Meetings and Marriage: Learning New Ways

My relatives going to [a] meeting in the 1800s. Time for an update.

Gumdrops. The details are now a bit hazy, but I think that’s what I brought with me. Although it might have been M&Ms. The point was, small edible items that came in many colors. Alas, after the planning exercise, they’d all been fingered too much to bother eating them.

Still, it worked — we came out of the six-hour “board retreat” with both a set of priorities for the year ahead, and a fresh understanding of why each one of us agreed to give so many hours each month to the regional agency supporting the “victims” of domestic violence.

Why was I there? I’d sheltered a couple of women in the past, coached and supported several others in hard relationships, and personally known fear of an angry partner. It seemed like, if someone asked you to help, you should. (Yes, that’s my overwhelming Take Responsibility feature, the one I’m currently trying to tone down.)

Dave and I were newly married (age 50) when the phone rang with a request that I take a seat on the Umbrella organization’s board. Oddly, it would be followed by two other requests, not long afterward. But Umbrella was my first, and to Dave, it made perfect sense for me to say Yes: As the 20-year “assistant dean of residential life” for the local college, he’d been on duty 24/7, coping with student issues, often late at night, and when we shared our life stories with…