It has been said that when a friendship is in trouble you need to change the rhythm of how and when you see each other. I suppose this applies to marriage too. I am still in the process of eliminating the ghosts that have filled my space…
I was cleaning closets and drawers and underneath my nightgowns, I pulled out the stack of cards and letters from my husband and reminisced through each occasions with absolute clarity. I sat on our bed and neatly sorted them by years. I never found it comfortable to receive…not gifts, compliments, sex or even attention. It’s astonishing how quickly we fall into a cycle of withholding. Somewhere along the way, I began to believe that the real problem was not my ability to receive, but the inability to give what I needed. The lack of trust intensified the problem and forced me to hold myself from the one I loved. I learned I was the only person capable of taking care of my happiness, and my life…and without each other giving and taking, our love would not have survived.
While I was tripping down memory lane, I heard Tina Turner's scratchy wail on the radio, “What’s Love Got To Do With It?” and thought, what does love have to do with it? What does love have to do with a long-term marriage? I couldn’t come up with an immediate answer, but I do remember some old chemistry that made us gel, and a whole lot of hopeful projections about who we thought each other was to the other. Here we are today, rapidly approaching thirty-nine years together, still separating our differences making something new everyday out of the old stuff.
We were once those golden people but we are not any longer…not better nor worse, only different. Certain experiences leave a mark on you. You look back and think, I’ll never be that way again. Like everyone before us and around us we are, have been, and are being tempered by life. These pictures and mementos I hold dear to my heart feel dreamlike, as if the experiences didn’t happen to me, yet it was my life and I did live it.
“Never, never again,” says the poet Kathleen Raine. “This moment, never, those slow ripples across smooth water, Never again these clouds white and gray…The sun that rose from the sea this morning will never return, for the broadcast light that brightens the leaves and glances on water will travel tonight on its long journey, out of the universe, never this sun, this world, and never again this watcher.”
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I was sitting here all comfy/cozy with the cat, surfing the net, answering emails, and playing some mindless don't have to think game, and thought, ok, lets see what's happening to the Constipated Woman. So far there is just one post that has left me cold, but hey...that's cool, no pun indended there....sorry. But after reading this I walked over to an antique china box that was my grandmothers. A simple, yet beautiful piece of furniture that holds great and wonderful memories as a child aloud to have tea parties with the china that still decorates the shelfs. I opened the single draw, and like under your nightgowns, I reached under an old table cloth and touched at pile of cards that were so lovinly given to me over the period of 20+ years...some are signed, "Murphy" (dog) some say, "Cloe" or "Thumper"(cats), and some say "Twittles"(bird) but all of them say "Tom"....I look at his name, study each letter, and hear the soft voice of a gentle man. I sit on the floor and sort them, like you, by the year, and then again by the occation. My birthday usually in the camper on the river, and I hear the water. Tom's birthday, and hear the laughter of a house full of friends, and I can smell the turkey, as his birthday wish every year was a Thanksgiving dinner, in March. Our Anniversary, and I hear the feelings of my favorite song that he would sing for me. Easter, Sweetest Day....he remembered them all. Christmas he would stand back and let me be the child I never was. If we caught eachothers eye, he would just be smiling at me....a simple mans joy. A card for every occation...some of these cards have flower peddels in them. Some from the grocery store stand, but mostly flowers that he would see along the road, stop and pick for me, the simple mans joy. Every Valentines Day a box of candy. Sometimes just a small box nothing fancy....sometimes a velvet covered lacy box with 2 lbs. of nasty tasting stuff...you know the kind...but always with flowers. I have sat here and read every one of those cards, cried myself sick, and have ever so quietly and gently wrapped them back up in the red undershirt he wore when we were married. A simply tear, from a complacated women...
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