Aha, I thought. Margaret’s and my cultural differences were small, but mighty. Perhaps the return of our disputes was due to my Canadian expat lifestyle in California, which—while a great fit for my professional interests—might be keeping me from being fully present in my American family life. If I could better integrate myself into the California community—as I’d managed to do in North Carolina—then the pieces of my family life would fall back into place.
Two years and several arguments later, Margaret suggested that we hire a marriage counselor to get to the bottom of our ongoing disagreements. Our counselor, Larry, insisted on being paid in cash and sat shoeless in his easy chair with stocking feet poking up from an ottoman. He dispensed advice in an off-putting manner, throwing out theories piecemeal as they popped into his head. Yet despite his flaws, Larry had a knack for reframing our disputes in ways that made us think.
When I shared my longtime worry that buying a cottage nearby might eat up vacation time that I could have used to visit Canada, Larry pushed back.
“You’re past oriented, while Margaret is future oriented,” he observed. “Maybe you’re not worried about losing Canada at all. Maybe you’re really worried about losing your past—and your father.”
Larry had a point. I did often dwell on the past, reading history books and researching genealogy. And recently I had been fretting about my dad, who had fallen ill with Alzheimer’s disease. Meanwhile, Margaret knit sweaters for babies who weren’t born yet and bought furniture for a vacation home that hadn’t yet been built. Larry helped me see that Margaret’s eye on the future and my lens on the past were complementary. My hindsight imbued our family with meaning, while Margaret’s foresight equipped us for an uncertain future. As my mom used to say, our family was better off with roots and wings.
Larry also set me straight when I shared my hunch that Margaret and I hadn’t been communicating as well in California because my immersion in an expat Canadian community had revived my Canadian nostalgia. Might our communication challenges improve if I socialized across a broader swath of the local community?
“You’re forgetting that Margaret was home with the kids in North Carolina, while you worked full time,” Larry offered. “Now she’s got the bigger job and you’re taking on more at home. Maybe you’re feeling more testy around Margaret now because you feel less in control of the relationship.”