My, how I could talk. And about so little, if measured by any
sensible metric. I had no more than 5 or
6 interests in my young life. Most would
have been about sex, leaving only one or two for polite conversation.
Never once did the girl turn my
way and say she was tired of listening to me.
I would tire of hearing myself before she did. I suppose she guessed that.
Almost two years later we sat on
her mother’s front porch in the evening and listened to the breeze rustle the
lilacs. The sound of a late
summer thunder storm came rolling toward us over the flat farmland that stretched
out twenty miles between us and the St.
Lawrence River. A week
before our wedding day, we were full of plans and little disputes as we began
to blend our lives together with early small steps. We disagreed over whether we wanted a drip
coffee maker or a percolator. Certainly
that was an important decision for a married couple. We were so naïve. If the angels hadn’t been busy forming a
lifetime of plans to protect us, I’m sure they would have been laughing.
As young as we were, we had
already built a few memories. As the thunder came near we spoke of our walking
about in New York City two years before.
She told me she hadn’t always listened to my tales as we walked, not
exactly.
“What were you listening to, if
you weren’t following my story about having my car fixed?”
“To your heart,” she said. “I wanted to know what kind of heart you
had.”
“That soon?” I wondered. “We had only just met.”
“But I wanted to marry you.”
“Really? When did you decide on
that?”
“The night you came to my
apartment to offer me a ride upstate on weekends.”
“I was just trying to be helpful,”
I said. “And I liked you. I remembered meeting you once before at that
bar in Utica.”
“I remember that night,” she said. “You ignored me.”
“That meant I liked you. I was tongue tied, afraid of saying the wrong
thing.”
“It wouldn’t have mattered,” she
said.
“What did you learn about my heart
while I was telling you all about my old car that was always broken? I never had the money to have it fixed.”
“That you were passionate about what
interested you, but often got in over your head.”
“And you still wanted to marry
me?”
“Even more. Because you worried about things. I knew you were responsible.”
At age twenty-two, I’d never
thought about being responsible for someone else. I would have been worried whether I was
handsome enough, smart enough, rich enough or astute enough to win the love of
a woman.
Turns out I probably wasn’t any of
those. So it was my good fortune that
none of them mattered. I needed to be
what someone wanted. Lucky for me,
someone wanted me and I wanted her. God’s
greatest gifts to me have always come without my asking.
But gifts can often have a
price. Not a tit-for-tat “you owe me”
price, but rather the kind that brings more responsibility. My wife, family, career have all been gifts
that brought more obligations.
As a young man I thought being
responsible for the woman I loved meant protecting her. After a few years I began to realize I was also responsible for my part in
nurturing her. We
weren’t often conscious of the process, but each of us would learn to grow up
over the coming half century together, and we needed each other’s help in doing
so. Condemnation of the other would
never build anything, only tear it down, even when tossed at the other with a
sly humor.
Neither of us began our marriage
with what it took to stay married for fifty years. No one does. We had to carve that miracle out
of the raw life given us. And feed it to
each other, as we did the wedding cake on a beautiful Saturday afternoon in the
fall of 1965. I don’t know the origin of the ceremony where the bride and groom
feed each other cake, but today when I’m at a wedding reception I see it as a
symbol of the two feeding the lessons of life to each other. It’s an awkward sight, but they do it
lovingly and slowly, helping each other to manage the task.
We met life as it uniquely
presented itself to us. The problems and
frights, the successes and the failures, the joyous and sad times, “in sickness
and in health.” And as each chapter flew
by, I came to realize how it worked.
First, I was responsible for myself.
For my behavior. I could blame nothing
on anyone else. And second, while my
wife was responsible for her own life, I
had promised to help her when I vowed I’d be with her “from this day forward.”
We never had any formal rules or
expectations of each other. We felt our
way in the dark and did what was comfortable.
A relationship really shouldn’t need a lawyer and it isn’t balanced by
each doing half of everything that needs to be done.
My wife has never done half the
lawn mowing and she hasn’t taken out half of the garbage. She has done none of it.
A balanced relationship has each
doing what the person feels is theirs to do in a unique arrangement that works
for them. How that comes about only they
will know.
With the children my wife tended
more toward matters of the heart while I tended to the practical. We had our roles. Some no doubt came from our families through
our experience watching parents as we grew up.
Many of the practices we took and many we left came from watching them
and choosing what worked for us.
As young parents we thought we
knew everything. After all, we read lots
of books. We really didn’t know much at
all, but I suppose our arrogance allowed us to forge new paths and our
ignorance guaranteed our self-satisfaction. I assume our parents did the same. Perhaps the delusion of self-sufficiency is
evolutionary and helps parents acclimate to a changing social environment.
I’m not sure I knew it then, since
we took on our roles as parents naturally, but today I realize that parenting
is work. And some men and women are not
ready to put in the effort. Looking back
on it, I remember times when I had to do things or not do things when I didn’t
want to.
Like any other spouse or parent I
sometimes fled my responsibility. The
impromptu business trip was a favorite.
So was the sudden desire to be with family members who were in any case
getting along quite nicely without my presence most of the time.
As my children struggled through
their teen years, my answer to the temporary chaos at home was to build another
house in the back yard for myself. A
tiny shed, my retreat was no larger than Thoreau’s shack on Walden Pond, I built it of rough cut lumber out behind our
home, in front of a field that backed up to woods of hemlock and oak, I didn’t sleep there or take meals in the
little structure. In fact, I spent less
time there than I had planned, usually escaping to it only for an hour or two
each time to tie trout flies. The interior was furnished with old camping equipment, a
toboggan and a camp stove, all in “1950s
Boy’s Life,” as a neighbor described it.
“It will be quite small,” I said
to my wife before I began construction.
We stood back near the woods one violet summer evening and I showed her
the plans, carefully folded so as not to reveal the full future extent of it.
“What’s this folded over on the
other side?” she asked.
“Oh, just a ‘someday’ plan for an
attached kind of barn. To house the
tractor and the garden stuff.”
She unfolded the map and held it
up to see. “It’s larger than the little house,” she observed.
“Just a garden shed for way in the
future,” I said.
She laughed. “You’re not starting another family back
here, are you?”
At that point, it would have been
the farthest from my mind.
I wouldn’t be the first husband to
admit that from at least an emotional point of view, I took more than I gave in
our marriage. But it was a surprise to
me when I finally realized it.
I sat one afternoon in Woodstock
with a wonderfully insightful woman who with me shared a shift on the telephone
Hotline. “Any problem under the sun,”
was our agency’s motto. During times
when the phones were quiet and our volunteer chores were up to date, we drank
coffee and spoke of one thing or another and sometimes of what might be bothering
either of us.
My wife had recently started back
to school, bent on a career that would fully utilize her talents and
abilities. Her days and nights were
consumed with classes, plus the time to drive to them fifty miles distant. I missed her.
“I feel abandoned,” I said. “When
I get home from work she’s not there like she always was. I have to make my own supper and take care of
the dog …”
“Poor baby,” was the woman’s
reaction.
”And I don’t mean to complain, but
the house is not as clean and picked up as it always was.”
“She probably doesn’t have the
time,” the woman said.
“Yeah, I guess.”
“So tell me one thing that
disappoints you about how she’s not keeping house,” said my shift mate.
“OK,” I replied. “the wash not
being done as often.”
“How much does that bother you?”
she asked.
“Oh, not much. Not really.”
“But it’s the first thing that
came to your mind.”
”OK, yes, it bothers me.”
”OK, yes, it bothers me.”
“The wash needing to be done
bothers you.”
“Yes, it bothers me,” I said.
She looked at me and sighed.
“So then why don’t you do the wash?”
I stared over her shoulder out the
window at the trees on the street. I
continued to stare fixedly at them. She
waved a hand in front of my face as I sat opposite her, dumbfounded.
“Why don’t I do the wash?” I repeated,
aloud to myself. I had never even
thought of that as a solution. And I
could do the dishes and even vacuum the rugs.
“Why the hell has that never occurred
to me?” I said.
“Aha,” she said, “the value of
launching a problem on the waters of conversation.”
I should have realized my
responsibility much earlier, but I was too used to being cared for.
In September of this year
(2015) the girl who walked with me all
over New York City and I will celebrate
our fiftieth wedding anniversary. I
cannot tell you where the time has gone.
I am still responsible for her,
although lately I find myself having to transfer some of my burdens to her
shoulders since I am evidently aging faster than her. She has taken on a few of my chores. She remembers facts I now easily forget. I bring her with me to the doctor’s office and
often introduce her jokingly as “my memory.”
Shuffling chores to one another to
fit our lessening capabilities after a half century of marriage reminds me of
standing up in a row boat and changing seats.
It doesn’t feel very good. My
arms reach out to maintain my balance.
But there’s nothing to grab on to except each other.
As time goes
on we will together need to hand more and more chores over to outsiders. That will be tough. But we can draw together as close as possible
in the center of the boat. Eventually
our only responsibility will be to hold each other, to love one another. Just like in the beginning when we first met
and walked everywhere hand in hand. In
our hearts, we’ll do it again.
copyright 2015, David Griffin
The Windswept Press
Murrells Inlet, South Carolina
www.windsweptpress.com
