 78 and I will actually say to myself: "Use your inner male Denise." I am grateful for that spark of male balancing within me. It can be very useful. However, I do believe it has been misused by women over the last century as they regain the feminine wisdom and power taken from them long ago. Women’s power lies in being feminine not being masculine. It’s time for balance again.

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Max Said

We do indeed balance each other beautifully.  I think that this is mostly due to the fact that we grew up together.  We have each supported and pushed one another to grow as human beings.  We each have an innate desire to grow and improve in order to bring something better back to the relationship, and then as a happy side-effect, to our family and to our communities.

We have both recently been noticing a new level of partnership and balance in our lives.  It feels like we have each reached a new level of maturity and inner balance and this has helped to solidify the balance in our relationship.

I honor you for swimming strongly against the tide of the feminism that looks to gain power at the expense of the masculine.  Instead you embrace your uniquely female goddess power that is creative and loving.  It is a power that is sure enough of itself that it does not need to push down or denigrate the masculine, but exists in a harmonious and functional balance with it instead.

It occurs to me that the Bible has something to say about this balance or yin and yang in what it says about marriage.  We are meant to leave our parents and cleave to each other.  The word used for "cleave" is a very strong one that implies the creation of a new single entity - the two shall be as one.  It is a symbiotic, balanced blending of man and woman that makes a truly successful relationship, like the one I am blessed to share with you!

Creating a Space

Max Said

Our living room and kitchen were transformed into a cozy performance space for 30 or so audience members and 10 performers today. Denise had her annual piano recital for her students. So we were host to parents, grandparents, siblings, aunts, uncles, etc. while kids ranging in age from 7 to 17 showcased their piano talents. It was a great success as the past two have also been. Somehow having everyone sardined in to our converted living spaces creates an air of intimacy and informality that strikes just the right balance for both performers and audience. Denise tends to debate the issue each year of whether we should keep the recital in our home, or find an alternate space for it. But I, for one, am convinced that having it in our home is what truly makes it work.

The recital in our living room highlighted something for me that I think is another key to our successful relationship. Denise and I excel at creating the right space for special things to happen. Well, truthfully, I think Denise is truly the expert at this, but I have learned from her and do have a pretty well tuned sensitivity for creating these spaces.

I need to spend some time defining exactly what I mean by creating a space. Of course, part of what I mean is literally arranging a physical space in a way that works for the intended purpose, the feng shui part, I suppose. We had to decide how to position the piano for the recital, Denise swapped out a piece of artwork that was the backdrop for the performers, and seating had to be arranged, etc. But there is a great deal more to considered about creating the right space. One of the reasons Denise keeps the recital in our home is because this is where the students come to take their lessons, so they are comfortable with the space and they are playing on the instrument they are used to. Having the recital in a home, as opposed to in a hall or church, takes it out of the realm of a rigidly judged performance and places it more in the realm of a supportive celebration of the students' accomplishments and progress. So the emotional and psychological elements of creating the space are to be considered. Then there is the way in which Denise teaches her students. She expects, and nurtures, her students to have a love for music. And it is the uniquely individual way that each student can relate to and express that love of music that really drives them to learn and practice. For me this is a great example of the most subtle but powerful way in which one create a space. It is holding out an empowering context which creates a positive possibility for someone to grow into.

So seeing how beautifully the space for the piano recital was created today on all of these levels made me reflect on how important this ability and skill is to our marriage and our parenting. By always being willing to work on ourselves and grow individually, we clear the relationship space of our personal baggage. By building on a foundation of absolute trust, we have created the space for a depth of intimacy that I don't think many people experience. And I think the best summary I can come up with for our parenting and teaching philosophy is that we do our best to create the space that encourages each of our children to blossom into the miraculous beings that they desire to be.

So, how does one go about creating these spaces? Well, for me, the answer is simply love. If I care deeply about someone, or something that I am doing, I am naturally empowered and drawn to creating the space which best serves that person or undertaking. Certainly there are other skills involved, like listening carefully, empathy, and listening to one's own heart, but at the core following love creates the spaces that make us thrive.

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Denise Said


Creating a space for love. Wow - very powerful, yet so simple my dear Max. I am always in awe at how you put things.

This reminds me of when we first started making the time, or creating the space, as you so nicely put it, to get away together on a regular basis. Making our relationship important and not lost in the day-to-day shuffle of our family life and our work lives is creating space for love to thrive. Love really does need space. For some reason our culture expects love and relationships to thrive all on their own, but honestly how can they? We as individual people are always evolving and changing as we grow older; learning more, changing habits, losing hair (or going gray) becoming wiser in certain ways, so it would make sense that our relationships therefore are always evolving. One easy way to nurture that evolving marriage relationship is to create a space - 10 minutes sitting over tea alone. Sometimes that's all we get in our week Max. Some weeks we'll find the space for an hour walk along the canal, or dinner in a quiet restaurant, or a racy few hours alone in hotel, or the most fulfilling - a weekend (or dare I dream week?) away with the phones turned off - and checked once in awhile for important messages.

It's been important for us to get away by ourselves for a weekend to remember "us" and to create a space where we can rekindle, remake, revisit whatever needs to be tended and nurtured. We discovered this 11 years ago, or so, when we snuck away to a hotel for a few hours. Just having those few hours to ourselves, having made the space - a sacred space in a way - made all the difference. Those few hours set a precedence - to make a space for us. It wasn't going to happen on its own. (It's lovely when it does surprisingly happen on its own once in awhile. ) When we first met we made the time to go places, take walks, talk, write to each other and surprise the other. This was creating a space. It fed us. It's brilliant actually to now have a phrase to use when I'm in need of having time with you. Creating the space for love.

Our relationship and love doesn't always need lots of time but it does need consistent time and space, even a moment in the day when I give you a look and tell you you're the best thing to ever happen to me. Or you say some quirky funny thing to make me laugh. This has all come about from years of having created time for each other. I'm not sure why this gets lost when people get married. We have much to share.

Luck had nothing to do with it.

I love this phrase "Luck had nothing to do with it!" It's one that Max has used when people have said that Max and I were lucky to have found each other as mates. I've even said many times I am lucky to have Max as a husband. But I do think he's right though that luck had nothing to do with it. It's been many years in the the making. Years of learning, re-adjusting, losing my ego in the relationship, and hard work. It's not magic, yet magic begins to occur again, like in the early days of a courtship, once a couple reaching a level of committment and acceptance for the other.


First of all I remember at 16-years-old really getting clear about what kind of boyfriend/husband I wanted. (Wow! That seems very young to me now.) There were certain qualities he had to have. He had to be kind and gentle - those two were the most important. He had to love me dearly, and also think I was beautiful. Beyond that he could be whoever he was. I even wrote down these qualities and how old this man should be, our wedding date, and I stuck that paper in a drawer and forgot about it for years. I found it not too long ago, and astonishingly it had all happened as I had written it down, even to the date of the wedding. (well I had the year wrong)The Law of Attraction really works, quite amazingly. Something I need to always remember.


We met when I was 16 and Max was 18 at a festival in PA. He came up to the blanket I was sitting on and said, "Are you Denise?" I saw immediately in his eyes that I knew him from a different time. This young man was person I had been looking for. He didn't quite get it as quickly as I did but somewhere in him he must have felt it too because he held my hand that very same night on the walk back to the group campsite. It felt very right.


It took 4 years of growing and dating before we got married. That was a sweet time as well as a conflicting time too. There were many expectations of what we should and should not be doing. College was one of them, but that is another story.


Getting married and moving to New York City began the next crossroad. I would be lying if I said we never fought. There were terrible fights and patterns that we got into. Control issues, many mine. Luckily we waited to have a baby. We waited 5 years into the marriage. I wanted the baby. Max wasn't so sure about the whole idea. Let me tell you - you better have a lot of your shit together before having a baby because otherwise it really comes out under the stress. It's no longer him and me; it's three.


So our marriage continued, still having the same arguements and patterns, but less frequently with a baby keeping us busy. Basically we were happy, but there were those moments that didn't make sense until I started learning more about relationships. I was doing a lot of things wrong I learned. I did a women's weekend with Justin Sterling, of the Sterling Institute of Relationship, and worked with women to start healing and transforming my marriage relationship. I had women to go to now with my complaints  - not my husband. No one wants to hear nagging about things you don't like about them. This is where the acceptance part started coming in.Interestingly I began to understand that the relationship is an entity unto itself. It doesn't thrive unless it is taken care of. We all find it easy to care for the relationship in the beginning when it is new, but it withers and dies if not tended. Marriage consists of three parts - the husband, wife and the marriage itself.


I've been fine-tuning my relationship with Max ever since that women's weekend in 2000. Sometimes sticking my foot in my mouth and saying the absolute wrong things still, but I am getting better at nurturing my marriage and more and more say the right things or NOTHING AT ALL. It's not luck. It's not magic. It's like gardening and I'm tending to the marriage to best of my ablility in each moment.

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I am the Luckiest...

Sorry, could not resist the counterpoint in the title... That Ben Folds song always makes me think of you, Denise.


What strikes me most about your post is how clearly it comes across that the success of our marriage is an excellent example of how the universe is meant to work for us. So, while we have been blessed in many ways throughout our relationship, we get credit for recognizing the blessings and taking action to follow the lead of those blessings.

Although, as you say, I was slower on the uptake in terms of knowing that we were destined for one another, we both remember the shared late night moment of absolute clarity when we knew that we were going to be together for the rest of our lives. There was so much certainty and simplicity in that realization. I always refer back to that moment as the perfect example of thought creating reality. It was simple, clear, absolute and filled with overwhelming joy. In short, it had all the most powerful elements of creative thought.

We say in the men's circle that absolute freedom is having no choice. Knowing that we had each found the one person that we were looking for as a lifetime partner so clearly so early on in our story gave us the freedom to pour ourselves without reservations into making our relationship flourish. This was the taking action part on following the blessing of that divine certainty. We received an inspiration, but we also did the hard work to make that inspiration and ongoing reality.

And, if I step back and look at our ongoing story, I can see the little signposts along the way to help us stay on track. The people we met that provided insights into our own ways of being, the experiences that these people led us both to, etc... The Sterling work was certainly a big one that has helped to put practical understanding and tools in our hands for shaping and nurturing our relationship.

I love the metaphor of tending a garden. While the process by which seeds become the fruits they were meant to be is full of all the mystery of the universe, it is the very simple, earthbound work of caring for the garden that provides a space for the plants to flourish.

And this carries through very well into how we have approached parenting - we provide the space and all the basic things that our children need to flourish into the beautiful creatures that they were each meant to be - but how exactly that happens and what they will become is a wonderful mystery.

Probably much more to be said on this topic, but I really wanted to bring out this one point. I hope we can both truly embrace how powerful the creative thought that began our journey together was and apply this lesson to continue to expand ourselves and our relationship into the beatiful, majestic and fruitful tree of life that it is and can be.