I was just headed out the door yesterday and saw them from behind. Not an irregular site but this moment gave me pause to extract the emotions from my head in writing. My parents are very much in love — they tease each other like the young 20-somethings they were while dating. They still don’t fully get each other, they actually really annoy each other at times — perhaps the novelty and intrigue of keeping a 41year marriage together? The first thought that crossed my mind was more shallow than deep — being a single 36yr old, impatient yet steadfast, with little affection in a while and no man on my radar — are they going to make out after I leave? Then subsequent thoughts took over as I projected myself into their situation…
Gosh, I would be making out with my guy within 1 minute of a snuggle. I can’t wait to __ __ ___ (fill in your crazy rated R thoughts.) Oh the proximity and safety net of being married and having sex pretty much at anytime! Wait, do they still do it? I wonder. Wait, no, actually I don’t want to wonder — Ugh! I wouldn’t even dare to ask them that for fear we both would blush.
Some things in life are better left a mystery and this is one of them. I still want to pretend like I have the innocent mind of a 5 year old in their eyes. I want to shield them from the proclivities of my wondering imagination at this age and in this frustrating growing-state of singlehood I am in. They look so sweet and freshly married young 20-somethings in spirit, eventhough they are chronologically in their mid 60s. Age is a cruel labeler as biologically younger-looking people have to fight against her prejudice of how society dictates a 65 year to look and act.
The couch snuggle will suffice for these two — and any couple of their longevity and rollercoaster of a marriage. Frisky thoughts are a feeling of the past (that I won’t comprehend until I reach their age). I tell myself, Whitney, right now they are just tired. Dude. 4 decades — they are probably just tired and soaking in that tiredness together. Some of their marriage days — even months and years, you could say — were like a boldozer held on by a shoe string. It’s quite remarkable they made it this long, their fire intact — that fire when they both met each other at the age of 19 and 20. If only our spirits intertwined with one another could stay frozen in time during the fever of First Meet — the beginning of dating, the vows on the wedding day, the honeymoon stage thereafter. If those feelings could only stay in Arrested Development while the rest of our lives matured, do you think more couples would still fight to hold on to the sacredness of their marriages no matter the nauseating drudge of life and selfish enterprise (from either one spouse or both) that came with that? I wonder.
Surely 40 years ago they would be a lot more physically lustful after I leave the room, but honestly, I think that’s not what couples do at this age. My mom and dad’s lustful fire for one another has morphed into a wholesome love — wielded by years of highs and lows that have found themselves a calm homeostasis energy I wish I could have experienced more as a child. But life and the things that happen in it are not some linear equation — some Leave It to Beaver Family in the calm utopia of a suburban coldesac. Oh no, my upbringing was not linear. I had to deal with more emotional turmoil as a child than I did as an adult — don’t you wish it was the other way around? I’m sure alot of offspring have felt the same as me. It should not be that your heaviest burdens come as a child, that should be the most lofty time in your life. Adulthood is for the emotional turmoil — for the Dark Ages. We can handle it better can’t we? Well, for some of us not living in that linear dimension, we had no choice: we had to handle it as children. Growing streetwise, not a snowflake gene in us, we overcame the drudge earlier in life than most of our peers. I don’t know about other’s cirmcumstances but that’s not to say I had bad parents — I had incredible parents dispite the emotional turmoil of witnessing them fighting alot. Sometimes I think about what era I would not want to time travel to and that is the Midievel Era, a.k.a. the Dark Ages. Likewise I wouldn’t want to travel back to parts of my childhood. That’s how dark it was sometimes. Othertimes it was so based, so euphoric and wholesome — in fact, if I took an honest inventory, that was actually most of my childhood and I look at my parents in that way. They are frozen in my memory as the cup is over half full: not just the opportunities they gave me in life but the genuine love and laughter that came over our home, overshadowing and softening the Dark Ages.
Seeing them sit there, I have fun thinking they could pounce on eachother after I leave the house. But again, as I remind myself, I think they are more tired than frisky — tired of living +40 years together. Too tired to get down like my mind — in its sexual prime — wants to think is a possibility. But it’s not all sexual energy on my mind, it’s logistics, too: the thought of forward thinking. A younger unmarried couple have no past to reflect back on; they are only thinking about each other’s future—or immediate future—as anxiety palpates through the girl’s veins and brains, as she wonders “Is this The One?”; whilst discomfort and excitement in a certain region of his as he wonders “Please don’t blue ball me again like last time, seriously, how long is this girl going make me wait?”lol Yet, for a couple that has been married so long, they are probably less looking at their future as they are reflecting on their past together: building a life and family, prevailing over the most tempestuous of seas that gave them no flat horizon in site and the trenches they could barely climb out of. They never gave up. As trite as it sounds: where there is a will there is a way. We have different camps of thought in our culture that dictates marriage longitivity: some say its practicality/peaceful ease of living together and others say its chemistry/fire — which is it?! Because the fire of chemistry might not always come with the peaceful ease and visa versa. Pick your flavor before the ice cream of relationship opportunity melts. (Believe me, I am reminding myself of this despairing notion more and more everyday.)
Perhaps that is what they are reflecting on: We made it. Four kids. Look what we built. Etc…I can only imagine that etcetera, being a fly on the wall of their thoughts as they lean their heads on each other. There is a redeeming and cleansing aspect to pushing through — but how much to push through and for how long? Well, even one of the most experienced marriage counselors could not answer that for two spouses currently hanging by a thread. It’s up to the people who said their vows — they have their own unique threshhold, what do they want to make of this life? Are they going to keep on this jarring journey of staying together through thick and thin or are they going to break off and (hopefully) each find a new adventure to face. The risk to stay together versus the risk of breaking up and facing the unknown (another kind of drudge) —oh, the epitome of being between a rock and a hard place. The grass ain’t always greener. Although mixed families are becoming the norm, there is something to be said about the only once-married couple: the diamonds in the rough they are — the rough times that shaped them, that challenge the vows they made. Nobody sees their diamond really glitter until much later — like my parents. Their’s was a diamond in the rough for a very long time….and I hope their’s never gets compiled by the pains of the past because no couple who survives the Dark Ages of marriage deserves to go back. They prevailed and I hope others can have faith in their First Love to do the same. A rose can only blossom after the rain. It won’t be easy — most great things in life never come easy. I hope you give your budding rose of marriage a chance to blossom in due time.
“You mock my pain.
“Life IS pain, Hingness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.”
The Princess Bride
