I guess it’s about progress

Posted on | August 22, 2005 |

No art and no running, but I finished the first half of that damn piece of writing that I’ve been struggling with all week. It completely kicked my ass. Made me delve deeply into my parent’s belief system, to try and locate within it what drew them together, and later, what created the gap that grew between them when they had nothing left but ideals to share with one another.

They were married for 24 years before my father died of cancer, and yet, for all of the years I can remember, they didn’t seem particularly happy, and certainly not intimate or close, or fun-loving. They did share ideals. They both believed that human beings are spiritual beings who are capable of developing higher consciousness through meditation and observation over a lifetime of self-evolving, and I admire this. Yet somehow, though on this level they spoke the same language, on a day-to-day level, there mostly misunderstanding.

My mother liked early morning walks, her cup of coffee and the paper, and to go to bed by 9ish wearing flannel. My father woke up late, sat by himself in the living room eating toast and oatmeal every morning of my life, without talking to anyone until we’d mostly either left for school or started our weekend adventures. He hated taking walks, enjoyed working with his hands, and stayed up late at night reading novels or working on his computer. There was little overlap, if any, other than a lot of regret and sadness between them

I’ve seen a couple of pictures of them when they were first together, and in love. My mother looks beautiful with her long dark hair and dancing eyes, as she glances over the rim of a brown mug at my father taking snapshot after snapshot. But there are only a handful like it.

Now I am the age my mother was in those pictures. I sit across the table from my husband I feel deeply content with the life we’ve made together over the past six years. We eat salad with home grown tomatoes; drink red wine and laugh about the day’s news, while keeping an ear tuned for the baby. We fight, but we fight fair—out in the open, without any resentment building up. We play hard together, we make love, we goof around: wrestling on the couch. We laugh. A lot. Things aren’t always easy between us, or clear, or understood, but we share mutual respect. We see each other as equals—partners in parenting and running both.

Yet some mornings I wake in a cold sweat, filled with dread that someday without my knowledge or consent I’ll find that my marriage has gone to hell in a hand basket the way it had mostly done for them by the time my father died.

So I’m writing this piece because I want to try and understand what happened between them that made their love atrophy over time. Of course, I imagine I’m like everyone else in that I want to do things better than my parents did. And I’ve always had a healthy skepticism about marriage. It seems to go sour for so many people, without their knowing it, or realizing until it’s too late.

And so I go backwards along the roadmap of my parent’s past, trying to find out where things broke down, or never were strong to begin with, to support two people growing in love.

I want to continue to live fully, fiercely, actively in the present. I want to shareideals with my husband, but also to bring awareness to each moment that is with us, right now in the room. This moment, here, where we look at each other and touch. Or yesterday, running on the bike path, making plans to build a house and fighting about those plans.

I want us to keep disagreeing like this. Without barriers. Fighting for clarity, for better understanding. I want us to keep talking, even if it means running hard, or crying hard. Because if we don’t, I know I’ll end up like my mother was, freezing my husband out: out of misunderstanding, and regret. And right now, honestly, I can’t see why twenty-four years of unhappiness in marriage would be worth it. I wouldn’t stay. I know this about myself. I’d be the first to run, if things were stagnant the way they were for my parents. I’d be the first to call a truce and leave before the very edges of my soul were shredded.

These were the thoughts that kept me busy today, buried in a heap of papers scattered round my desk. And I’m only at the beginning, but I feel relieved to have begun it for real. To have gotten past procrastination (i.e. obsessive blog hopping) and plunged in.

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