Perplexed But Devoted

Estimated reading time: 14 minutes, 46 seconds

Jan Surprises Me
But Love Never Dies

“Richard, there is a call for you on line three. It is your wife.” Hearing the voice from the other room caught my attention. In two months, Jan and I would celebrate four years together, and I had never gotten a call at work from her. When I had interviewed for this job at St. Nick’s, Jan had almost left me. Hopefully, she is not calling me to say she changed her mind. I stopped talking to my co-workers and walked to the closest phone.

“Hello, my love,” I stated with passion as I picked up the phone. 

“I’m thrilled! They offered me the job!”

I had forgotten she was attending a job interview today, but I quickly regained my composure. 

“Congrats! That is wonderful news! I am so happy for you.

“There is a question I need to ask you.”

I said OK but began to wonder what question she would ask me. 

“The salary they offered me is a few hundred dollars a year higher than yours.”

“That is not a problem. What is the question.”

“The interviewers said I should ask if you are OK if I make more than you do.”

“I have no problem. We are married, and all that matters is our combined income.

“Are you sure? The team interviewing me said many men are unhappy if they are not the primary wage earner.”

“I do not know what other men would say; I am your husband, and it is not a concern.”

Jan persisted in asking the question differently, and I kept answering the same way. 

“Why don’t we celebrate tonight when your class is over,” I suggested to shift the conversation. 

Jan agreed, and I told her I loved her and ended the conversation

Standing at my desk, I was perplexed. After almost four years, how could Jan presume I was an average man who would be upset if my wife made more money?


Next Page


Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6

12 comments add your comment

  1. Excellent story…I never heard of any couple making almost the same salary!!

    Funny and sad story, but I enjoyed it!!

    • Thanks, Hugo, for your comment.

      Jan and I chose similar work focused on repairing the world. As a result, our salaries were both modest. That we ended with wages almost the same at the end is not all that surprising. If Jan had lived and continued to work at the YWCA for the last two years, her total compensation would have surpassed mine.

      I agree that the story, like life, is humorous and sad simultaneously. I write from my heart, and the articles reflect the complexity of the lives Jan and I lived and how life is complicated.

      The love that Jan and I shared will never die.

      In closing I wanted to share share a poem from Evergreen by Kirsten Robinson. Her poems are a tribute to the enduring resilience of human nature as we cycle through times of light and darkness, much like nature itself.

        Give thanks for all
        that is good and beautiful;
        the gifts you carry
        people who lift you up
        your big, big love
        faith and trust that your life
        is unfolding as it should

        Give thanks for all
        that has been difficult and hard;
        trials tribulations tears
        tests of self strength fears
        all of the unknowns and days
        that broke you

        Without the darkness
        you would not have
        learned to appreciate the light

      Thanks for your friendship and support.

Share your thoughts and ideas

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Previous Post:

Next Post:

The Jan Lilien Education Fund!

Neruda on the Park: A Novel

Read: May 2023

Get this book

Neruda on the Park: A Novel

by Cleyvis Natera

Neruda on the Park is a novel by Cleyvis Natera that beautifully depicts the complexities of family, friendship, and ambition. The story highlights the community’s efforts to protect their neighborhood amidst the gentrification and the tension between a mother and her daughter.

The Guerreros have lived in Nothar Park, a Dominican neighborhood in New York City, for twenty years. When a neighboring tenement faces demolition, Eusebia, an elder of the community, takes matters into her own hands and devises a series of increasingly dangerous schemes to halt the construction of luxury condos. Meanwhile, Eusebia’s daughter, Luz, a rising associate at a Manhattan law firm, becomes distracted by a passionate romance with the handsome white developer working on the project her mother opposes.

As Luz’s father, Vladimir, designs their retirement home in the Dominican Republic, mother and daughter clash, escalating tensions in Nothar Park and leading to a near-fatal climax. Overall, Neruda on the Park is a captivating story that weaves a rich, vivid tapestry of community and sacrifice to protect what matters most.


The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.

Subscribe

Contact Us

I receive a commission when you buy a book or product using a link on this page. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.



×
Piranesi

Read: May 2022

Get this book

Piranesi: A Novel by Susanna Clarke

by Susanna Clarke

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke is about a man known as Piranesi who lives in a big house and explores the labyrinth of rooms and hopes of understanding the meaning. Is it any surprise that I would pick this book as my thirtieth of the year? As a widow, I journal and journey in a life I did not expect to live, and I still believe I will find meaning and purpose. 

In addition, a labyrinth is one of the options we have discussed for the next phase of the work in Hanson Park.

Piranesi is a page-turner, but that does not fully describe the beauty of the world that Susanna Clarke created. I highly recommend this book as it is one of my best this year. 

The Goodreads summary provides an overview of Piranesi by Susanna Clarke.

Piranesi’s house is no ordinary building: its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls are lined with thousands upon thousands of statues, each one different from all the others. Within the labyrinth of halls an ocean is imprisoned; waves thunder up staircases, rooms are flooded in an instant. But Piranesi is not afraid; he understands the tides as he understands the pattern of the labyrinth itself. He lives to explore the house.

There is one other person in the house—a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known.

For readers of Neil Gaiman’s The Ocean at the End of the Lane and fans of Madeline Miller’s Circe, Piranesi introduces an astonishing new world, an infinite labyrinth, full of startling images and surreal beauty, haunted by the tides and the clouds.


Subscribe

Contact Us

When you buy a book or product using a link on this page, I receive a commission. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.

×
The Houseboat

Read: February 2023

Get this book

The Houseboat: A Novel

by Dane Bahr

The Houseboat: A Novel by Dane Bahr was one of 6 New Paperbacks to Read This Week in The New York Times. Miguel Salazar of the Times described it as “A girl claims her boyfriend has been murdered outside a small town in Iowa, and although no body is found, collective suspicion lands on a loner who lives in a rotting houseboat along the Mississippi River. Through chapters that shift in perspective and move through time, Bahr builds to a nail-biting denouement.”

Edward Nese, the regional marshall from Minnesota, was a character that I could identify with, as he was widowed but still married. Of course, in the early 1960s, I was still a middle school student and would probably have been freighted by The Houseboat

I recommend this true crime novel. Until the last page, you will be unsure how it will end.

After reading non-fiction history about the assassination of President Garfield, I needed a change of genre.

The Goodreads summary provides an overview,

James Sallis meets Mindhunter in this stylish and atmospheric noir set in a small town in Iowa in the 1960s, a midcentury heartland gothic with plentiful twists and a feverish conclusion.

Local outcast Rigby Sellers lives in squalor on a dilapidated houseboat on the Mississippi River. With only stolen manikins and the river to keep him company, Rigby spirals from the bizarre to the threatening. As a year of drought gives way to a season of storms, a girl is found trembling on the side of the road, claiming her boyfriend was murdered. The nearby town of Oscar turns its suspicions toward Sellers.

Town sheriff Amos Fielding knows this crime is more than he can handle alone. He calls on the regional marshall in Minnesota, and detective Edward Ness arrives in Oscar to help him investigate the homicide and defuse the growing unrest. Ness, suffering from his demons, is determined to put his past behind him and solve the case. But soon, more bodies are found. As Ness and Fielding uncover disturbing facts about Sellers, and a great storm floods the Mississippi, threatening the town, Oscar is pushed to a breaking point even Ness may not be able to prevent.


The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.

Subscribe

Contact Us

I receive a commission when you buy a book or product using a link on this page. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.



×
Keepers of the House

Read: May 2021

Get this book

The Keepers of the House

by Shirley Ann Grau

The Keepers of the House by Shirley Ann Grau is a book that I read a portion of for a college class, but for reasons that I cannot now remember never got around to reading it from cover to cover. In the early stages of grief, I found a copy in our bookshelf and said, let me read it now. It was a decision that I did not regret.

Having grown up in the American South, the book resonated with me, as did the sections I read fifty years ago. It’s a many-layered indictment of racism and rage that is as terrifying as it is wise.

As someone who likes history and values the importance of place, the book’s focus on the continued ownership of the same land since the early 1800s by the Howland’s provided a broad historical perspective. Abigail Howland has learned many important family legacies, but not all.

However, when William’s, her grandfather, relationship with Margaret Carmichael, a black housekeeper, is revealed to the community, the racism and fury boil over. Abigail chooses to get even with the town her family built by punishing them.

The Keepers of the House is a book that I wish I had read in its entirety half a century ago. Having read it now, I recommend it to all who care about life and community.

Subscribe

Contact Us

×
Trouble the Saints

Read: January 2022

Get this book

Trouble the Saints

by Alaya Dawn Johnson

Trouble the Saints by Alaya Dawn Johnson is one of NPR’s Books We Love from 2020. The dangerous magic of The Night Circus meets the powerful historical exploration of The Underground Railroad in this timely and unsettling novel, set against the darkly glamorous backdrop of New York City at the dawn of WWII. Amidst the whir of city life, a girl from Harlem is drawn into the glittering underworld of Manhattan, where she’s hired to use her knives to strike fear amongst its most dangerous denizens.

The book is written in three sections with different protagonists and voices. Phyllis, or Pea as her friends call her, is a black assassin for a white mob boss narrates the first section of the book. Her saint’s hands are the ability to use knives to commit murder. She can also pass as white as Phyllis, but she is a black woman from Harlem as Pea. The section she narrates is difficult at first to follow as she attempts to deal with the consequences of her actions. Can the past ever be the past?

Dev, Indian and Phyllis’s lover, narrates the second section. He is an undercover cop who protects her and helps her free herself from the mob boss. This section is located in the Hudson Valley and highlights the tensions before the war between whites and non-whites.

The third protagonist, Tamara, narrates this section. The war separates Phyllis and Dev. Phyllis is pregnant, and Dev and Tamara’s love interest are serving in the military. This section brings together the threads and reminds us that the past is never the past.

As Goodreads summarizes the book,

But the ghosts from her past are always by her side—and history has appeared on her doorstep to threaten the people she loves most.

Can one woman ever sacrifice enough to save an entire community?

Trouble the Saints is a dazzling, daring novel—a magical love story, a compelling chronicle of interracial tension, and an altogether brilliant and deeply American saga.

I recommend this book and encourage all readers to read it to the end.

Subscribe

Contact Us

When you buy a book or product using a link on this page, I receive a commission. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.

×
The Sorrow Apartments

Read: June 2024

Get this book

The Sorrow Apartments

by Andrea Cohen

Today, I explored “The Sorrow Apartments,” the eighth collection of poems by poet Andrea Cohen. Renowned poet Christian Wiman accurately describes Cohen’s work as a “cumulative force,” showcasing her deep attention, genuine intelligence, and soul. Cohen’s distinctive talents are featured in this collection, complemented by her characteristic sly humor, unwavering conciseness, and surprising moments of profound wisdom.

It’s astonishing how swiftly Cohen transports us:

Bunker

What would I
think, coming

up after
my world

had evaporated?
I’d wish

I were water.

The Sorrow Apartments house a collection of sparse and haunting poetry, each piece a captivating narrative of mystery, grief, and awe. These poems transport us not just across time but also through a spectrum of emotions. Cohen’s unique approach to illumination is evident in “Acapulco,” where an unanticipated companion muses, “as men tend to, / the stars comprising Orion’s belt — / as if it were the lustrous sparks and not / the leveling dark that connects us.” For a poet often deemed unfashionable, Cohen’s work proves that unfashionable can be beautiful.

×

Discover more from Sharing Jan’s Love

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading