Michaele Weissman, THE RYE BREAD MARRIAGE: How I Found Happiness with a Partner I'll Never Understand
[0:02]Hi, I'm Zippy Owens, and you're listening to moms don't have time to read books.
[0:06]This 30 minute podcast features a new author interviewed by me every single day, 365 days
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[1:03]Michael Wiseman is the author of the right, bread, marriage, how I found happiness with
[1:08]a partner.
[1:09]I'll never understand.
[1:11]She is the author of four books and a freelance journalist who writes about food, families,
[1:15]and the reverberating impact of history.
[1:17]Her articles appear in the New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal
[1:20]Forbes, and dozens of other publications.
[1:22]She is the co-author with Carol Heimowitz of a History of Women in America, a narrative
[1:27]history published in 1980 that has sold nearly 250,000 copies.
[1:32]More recently, she wrote, God in a cup, a coffee travel log for which she fell at three
[1:36]young coffee buyers around the world.
[1:38]She has enjoyed a long association with new directions, a psychoanalytically-oriented writing
[1:43]program for scholars and psychotherapists.
[1:46]And she co-leads workshops at politics and prose that help writers delve more deeply
[1:49]into their own psyches.
[1:51]The mother and stepmother of three foodies, she has been married for 40 years to her
[1:54]rye bread co-conspirator, John Meln Gayless, a retired professor of electrical engineering
[2:00]at the University of Maryland, who owns a company that markets Latvian rye bread, which,
[2:05]by the way, I bought after I read this book and tried out, it was so good.
[2:09]The couple lived cook and entertain in Chevy Chase, Maryland.
[2:13]Welcome, Michael.
[2:14]Thank you so much for coming on mom's.
[2:15]Don't have time to read books to discuss the rye bread marriage, how I found happiness
[2:19]with a partner.
[2:20]I'll never understand.
[2:21]I am to be here, Jimmy, thank you.
[2:25]Oh, it's so funny because if you had a comma in the subtitle, it would always be
[2:30]be like, how I found happiness with a partner.
[2:32]I'll never understand.
[2:34]Anyway, don't joke.
[2:37]No, I just love the subtitle.
[2:41]And then my editor at Algonquin went like this, Michael, it's not how I found a partner,
[2:46]blah, blah, blah.
[2:48]How I found a partner, I'll never understand.
[2:52]Yes.
[2:53]Okay.
[2:54]Yeah.
[2:55]No, I get it.
[2:56]It's perfect.
[2:57]And I love that.
[2:58]I think the whole cover is great.
[2:59]I could wait to read it and it was wonderful.
[3:01]And you are so funny.
[3:03]I love your sense of humor so much.
[3:05]I just ate it all up.
[3:06]It's well, I mean, symphony is just our, you know, our, our, our stringing in the background
[3:14]when you say, no, it's true.
[3:17]And by the way, after I read the book, I went online and I ordered, I know you don't own
[3:21]the company anymore, but I went and ordered the bread sampler from Black Worcesters
[3:26]to food.
[3:27]It's, he just has a partner because he needed a young partner who was techy-wise.
[3:31]Yeah.
[3:32]I'm very excited to try the bread, not that, you know, not that I, I mean, I also grew up
[3:37]with rye bread, by the way, with like, most, you know, I'm Ashkenazi, but anyway.
[3:41]Okay.
[3:42]Tell listeners what your book is about, please.
[3:44]Well, my book's about three things.
[3:47]It's about the meaning of rye bread and Eastern Europe because it, that's a passionate
[3:52]subject for my husband.
[3:54]It's about my husband's remarkable story as an exile.
[3:59]And it's about marriage and difference in marriage because we are quite different.
[4:03]He was a Latvian rep for you, gee, he's not Jewish, he's a physicist, I'm a writer,
[4:08]he sees black, I see white, and we've been together for a long time.
[4:12]So how does that happen that you can stay together?
[4:16]The moments where you're sort of on the precipice, I found to be the most, like, just
[4:23]so interesting when you're like, okay, this is the moment where I was like, okay, this
[4:26]is finally like, we're done.
[4:28]And then something happens and you always like go back to each other and you keep rewriting
[4:32]what marriage means.
[4:33]Like throughout the book, you're like, you know, the definition of marriage is this and
[4:36]then it just, as you age and you age together, not age, but really as you go through
[4:40]marriage together, which it, it's not about the aging, it's, you keep refining your definition
[4:45]kind of what it means to be married.
[4:47]So maybe if you could just talk a little bit about how you felt like it, what it really
[4:51]meant to you starting out and sort of where you've arrived now that you've done this
[4:55]like deep dive into not only your marriage, but your husband and his family and your own
[5:00]family and all of that.
[5:02]It's a good question.
[5:03]And because you start with being, you know, you start with thinking the guy is sexy and
[5:08]you start with wanting to be married to someone different who doesn't play golf because
[5:12]your dad, you start in total night, I did start having written a book and I knew one
[5:22]thing.
[5:23]I thought, I thought getting married will not murder my selfness because I've written
[5:29]a book.
[5:30]So I'm somebody and I'm here to get married.
[5:32]And John with all the conflicts between us, he likes powerful women.
[5:37]He likes women with Brio and that has been a steady thing.
[5:42]In some ways, I'm going to answer your question, but in some ways I think maybe we've still
[5:47]married because we both had mothers who loved us.
[5:50]Hmm.
[5:51]In some way, if you tell John that you love him, he believes you.
[5:54]And if you tell me you love me with all my mischievous and craziness, I will believe you
[6:00]unless you're lying.
[6:01]So there's that, but you know, so we started with this attraction.
[6:07]And a tremendous naivete because I thought John would be married to me and he'd become
[6:14]like me because he wasn't Christian.
[6:18]He was a rye bread worshipping, he called himself a pagan.
[6:23]But he was quite in favor of liberal Judaism because of its emphasis on kids and respect
[6:29]for children.
[6:30]And that's an interesting thing.
[6:32]So anyway, but we started there.
[6:34]And then I find myself married to somebody who doesn't want to become like me and is
[6:40]so different.
[6:42]And these multiple definitions take place as I dig deeper and deeper and deeper over time
[6:52]to understand what it means to be connected.
[6:56]And the last definition, and I just love this, has to do with kindness and stay together
[7:04]if you are lucky enough to develop compassion towards one another as the years go on.
[7:10]And you know, we're still attracted to each other physically.
[7:13]We still like to be in the same room.
[7:15]But of course you can't count on that to the same degree.
[7:18]But the kindness and I'll say something else, I've never stopped respecting John's character
[7:25]even when I want to kill him.
[7:27]He has a good and decent man.
[7:30]And you know, is it because I know you're remarried.
[7:33]It was so, I had never had children.
[7:36]I had never been married before.
[7:37]It was so important to me that he was a good dad that, you know, but his mother had said
[7:43]to me and that's, you know, John has a good character and he has a good character.
[7:50]So he drives me crazy and we'll, you know, in perpetuity.
[7:57]I love that because we, I think everybody has this hope like, okay, well, we are kind
[8:04]of the same person now or we like, he will obviously become more like me.
[8:09]But there he could be helping you'll be more like him.
[8:11]You had that whole scene towards the end about the temperature in the room, which is such
[8:15]a mundane thing that so many people find about it and whatever it's too cold, it's too hot,
[8:19]whatever.
[8:20]But you have this whole thing.
[8:22]John, we are not the same person just because like you, like it cold does not mean I
[8:28]like, I actually can be hot when you are cold.
[8:31]It's like a Jewish mother, it's like a joke about Jewish mothers put on your sweater
[8:37]on cold.
[8:38]Yeah.
[8:39]Exactly.
[8:40]Yeah.
[8:41]No, that's why the forbearance and, but I'll say, there's something else that I might
[8:45]have gone through my home-married life, not understanding at this level.
[8:51]If I hadn't written this book, because it's a sort of meditating on his childhood
[8:57]during World War II and the trauma of that and his parents and understanding his parents
[9:04]brilliance in protecting their family better than any other Latvian, I mean, in some regards
[9:10]better than any other Latvian family, I know, they were based, they did really well as
[9:15]they fled, I mean, as these things go.
[9:19]But the more, the more I worked on it, the more he became separate from me and it was,
[9:27]I was writing about him as a character and I saw him separate from me.
[9:34]And that was, it's a huge, huge, huge lesson because I think that because women were tend
[9:39]to be often emotionally intelligent, we tend to think we understand everything.
[9:49]I do, until I realized I didn't understand and now I understand the other role in life
[9:56]that teaches you your own limitations of...
[10:00]perception are being a mother-in-law, you know.
[10:05]And I adore my daughter-in-law.
[10:07]And I think she really loves me.
[10:09]And I have worked to understand.
[10:14]I have just worked on seeing them as separate,
[10:16]seeing them as separate, seeing them as separate.
[10:19]It's work, it's life, it's work.
[10:22]Well, your mother-in-law, you're also a stepmother,
[10:25]any grandmother, you know, you play some,
[10:26]you have some, you wear somebody hats in your family.
[10:29]And I was really surprised, obviously,
[10:30]by the turn of events with your stepdaughter
[10:33]and the conflicts that that, and I won't give things away,
[10:37]I guess it's so hard to know with memoir.
[10:39]But anyway, she ends up getting into a difficult situation.
[10:43]And of course, John feels very torn at the time,
[10:46]which he finally confesses to you.
[10:48]And you're going through the sort of family stress
[10:50]and like, what do you do about it?
[10:52]And I don't know, I felt such empathy for you in that moment
[10:54]because, you know, what, I don't know, anyway,
[10:57]I don't know how you feel about that now.
[10:58]Or what you want to talk about her.
[11:00]What I feel about it now is,
[11:02]I actually feel incredibly proud of our family
[11:06]that we came through this and she's doing really well.
[11:09]And I guess we're all tested in life.
[11:12]You know, you say you have these principles,
[11:14]my kindness, compassion for one another,
[11:17]but can you live it?
[11:19]And it's not just me, I'm proud of, I'm proud of all of us.
[11:23]But it was not, I'm giving things away,
[11:27]but this is a joke that John made.
[11:30]John actually said that in 2016,
[11:33]we got two grandchildren and one jailbird.
[11:39]Brief sentence, everybody.
[11:41]Yeah, it's a teaser.
[11:44]It's a teaser, right.
[11:45]So, whoa, life throws the match up.
[11:48]Never know, you just never know.
[11:50]And I love like how you kind of summed it all up
[11:52]and actually brought tears to my eyes
[11:54]and finishing this book when you're saying,
[11:56]like, you just don't know.
[11:57]Like, I know this sounds so obvious,
[11:59]but the way you wrote it was so good
[12:00]and just going through all of your story,
[12:02]like, we all don't know what's coming next.
[12:04]And, you know, we're okay, you know,
[12:07]the test so many people feel, right?
[12:08]Like, okay, well, today we're okay.
[12:10]Or I feel this the way all the time.
[12:12]Like, okay, none of my kids are sick today.
[12:14]God willing, you know, like everything's okay.
[12:16]You know, knock one, okay, today's all right.
[12:20]And then you're just sort of always holding your breath,
[12:22]but like, okay, the juxtaposition of holding it on
[12:26]to when things are good and knowing
[12:28]that at any moment it can all change
[12:30]and sort of holding those things together.
[12:31]So I feel like you did such a beautiful job
[12:33]of saying all that in your funny way
[12:35]and by telling your story.
[12:37]Sydney, you are the reader that writers dream of.
[12:41]I really, to have someone who's read with that care,
[12:44]I'm really touched because I didn't know,
[12:47]does your staff read the book?
[12:49]Do you read?
[12:50]I read, I mean, I'm, you know, you read this book.
[12:54]Yes, I did.
[12:55]I love it.
[12:57]Well, I'm very, very, very, very touched by that.
[13:00]And I'm just happy.
[13:02]I just want to throw out to, like,
[13:05]I don't have either I read it or I read part of it,
[13:08]but nobody else ever reads it and tells me about it.
[13:11]Like, that doesn't help me.
[13:12]I try at the very beginning when I started my podcast,
[13:14]I was like, people are like, oh, you should have people
[13:16]read for you.
[13:17]So I had a friend read a book and I was like,
[13:18]all right, tell me about it.
[13:19]But she doesn't know what I find interesting.
[13:21]Like, my relationship to books is so personal.
[13:24]You can't have someone else read a book for you.
[13:26]It's like, I can't explain, I don't know.
[13:28]Well, you know, I mean, anyway, so no,
[13:30]but I'm glad I had time and I had time to read it
[13:33]and everything and I loved it.
[13:34]And yeah, I also learned more about the Latvian culture
[13:37]than I ever expected to know.
[13:40]And I find it very interesting.
[13:42]I had no idea what a, like, a tight knit,
[13:44]displaced group they all are and the, you know,
[13:47]just the fierce loyalty and connection.
[13:49]And, you know, the ways you can stay involved
[13:52]with that community and all these like dinner clubs
[13:54]or whatever, that was another wonderful scene
[13:56]where you really didn't want to go
[13:58]and then John brought you the dinner leaf
[14:02]and put it on the bat's oven meaty dinner
[14:04]and you just quietly got up and went,
[14:05]oh my gosh, that was so perfect.
[14:07]I mean, you know, he really is a very lovable guy.
[14:11]Now, when this podcast is over,
[14:13]I'm gonna have to go tell him all over again
[14:15]that he really is a very lovable guy.
[14:17]And he has a sort of innate sense about me.
[14:21]And again, this is a thing that women always think.
[14:23]We are the ones who know and blah, blah, blah.
[14:26]And we do know a lot.
[14:27]But he has a sort of sense when I'm in trouble
[14:32]and he really rises to the occasion, you know?
[14:35]And I mean, I hope for everybody in a long term marriage
[14:39]is they can feel that way.
[14:40]And I can't speak for everybody,
[14:41]but I think that some marriages are more ambivalent
[14:45]than others, you know, all people, you know,
[14:48]are, you know, there's always competing emotions.
[14:53]And I think our relationship has more ambivalence
[14:57]because of the cultural differences
[14:59]and also professional and that he's so numeric.
[15:02]Yeah.
[15:03]And he, you know, he gives directions
[15:04]and I know, what are you talking about?
[15:06]You know, but then there's that other piece
[15:11]where he gets me.
[15:13]And he doesn't want to flatten my enthusiasm
[15:21]or my sort of bigness in terms of personality and stuff.
[15:25]And that's really unusual.
[15:27]And to be, I just, I think I'm very lucky that way.
[15:31]And then that makes me that, you know,
[15:35]that generosity begets generosity.
[15:38]If you feel that you're receiving that,
[15:40]you work harder to be that.
[15:42]And believe me, I am not always that.
[15:44]I am.
[15:45]I think you were pretty honest.
[15:47]I mean, obviously I don't know you except for your book,
[15:49]but you seem very honest about your shortcomings
[15:52]and you show us moments where you're like,
[15:54]this is not flattering, but I'm gonna put it out there
[15:57]because who is flat, who is always perfect?
[16:00]Nobody, nobody is like that.
[16:02]No.
[16:02]And who wants to read a book with that kind of falseness.
[16:09]And I think that in terms of as a writer
[16:12]and fellow writer, that's the work is to,
[16:16]I mean, early on when I wrote first person things,
[16:19]I wrote this sort of stream of consciousness,
[16:21]how I felt about it and defending myself.
[16:24]And then you move into what you're doing
[16:27]and you realize that the work, the artistry,
[16:31]is to show, as I always say, is to show
[16:35]what goes on between people.
[16:37]And I think maybe I am driven to do that about marriage
[16:43]because I grew up in that late 50s, early 60s world
[16:52]where everybody that the exteriors were so polished.
[16:59]And I was born with this sense of understanding
[17:05]when I was in the presence of lies
[17:07]or incomplete truths.
[17:09]And I understood my own parents' marriage
[17:15]at a shockingly early age.
[17:17]I mean, I think that's the writer that you see things
[17:21]and it wasn't that their marriage was so horrible.
[17:24]It's just I saw the complexity and it confused me
[17:28]that nobody, the people don't tell the truth
[17:30]about human experience.
[17:32]And I think that drove me to be a writer
[17:34]and there's also the intellectual piece for me
[17:37]but that's a big piece of what drove me to be a writer.
[17:40]So of course, I really, you know, so in high school,
[17:45]you know, it took me a while to grow into my personality
[17:49]socially and become really socially comfortable
[17:51]as it happens for so many people.
[17:54]And then some time in my mid 20s,
[17:58]I realized that everybody was as insecure as I
[18:01]and it totally changed my life.
[18:03]You know, and I will address that in the room
[18:05]and I'll walk up to somebody and I say, oh my God,
[18:08]you really, this, you know, I, you know,
[18:12]you really must be going through a time
[18:14]or I mean, there's something more subtle than that,
[18:15]I hope, but just making reference to other,
[18:20]the reality of life instead of all that,
[18:23]you know, all that kind of country club chatter
[18:26]and cocktails that was the life that people led them
[18:30]and we live a different life happily.
[18:33]And I remember my mother telling me this
[18:36]when I was, you know, totally insecure and shy
[18:40]and feeling awkward and like sixth grade at a dance
[18:42]and things like that.
[18:44]And she would be like, you know,
[18:45]as if everybody feels the same way.
[18:46]And I'm like, but they don't.
[18:48]They don't feel this way.
[18:49]They're running around confident and like playing games
[18:52]or like chatting with all the boys or just like,
[18:55]there's no way because I can see that they're fine.
[18:58]And her, what she said was both true and not true.
[19:03]You know, because some people do do that,
[19:07]do do high school better.
[19:08]They're not necessarily the best,
[19:10]the most successful human beings.
[19:12]Yeah, I mean, I was having middle school here.
[19:14]I'm really taking it back, but yes.
[19:19]The really painful time.
[19:20]They're really painful time for sure.
[19:23]You also with John and I don't feel like this is a spoiler
[19:26]because it comes up pretty early,
[19:28]but you know, John also is bipolar
[19:31]and you have to deal with the added complications of that
[19:33]and you talk throughout the book about different times
[19:36]when he's having a manic episode
[19:37]and you're just like, John, you're manic today.
[19:39]You know, like cut it out as if someone's like,
[19:42]you know, this isn't gone too loud or something.
[19:44]Right, exactly.
[19:46]That's really a great metaphor.
[19:47]Yes, he's bipolar.
[19:49]And we have lived with that in our home air and life.
[19:52]But I will say this that he's also that that's where
[19:57]being such a disciplined person in the training
[20:00]scientist. He takes care of himself. He gets exercise almost every day. He has the whole
[20:09]life of our marriage. So there are times when he's just, you know, there are times when
[20:16]he's manic and it's difficult and I'm constantly trying to learn how to negotiate that and
[20:23]not blame him for it and not understand that at those moments his thinking is very rigid
[20:32]and that he doesn't understand that another person is another person and that's the nature
[20:37]of the illness. But I have always felt that he was working hard to, you know, have
[20:47]a solid to be solid and he was hospitalized once before we were married. And so I haven't
[20:53]gone through the horrors of that, that people do. Yeah. Still, it's just another, another
[21:01]thing to contend with. Thank you. And thank you so much, Debbie. I've had someone.
[21:07]You too. Thank you so much for coming on. I love the books. Take care. Let's stay in touch.
[21:11]I would love that. Okay. Bye bye. Bye bye. Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't
[21:17]Have Time to Read Books. Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at zibbowens and at Moms Don't
[21:23]Have Time to Read Books. Also sign up for my newsletter at zibbowens.com and sign up for my virtual
[21:28]book club and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan
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[21:37]this fantastic intro and now trim music.