Teaming Up

Chris and I used to say we were always on each other's teams. It started when we adopted a couple of pups when we were still in college and grad school. "Tag, you're it," we'd say as we handed leashes and balls of fur to one another on campus. We worked together to schedule which classes would allow a puppy to tag along, where and when we could meet up and who was going home first to be able to feed them. Next we trained for a marathon together, motivating one another to get up and run, come home and run, get off the couch and run. We had fun living life in a tangled way of constantly interacting, seeing one another and keeping track of what the other was doing so we could coordinate our next event which would be together. In the mountains we would carpool over the snowy roads, Chris volunteered for the organization I was working for, we played adult league dodge ball, and coached a soccer team. We were each other's team, rooting and playing with one another.

Living in the suburbs with Chris comfortable at work and myself comfortable at home was fun, it was easy, and we had a great house, but we were not working "together" nearly as much. We started to have defined roles and we weren't necessarily having to work with one another as much. Life together seemed a little more like Chris living his life, me living mine and at the end of the day we could come together and chat about it. Family dinners and birthday parties were still coordinated, but it was easy to go our separate ways for the majority of the day and then collapse in front of a show at the end of the day not really knowing how the other one had just spend the past 10 hours. I think we have always had a strength in letting the other one know that we appreciate what they are doing, but we weren't nearly as cognizant of what that was throughout any given day. I knew that Chris worked hard to provide financially and Chris knew that I worked hard at managing the house, but details were lost in the tiredness that comes at the end of the day and the lack of excitement in sharing what it feels like to work in an office or manage a family's schedule.

When I was researching full time RV'ing, I kept coming across forums that would talk about how living like this would effect a marriage. What would it do to two people who were living on top of one another all day? The general consensus followed along with common sense and was that if you already felt like a house was too small, things would get pretty hard pretty quickly and yet if you genuinely liked being around one another relationships tended to grow.

Over the past two months I feel like we have joined hands and I have my best friend back on my team. I look at him with awe that he can keep this schedule he has created. Waking earlier than any of us to start his day as his site is two time zones ahead. He lets me know how much fun it is to be around the kiddos and I as he works outside and listens to our various conversations or watches us do our projects around the camp site. Dog walks are coordinated again as it's the way our two old pups get their exercise. Chris' travel schedule has been a constant conversation for us as we figure out good camp sites to be in, how to get back and forth to the airport with one car, and we touch base a lot when he is gone as he wants to know how we are faring wherever he has left us. It doesn't sound exciting, but it has allowed us to become involved with one other's daily rhythm of life again. We have such appreciation for what the other is doing and we are starting to fully understand just what it is that we each bring to the table. The good, the hard, the monotony...we are living our lives together and we are so happy to find ourselves on the same team again.