Love Languages

[“Let Inga Tell You,” La Jolla Light, published July 22, 2024] ©2024

There was a book that came out some time ago about the five “love languages” people have in relationships and the problems couples get into when they don’t speak the same ones.  The five languages are: words of affirmation, quality time, receiving of gifts, acts of service, and physical touch. 

For example, some people feel most adored by being lavished with gifts, while others feel most loved when hearing positive words (affirmations) from a spouse.  Honestly, it would seem like having some of all five in a relationship would be a good thing, although frankly, neither my husband nor I care about gifts.

Olof and I are mostly in sync on the love languages, except for the ones that neither of us speak at all.  Now that we’re retired, we get to spend lots of quality time together, a huge improvement from all those 80-hour weeks Olof worked when he would literally fall asleep at the dinner table.  It’s very hard to have a conversation with someone face down in their linguine. 

And while he himself isn’t big on massage, he gives the greatest back rub ever. 

I’m very good at giving words of affirmation.  However, I don’t get as many back as I might like.  Is this a guy thing?  An engineer thing?  Olof’s view of communication is that couples should be able to talk to each other about anything. So long, he adds, as you never actually do it. 

He will never offer an opinion about anything personal unless asked.  Nay, begged.  No, implored.  Actions, he maintains, speak louder than words.

OK, but as I’ve pointed out to him on more than a few occasions, sometimes words would come in really handy.

For me, the acts of service are really high on my list. One such example:  Olof has taken over cleaning our outdoor aviary, a job I had for two decades but am physically unable to do anymore. And it’s not the type of job you can hire out.  The aviary cage is built into our back porch and requires a whole lot of shoveling bird poop and seed hulls, then laying down fresh newspaper which will be coated with more bird poop and more seed pretty much instantly.

After he retired, Olof graciously also took over the dishes although I think it might have been more self-defense than an act of love.  I’m not the worst housekeeper in the world although it has been suggested I’m a contender. (Was he a single working carpooling Cub Scout-leading parent for 12 years??? I think not.) 

As happy as I am not to be doing dishes after all these years, he runs the dishwasher practically empty.  It makes me nuts.

 “Inga,” I have to say to myself.  “Step AWAY from the dishwasher!  The man is DOING THE DISHES.  If he wants to run it with two friggin’ forks, let him!” 

So I’d like to amend the “acts of service” love language to say “providing acts of service as the previous servicee would have done them.” Is this too much to ask?

There is no question that Olof and I have very different styles of doing things.  My biggest love language is action.   If I see something that needs attention, or it is pointed out to me by my husband, I’m on it.  No time like the present!

It is definitely not Olof’s idea of a love language, however. Olof has a different word for this love language: “nagging.”  If I point out something to him that he needs to take care of that I can’t do myself, it goes on a list where it generally languishes until it dies of old age (or I hire the handyman to do it).  

Olof is clear that he hates being nagged worse than about anything. 

I have tried to explain over the years that there is an amazingly simple solution to nagging.  Just do what you were asked to do!  Maybe even this week! You’re retired! You have time! 

I confess I’ve had malevolent moments when he’s asked me to make copies of some financial documents for him (the printer-copier is on my desk) and I’m tempted to let them languish instead of making the copies right away.  If he should ask, my fantasy is I would smile brightly, and announce, “It’s on my list!” 

But if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years, escalation of hostilities is never a good approach to problem resolution. 

I guess the ultimate love language might just be accepting the person you’re married to with all their quirks, including running an empty dishwasher that wastes a ton of water and reduces the life of the machine by a decade.   

But every week, when I see him out there mucking out the bird cage, I feel loved.  Really, really loved. 

Olof mucks out the bird cage while Lily supervises

Some residents of our outdoor aviary

Tempting The Fates: Covid Finally Gets Us

[“Let Inga Tell You,” La Jolla Light, published July 15, 2024] ©2024

Nature abhors a confident person.

I truly thought that both my husband, Olof, and I were immune to Covid, having managed to escape this affliction in spite of many, many up-close-and-personal exposures.  I was even contemplating volunteering us for one of those studies for people who had not contracted it, such was our seeming Teflon protection against this scourge.  We were feeling downright smug. 

Since the pandemic began in March, 2020, I have been used to getting calls from people who I’d just seen in the last few days who’d announce, “You’re not going to believe this!”

“Oh,” I’d say.  “You have Covid.”

And they’d said, “Huh?  How did you know?”

And I’d say, “Because I get this call at least once a week.” 

Of the 25 of us who regularly descend on my younger son’s home in L.A. at Christmas, Olof and I were the only ones who had not had Covid, despite my sitting on the living room couch for an entire afternoon next to my daughter-in-law’s parents who the next day tested positive for Covid.

At Thanksgiving the month before, I’d been leaning in to my friend’s daughter for several hours as we chatted through a lengthy meal in a closed-in environment.  Two days later, she was diagnosed with Covid.  Ditto a holiday dinner with some neighbors.

There were people who would insist that Olof and I had clearly had Covid and just not realized it.  But every time we were exposed, I tested diligently for a least a week after.  No symptoms, negative test.  This would have had to have been the most subclinical case of Covid in the history of virology.

At first I was assuming that all those shots we were getting must be having a protective effect.  Olof and I had had all seven Covid vaccines and boosters recommended for seniors.  Not to mention, an RSV shot, 2 shingles, 1 pneumonia, and a flu shot.  Honestly, it was a miracle we could even raise our arms. 

But all the friends who ultimately ended up contracting Covid had had all those shots too. 

We did have our own personal theory about our immunity:  the rest of those people just don’t drink enough.  Olof, especially, was convinced of the microbially-protective effects of a Scotch (or two), which he ingests strictly for medicinal purposes on a nightly basis.  And it worked!  No Covid!

I myself am not a Scotch drinker but have been known to imbibe medically-therapeutic doses of white wine, also on pretty much of a nightly basis. 

Frankly, I’d stopped even worrying about Covid. So imagine my astonishment when I woke up one morning with a sore throat and the routine just-in-case Covid test I took came up positive. How could this be?

Ironically, I’m almost sure I contracted Covid in a packed medical waiting room where I’d gone for a routine test that, ironically, came back normal.  This waiting room was a super-spreader event if there ever was one. Forty people sitting shoulder-to-shoulder in a small space.

I couldn’t believe how sick I got how fast. I had a fever of 101.5, and just felt completely terrible.  Within 24 hours, my throat felt like I was trying to swallow shards of glass. I honestly felt like I was choking to death. 

After what was one of the worst nights I’ve ever spent, I texted a friend and asked him to take me to the ER.  I would have called him except that my throat was so swollen, I couldn’t speak.  You might wonder why my husband, Olof, couldn’t perform this duty but did I mention that two days after I tested positive, so did he?  Definitely the downside of sharing air space with another person.

I honestly wasn’t sure what, if anything, they could do for me in the ER. What I was really hoping for was a lethal shot of morphine, administered as quickly as possible.  What they did do, however, was give me a hefty dose of prednisone to reduce the swelling and inflammation in my throat.  Wouldn’t help the Covid, obviously, and I still had a sore throat.  But I didn’t feel like I was choking to death anymore. 

And let me say a few words about the Barbey Family ER and Trauma Center over in the Prebys Cardiovascular Center at Scripps Memorial.  This facility opened up in 2016 and is orders of magnitude better than other *ahem* nearby ER which is always a guaranteed multi-hour, if not all-day, wait.  At Barbey, I was treated and out the door in an hour.

Fortunately, Olof didn’t get nearly as sick as I did.  But he continued to test positive for what seemed like forever.  I began to fear we were going to cancel an entire summer’s social life.

I recognize now what we did wrong: we tempted the fates.  We bragged that we had never had Covid. 

Never do this. They hear you.

 

The War That Brought Us To San Diego

[“Let Inga Tell You,” La Jolla Light, published July 8, 2024] ©2024

The recent protests around the country, and especially on college campuses, have been a déjà vu for me as a someone who went to college in the late 1960s when the hugely unpopular Vietnam war was raging.  The issues behind today’s protests are different, of course, but all these years later, the “Demonstrations and Arrest: Rights and Liabilities” guide from the ACLU that was widely distributed for student protestors is still in a file folder I’ve kept from that time.  The advice remains eerily the same.

On December 1, 1969, a lottery system was held by the Selective Service Commission to determine the order of call-ups by birthdays for induction into the armed services (and a pretty sure ticket to Vietnam) for all males ages 18-26.  The lottery was done on TV as a nation held its collective breath willing one’s own or one’s son’s birthday from being called.

 College students could generally get deferments which at least saved you until you were 22. Otherwise, your choices were going to jail as a conscientious objector, fleeing to Canada, or trying to get classified as 4F - unfit for military duty, generally based on a medical condition, real or fabricated. ("Heel spurs," anyone?)  

If I close my eyes, I can still hear the chants of "hell no, we won't go!" in my ears. 

My first husband graduated from medical school in 1969.  A mere month later, he received a letter informing him that he would be going to Vietnam next month as a general medical officer. Alternatively, he could sign up for what was known as the Berry Plan and defer his military service until he had finished his specialty training.

That was a decision that took not quite two nanoseconds.  It was our hope that the war would be over by that time.  And as it turned out, it (mostly) was.  But Berry Plan doctors were still obligated to serve two years in the military.  And that, folks, is how we ended up in San Diego.

 In the spring of 1973, we received a communication in a foreign language, later identified as "military speak," from an entity called BUPERS. Once translated into English, it ordered my husband to report to the Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego on July 1, 1973 for a two-year assignment. 

We had a reservation for our first night in San Diego at guest rooms at the Naval Air Station.  When we got there, we saw a sign announcing a strict policy against pets. We didn't sleep all night, not only because of the deafening noise of planes taking off and landing, but because we were afraid they'd find our cat and shoot it.

 This was medicine in a very different way than my husband had experienced.  His training had included treating gunshot wounds and knifings in the South Bronx but now dealt with a patient population who had to stand at attention while being treated and to speak in the third person.  ("The private, sir, has a broken leg, sir.") 

The assignment required staying at the MCRD clinic overnight every third night (even though it was closed) in the event of "national emergency."  While there was a perfectly nice officers club on base, my husband was only allowed to venture for meals as far as Leatherneck Lanes, the base bowling alley across the street, where I would join him for some of the worst food in the highest decibel environment I have ever experienced. I started bringing picnics, out of fear for our hearing. 

Even though my father and grandfather had served in the first and second world wars, I wasn't particularly familiar with military customs. So when I received an invitation to a luncheon from the Navy Officers' Wives Club, I thought I'd give it a try.  A very nice woman greeted me and said, "We sit according to the rank of our husbands."  She pointed to the far end of the table.  "You sit down there."  As a fourth-generation feminist, I could feel the previous three generations turning over in their graves (and my mother wasn't even dead yet).  "Thank you," I said, and left. 

OK, enough whining.  MCRD vs. a Vietnam field hospital?  Not exactly the medical experience my husband was hoping for after all those years of training.  But we instantly loved San Diego. 

And after six months, we were entitled to a VA loan to buy a home with 100% financing.  Already we'd homed into La Jolla as the place we wanted to live (I mean, duh) but quickly found that, in that era at least, no banks or realtors in La Jolla would work with VA loans. But fortunately, we found a total fixer/dump being sold by owner who wasn't aware of the VA's complicated rules.  So, with no realtor in sight, we signed a contract with the owners which they pretty much instantly regretted.  A lot of hassle later, we owned a home which we would never have been able to afford until years later otherwise.  So thank you, VA. 

 And thanks, BUPERS, whoever you are, for sending us to San Diego.  This has been the place place to live ever. 

At my 1970 college graduation, most of the students had peace signs glued to their caps.