Why marriages fail…

Wedding season is finally over. April showers brought may flowers that were thrown at June, July and August’s weddings.

Weddings are such big business these days. On the We! Channel I watch shows about the dress, the cake, the crazy bride and even the guys who plan the reception. Barely anybody does a low-key wedding anymore. Everyone is looking to have something no one else has or has even considered. And we all know the very sad statistic that 50% of all marriages end in divorce. But why do those marriages end, what is the first fissure that ends up cracking the entire union. My theory is that it begins with the wedding song. Most of these songs that herald in the couple as Mr. and Mrs. Stupidly-in-Love is a precursor of how things will end up.

For example, on Wuderlist’s Best Love song list, the number one song is, Open Arms, by Journey. Sounds like a great song because he is finally here with his arms open…obviously he is there with open arms because she already left him once and as a co-dependant woman, she’s back for more! Trust me, those arms won’t be open for very long.

Another one on the list is Something, by the Beatles. She’s asking him if his love will grow, his response is, “I don’t know, but stick around and let’s find out.” Hey bub, if you don’t think that the passing years, babies and a mortgage and all the other ups and downs of life won’t make your love for this long-suffering woman grow…then you should probably go now.

One more, and one of my favorites, Van Morrison’s Someone Like You. Basically, he is looking for someone exactly like you…not you, but someone like you. Can you imagine the poor bride dancing with her new husband when she finally figures out that he wanted someone like her…maybe her sister…total devastation.

John Bon Jovi, hot and sexy as he is, sings a lot of co-dependant songs. Namely, I’ll be There For You, where he wants to be the air I breathe and the water I drink. Good gracious! Give a girl some space.

Howard Jones sings, “I'm not eating I'm not sleeping this tension this worry
You don't call you don't write me
I need your love in a hurry
Teach me, Reach me, Meet me, Beat me,
Tease me, Please me,
Come and seize me,”
YIKES is my only response.

Some of the songs are obviously co-dependent just by the titles:
"How Am I Suppose To Live Without You?" - Michael Bolton
"I Am Nothing" (If I Don't Have You) -Whitney Houston
"I Fall To Pieces" - Patsy Cline
"If I Can't Have You" - Yvonne Elleman

Groups from the late 70’s and early 80’s seemed to have only written co-dependent songs, for example:

Chicago – You’re the Inspiration, If You Leave Me Now, and Hard Habit to Break.

Basically, I don’t want any one woman to be any man’s EVERYTHING. I don’t want to be responsible for your happiness nor do I want to fulfill your every need. That’s why we get on with life after the honeymoon. Go make some friends, go golf with the guys and the come home and tell me about it, but don’t make me be your only friend.

To make my point, I asked my Facebook Friends what their love songs were. Here’s part of the list:

- All The Way" by Frank Sinatra
- True Companion by Marc Cohn
- All I Ask of You (from Phantom of the Opera)
- When a man Loves a woman" by Percy Sledge

When I checked the lyrics on these songs they were all about sharing life and love and giving all of yourself so someone because a marriage is not 50/50 but 100/100. How do I know this works? These songs came from people who have been married for over 10 years, most closer to 20.

And what about me, you ask, what’s our song? Well, the song that was “Our” song with my first husband was Time in a Bottle, by Jim Croce. A somewhat co-dependant song in the fact that I don’t want to spend every single day from August 26, 1989 til eternity with anyone. I need more interaction than that…Of course, he spent more time in a Vodka bottle than he did with me, so the point is moot.

My current husband,and best friend, and I have two songs. The Good Stuff, by Kenny Chesney and Home, by Alan Jackson. Both songs talk about the hard stuff married people go through, but love each other anyway; we are each other’s home. It may not be expansive and filled with fine furniture, but wherever we are, that’s home.

Now, please don’t take this personally…it’s just a silly blog. No matter what your song is, you picked it for a reason that’s special to you and you shouldn’t let me ruin that for you. But, if you find yourself living your life only to fulfill someone else’s life, then you should probably start singing a different tune.

Music to my ears...

I’m on the couch, again, while he is lying in my bed making the most God-awful noise. It’s not a gentle snore, but a reverberation that comes from deep in the back of his throat. It’s impossible to fall asleep next to him. I always love the bedtime ritual of wrapping our arms around each other just to feel each other breathe. When I place my head in the pit of his shoulder, I can hear his heart beating and feel like I’m almost inside of him, like we are one breath. But then he infuriates me by falling asleep so fast and commences with that ragged sound. It seems like he can fall asleep as soon as his head hits the pillow, while I struggle with insomnia all night long. I assume that he has no worries, has no stress. He’s at peace with his life. His brain goes quiet while his mouth roars on.




When he wakes up in the morning it’s as if he’s shot out of a cannon. He needs no alarm because he can wake up at whatever time he tells himself he needs to the night before. I can hear him whistling when he gets out of the shower. It’s like a bird from “Snow White” has flown into our bathroom. I, on the other hand, fell that morning should not come before noon. Sometimes his jovial mood annoys me, but most of the time I just accept it for what it is; the sign of a man happy in his own skin.



There are other times, on the weekends or at the end of the day, when the sounds coming from my living room are those of children being tortured. I’m quite sure the neighbors wonder if they should call Social Services for all of the “Owws,” “Don’ts!” and “Stops,” Being screamed from my children. But along with the shouts of “Mom! Help!” are the never ending giggles and he tickles them or hugs the air right out of their lungs. There used to be Saturdays and Sundays filled with football games in the front yard. But now they plan on him being the designated chaperone while they attend some screamy, all-day concert in a dusty field. Some nights they all disappear for a movie in the park. At first, the chaos made me crazy. Our home had been so quiet until he came along and now it’s filled with cries of joy, laughter, and an abundance of love. I never knew love could be so loud. I realize now that what my children needed was a man who knew how to have fun and would ask them to join him.



When it comes time to talk about work ethic, grades, chores and the allowance they won’t be getting again this week, everyone gets stormy and upset. He is calm, but firm with them. He never forgets a punishment, nor does he forget a job well-done. He’s quick with discipline as well as with praise. He treats my children as if they were his own. Even though we now have babies that we share together, no one can tell by his behavior that the first three are not his. He’s ruggedly dark and handsome where they are fair and blond. Most people just say that they favor me, where the babies favor him. The average stranger is surprised to find out that the older children come from a different father. “he loves them so…” they say. “I can tell your son loves his father,” the quip. Little do they know, my son actually has no feelings for his father, but adores and respects his step-dad.



Speaking of steps, the most amazing sound I ever heard from him was when he responded to a question my daughter asked upon the birth of our child. She asked, “Is Lina my step-sister, or my half-sister?” His response was, “There are no steps or halves in this family. Lina is just your sister.”



We are an unconventional and noisy family and he is our conductor. I like his music much better than any music I have ever heard.

By way of introduction…


Having a big family is like cooking a frog. If you put a frog in boiling water, he’ll jump out to save his life. But, if you put him in a pot with room temperature water and slowly bring it to a boil, he has no idea what’s coming until it’s too late. That’s sort of what happened to me. I had one baby and he was cute, so I had another and she was cute and so it goes….and now it’s today, and I have five kids ranging in age from 4 up to 19 and they aren’t so cute anymore.

Yeah, go ahead and read that again….5 children and they’re driving me nuts

They are either pitching fits because they can’t go where they want to go when they want to go or they have found a new lifestyle that I am supposed to embrace and love and support, no matter how cockamamie it sounds to me.

So, I decided to go see the doctor to see what kind of medicinal therapy I can get to help me deal with these ankle biters.

So, while I am waiting in the waiting room, I spot an adorable, clean baby smiling up to its perfectly helpful non-rival of a three year old older sibling on a magazine cover. Parenting magazines lure me in with titles like, Tips for School Age Kids. Well, this was looking like a good day for research and development in the Wood/Keith Family lab.

When reading any book or article, I start by reading about the author. I like to know who I am getting advice from, unless I am in the produce department at the grocery store and I can’t tell which melon is ripe and which one needs a few more days, then I’ll take advice from anyone. Anyway, I look at the pictures of the article authors and all of them have perfect hair, smudgeless make-up and ironed shirts without spit-up, snot or spaghetti sauce stains on them. This immediately puts me on edge. I haven’t had perfect hair since I did it all up nice before I went to the hospital to have my first child. I wanted to be sure that I looked all put together for the pictures we would take before, during and after the miracle of birth. But after the pitocin started flowing and the contractions started coming…I didn’t give a damn about my hair. In fact, all I wanted to do was to waddle out to the dumpster so I could get rid of Satan’s Spawn and start over again with the beautiful experience I had been promised.

Needless to say, these women didn’t even look like they had even showed up for the job of labor, delivery and continued devotion to irrational children.

But, I am willing to give anyone the benefit of the doubt. You can’t judge a book by its cover (even though I do it all the time), so you cannot judge an author by their picture. I then go on to read the bios. All of them have PhDs from high profile schools. How do you learn about raising children by reading a book and listening to a lecture. But again, who am I to judge? I mean, I was trying to learn by reading a free magazine. I wasn’t even willing to invest in the experience by buying the rag.

I continue reading. One of the Princesses of Pristine has only ONE child who is six months old, while another is blessed with 5 year old twins…only TWO of God’s Sweet Spirits. What kind of experience is that? I was looking for a wrinkled old sage who had never lost a child in the Wal-Mart. I suspect these Wonder Women have nannies. I doubt any of these women had ever even gotten one spec of poop under their perfectly manicured fingernails.

I thought things couldn’t get any more desperate but they did. All of the articles were geared towards the wrong age groups. They covered infants and toddlers. Mine are all out of that stage. Which brings me to another point…since when is a 2 yr old considered a “school-age child?” Two year olds don’t go to school. They go to day care to play, have snack and take a nap on a mat. If that was school, I’d still be there today.

Then they move onto Pre-School age kids, of which, I have two. But my two are not twins and they are not separates. They are more like a sweater set. Not good on their own, and really hot when put together. The articles solutions for bad behavior were things like time-out. Time out doesn’t work at my house because while I am putting one in time-out, the other one is half-way down the street without her panties on! When I run out to get that one, the other one is trying to make popcorn by putting the popcorn in the microwave without taking the plastic wrapping off. So, I skipped those articles.

On to the Tween. One of my sons is 13. I don’t know if that makes him a teen or a tween. I don’t even know what a tween is. He is adorable and sweet and wants to be just like his older brother and sister. Obviously, if I can get those two straightened out, the 13 year old is covered. So I skip that article.

There were no other articles. According to Parenting Gurus, kids are perfect by they time they hit 15. There’s no more need to raise them. I couldn’t find one article that told me how to handle a love-sick, hormonal irrational 17 year old girl or a 19 year old boy who isn’t ready to move away from home, but is ready to be free of familial responsibilities..

The nurse calls my name. I follow her to the backroom where she asks me to step on the scale…oh forget it. I turn around to leave realizing all I need is a vacation that includes an all you can sleep buffet. But since I am the butcher, baker and candlestick maker in my home, I will just settle for some Ben & Jerry’s.