I feel we've grown. In fact, hand me the tape measure and I'll prove it. More and more we've come to resemble one another and sometimes fight over the ballet shoes. I've learned that "a conversation" is when one person speaks while the other one listens and then responds whenever she's through. ("Are you through?") That you need to reply in some fashion--even a perfunctory "Yes, dear" will do--to every question, even "Did you have fun at the tavern?" (Example: "Yes, dear, we made things out of pipe cleaners and pretzels.") I now know there are two sides to every story, and they're both hers; that a flashing yellow does not mean "step on it" to everybody; and that when the "Don't walk" flashes, you're supposed to hop back up on the curb, or, if you're on an island, swim back. "Sharing" is now my middle name. You have to learn how to share, because if you don't she'll take a bite right out of your hard-boiled egg anyway, grazing your index finger. (On get-togethers with her family I discovered everybody eats what's in the other's hand, sometimes biting a Book-of-the-Month-Club selection, or a can of household cleanser. I once watched in horror as Consuela snatched and devoured the last piece of dill pickle from her blind Gram. I can still see those poor hands fluttering around the empty plate like sparrows whose nest has been knocked out of the eaves with a rake.)

Compromise is the key word--or "compromised," to put it in the descriptive--even little things like tucking in her corner of the bed and not yours, so at least somebody can hit the floor running should the need arise. I gave up sleeping on the diagonal--if you try it in marriage, you form an X. Unless you can master the basket weave (which I think I saw illustrated, one time), you'll be much better off teetering on your brink with the sheets clamped in the vise of rigor sleepis so she can't anchovy-roll on you. Try to minimize the effects of habits you can't change--maybe your bleeding palms are stigmata and not the result of her habit of dropping knives point up in the strainer. Write some things off as inexplicable, like why, when she washes a few things out in the sink, it's always the same few things, and just brush your teeth in the bathtub.

I've come such a long way, I feel that my second marriage has finally prepared me for my first. I guess you're always one behind. It takes years, after all, to learn about someone else, and just an instant for your wife to find out about it. You may think you know the person you marry, but you don't, not even the parts you thought you had a lock on, like ethnicity. I, for example, have always been attracted to Spanish-speaking women because of their dark good looks and the fact that they don't use possessives. The fact is, I thought I'd married Spanish. Consuela sounds Spanish, doesn't it? It does, but she doesn't. She's Jewish, thirty-five long years of ginger sidestepping wasted, and for what? A misunderstanding.

The story is, Consuela grew up--not under, but along side--liberal parents who permitted her to choose her own ethnic background. Mamá and Papá gave her a lot of latitude, and she supplied the longitude. She was Ojibwa for a while, before walking a mile in the wrong moccasins. But she was clearly Latin when I met her: the white lace, the single long, black braid (now hanging alongside my black belts), always reading One Hundred Years of Solitude in real time. It was impossible to believe she wasn't at least from the Canal Zone. Now I know the flashing eyes were tearing from her contacts. When I think of all the pauses I thought charming as she searched for the right word in English--of course, she did! Everybody in Sterling, Illinois, does.

It sounds hard to believe, but when she insisted on a rabbi for the ceremony, I thought she was just thinking of me (a good sign). Turns out this was the reform rabbi who taught her Spanish. Así es la vida!