Legacy

June 17th, 2007 Family, Marriage

My wedding band is special. It’s gold, of course–yellow gold, about 8 mm wide. No stones–I wasn’t interested starting a marriage in debt. (My roommate’s ring came with monthly payments, which struck me as ridiculous. Reed claims this is one reason why he married me.) I like its plainness, its classy simplicity. But I love my ring for this reason: it was made from the gold of my father’s wedding band.

My parents divorced when I was five; each of them remarried a year or so later. I’m not sure why my mother ended up with her ex-husband’s wedding ring–I imagine my father had no interest in this token of their unhappy union. But she saved it, along with the white gold bands of her wedding set. And when I became engaged, she offered these mementos to me.

Reed was thrilled by the economy of it all (he paid less than $100 to have the precious metal melted down and recast: yellow gold for my ring, white gold for his.) And I was thrilled by the symbolism. I did not want to repeat the disaster that was my parents’ marriage, of course, but I was hopeful that I could take the raw materials of my past and make something new, something good.

Fifteen years have passed. For Reed and I they’ve been difficult years, in some ways. Even though both of us have been committed to marriage since our wedding day, it took us a dozen years to figure out that we really, really wanted to be married to each other (big difference). But we know this now, and life is sweet.

I just called my father to wish him a happy Father’s Day. We don’t speak very often–a few times a year, usually, unless there’s some crisis afoot in the family. Like my marriage relationship, my past relationship with my father has been difficult in some respects. His personal weaknesses have hurt me, at times a great deal. But I love him. Perhaps the greatest evidence of this is that I married someone very much like him.

On this Father’s Day I am grateful for the love of my husband and father. I’m grateful that I have learned to love them without reservation. And I am grateful to wear a constant reminder of them both, shining with soft luster on my ring finger.

A River in a Time of Dryness

January 12th, 2006 Marriage

I used to think that one of the downsides to being in a stable marriage is knowing you’ll never fall in love again. I mean, really, passionately in love. When your every cell is supercharged with life, and the whole earth feels renewed with promise.

Truth be told, I didn’t even experience that kind of heady power before I got married. At least, not to the extent that I knew was possible, in fabled theory. Happy as I was after the big “yes,” part of me felt that I had missed out on the stuff of legends. Period.

Thankfully, I was wrong.

Which is more wonderful — discovering such love after nearly thirteen years of marriage, at the very moment when the relationship hits a pinnacle of crisis?

Or conceiving, in the midst of it all, a child, who will live forever as a token of that discovery?

Or realizing, nearly a year later, that the rush of the river, although seemingly tamed by exhaustion and life-grind, flows just as surely still?

Or grasping the stunning truth that grace, and mutual desire, will bring untold length and depth to the water, worlds without end?

Yin and Yang

July 22nd, 2005 Marriage

Recently I’ve been re-reading parts of Judith Viorst’s Necessary Losses. Her approach is way too Freudian for me to swallow wholesale, but it’s interesting nonetheless.

One claim she makes is that we tend to marry people who act out the parts of our own personalities that we repress out of fear. This goes beyond the more obvious spouse-as-complement idea (e.g. a lazy man marries a hard-working woman, a loud woman marries a quiet man). Could it be true?

The other day, Matt, our destructo four-year-old, created a whopping toilet clog with wads of toilet paper. Poor Andrew, the innocent eight-year-old, flushed. (Later on Andrew told me that in the past, flushing had cleared up the problem–toilet paper experiments are popular around here.)

We had just sat down to dinner when I heard the dreaded sound of an indoor waterfall. Rushing to the bathroom, I found a major deluge. For some reason, the water flow hadn’t stopped once the toilet tank was full. “Reed,” I called, “emergency!” And here’s the funny part: I didn’t feel at all worried, or upset, about the water. I was a bit reluctant for my husband to see it, because I knew what his reaction would be, but overall I was–shall I say it?–serene.

Predictably, Reed was furious. Sharp scoldings came. As I grabbed towels and our carpet-cleaning vacuum (great for sucking up water) I felt badly for Matt, who of course didn’t intend to cause true disaster, and for Andrew, who of course didn’t either. But I realized that had Reed not been there, I would have been furious too. Would have scolded, would have fumed. Since he was aptly playing out that role, I didn’t have to.

Having Viorst’s claims freshly in mind, this got me thinking. My husband has a few traits that I don’t like, and they are the very things I fear in myself. It’s entirely possible that (among many other reasons) I chose him in order to vicariously express myself in taboo ways. So even as I resent some of his personality and behavior, he’s actually contributing to my sense of emotional safety. Oh, the irony.

(There’s a whole part in the book about marrying Daddy, and I hate to say it but my husband is a lot like my father…)

A couple days after the toilet clog I found a note my nightstand from Christine, age 6:

Mom is 100% Mom, 0% Dad
Dad is 100% Dad, 0% Mom

Maybe she’s been reading my Viorst book.