He Wanted to Kiss a Million Times. Could We Do It?
I sighed, found a calculator and punched in some numbers. “Good thing you’re so good looking,” I said as I showed him the total. “If we kiss 20 times a day, it will take us 109.6 years to reach one million.”
“OK,” he said, undeterred. “How about 50 kisses a day?”
I typed in the numbers. “Better,” I said. “That’s only 54.8 years.”
“And 100 kisses a day?”
I calculated. “Down to 27.4 years.”
“Then, no problem!” he said. “We’ve got a few good decades in front of us.”
My husband came from Denmark, one of those countries with poppy-dotted fields, a robust social safety net and a sky-high “happiness rating.” His sunny upbringing and temperament were a world away from my gloomier homeland, northern New Jersey. I was an independent, overthinking sort of person, reared on the notion that I would need to make my own way as best I could. That life would be more sour than sweet.
When we first met, he launched a campaign to indoctrinate me with his optimism: Our toaster wasn’t broken, just temperamental. The endless torrential rains? A lucky jump-start on a vibrant spring. And landing in a new country, almost broke? An excellent adventure.
I wanted to believe in the world he tried to recruit me into, but given my own temperament and upbringing, it was a hard sell. His positivity seemed sanitized, as if he were naïve to the hard work of being a person. So I, in turn, tried to yank him into my wariness: Our cranky toaster? An electrical fire in waiting. That downpour? A soggy basement to mop up. And always, the ax of bad luck poised to fall at any moment, severing our happiness.
