Now, I’m not a misanthrope. Every once in a while, however, I need to retreat and recharge. Today was a recharging day. Tomorrow, my wife and I will celebrate our 30th wedding anniversary. We dated for five years prior to tying the knot. That means we have been a part of each other’s lives for 35 years I wish I could say it has been all rainbows and unicorns, but I live in reality, not a rom-com. True love ain’t pretty.
Sharon Olds meditates on . . .
True Love
by: Sharon Olds
after making love, we look at each other in
complete friendship, we know so fully
what the other has been doing. Bound to each other
like mountaineers coming down from a mountain,
bound with the tie of the delivery-room,
we wander down the hall to the bathroom, I can
hardly walk, I hobble through the granular
shadowless air, I know where you are
with my eyes closed, we are bound to each other
with huge invisible threads, our sexes
muted, exhausted, crushed, the whole
body a sex—surely this
is the most blessed time of my life,
our children asleep in their beds, each fate
like a vein of abiding mineral
not discovered yet. I sit
on the toilet in the night, you are somewhere in the room,
I open the window and snow has fallen in a
steep drift, against the pane, I
look up, into it,
a wall of cold crystals, silent
and glistening, I quietly call to you
and you come and hold my hand and I say
I cannot see beyond it. I cannot see beyond it.
It’s such an intimate, tender moment Olds describes here—one of those stolen moments most married people with kids will recognize. Yes, Olds and her husband ended up divorcing eventually, but every love story (successful or failed) is made up of these kind of sweet, stolen times.
I’m a lucky guy. I found the love of my life pretty early, and I got to spend my life with her. Sure, we’ve had some touch-and-go periods because of mental illness and addictions. We even separated for a year. Yet, to paraphrase Elton John, we’re still standing.
And we have two beautiful, smart kids—one in medical school, one about to graduate from high school. We are well beyond the quickies-when-the-kids-are-asleep phase. Currently, we are in the hey-we-can-take-an-afternoon-nap phase. (For my younger disciples, let me say that EVERYONE eventually realizes that naps are God’s greatest creation, with sex coming in a distant second.)
Falling in love is easy. Staying in love for close to 40 years? Now, that takes some seriously hard work. People change over time. It’s inevitable. One passion gives way to another passion. You give up computer science to study creative writing. You take a temp job at an outpatient surgery center to pay the bills, and you end up temping there for 25 years.
Life has a way of throwing you curve balls. It’s simply a matter of finding the right person to stand behind home plate with you. I was lucky enough to hit a home run.
Saint Marty wrote a sort-of love poem for tonight, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:
On this day in 1962, Edward Albee’s play Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? opened on Broadway. Write a poem where you take the name of an author and have it reoccurring in your poem in surprising ways. If you don’t know where to begin, use the image of walking into an old or used bookstore and reaching for a book.
Mary Olivering
by: Martin Achatz
I always return to you, Mary Oliver, when I hear
the oar train hurtle through 3 a.m. on its way
to Lake Superior, return to those peaceful Mary moments
of marsh and heron, snakes luxuriating in puddles
of sun, bears muzzling honey from tree trunks. Return
to the grove of Oliver trees you planted, nursed,
pruned with so much joy and grief that I can still
smell your cigarette smoke as I wander through
the orchard, squeezing each Oliver on the branches
for ripeness. Some yield to my pinches, almost blush,
as if I’m at a middle school dance and just pressed
my lips to my crush’s neck, incanted her name—
Mary, oh, Mary, yes, Mary!—as Simple Minds flooded
the gym and everyone’s bodies swayed, arched
in adolescent desperation.
I bring my pail of Olivers home, whip up some
pancake batter, stir them in delicately so they won’t
bruise or burst. In the morning, when my wife
stumbles into the kitchen. I will hand her a plate
piled with Mary pancakes. I’ll watch her fork
pieces between her lips. As she chews, I’ll sit beside
her and wonder what we’re going to do with the
wild and precious day ahead.
