Today it crossed my mind that if 23 was the most adventurous year of my life, then, from what I’ve thus far lived of it, 24 could also be defined by a superlative of some sort. I have a few ideas as to which adjective that may be, but I’ll withhold its announcement until I’ve lived out each storyline a bit further. Life can change so suddenly; a fool presumes to know the future.
Caves. Consistently.
Monday, February 12th, 2007
I looked for it in my coat pocket.
I looked for it in my wallet.
I looked for it in the tray where we keep all of the car keys.
I looked for it in the laundry basket.
I looked for it behind the couch.
I looked for it in my glove compartment.
I looked for it next to the microwave oven.
I looked for it high and I looked for it low, but I could not find my WILL POWER anywhere!
But who spins the wheel?
Thursday, February 8th, 2007
Her life was a game of Life, unmistakably. Her rank had been determined by a spin of the plastic wheel and little else. Thinking it would give her an advantage, she took the longer route–the University route. All that did was set her back.
She married young–she had to. Society had placed a mandatory STOP, determining she was unfit to proceed through Life independently.
She drove a station wagon.
She was still paying off her college loans when the first child arrived, a blue stick of a thing, a boy. They came quickly after that, another boy and a set of twin girls, each one of them plastic, in a manner of speaking, and each one of them a burden. But this was Life and the plastic wheel continued to spin and she loved her husband and she loved very much her children and told them so every morning as she plopped their little stick bodies into the back seat of the station wagon.
At random intervals her life was colored by tragedies and triumphs: She started a party business. She was injured in an automobile accident. She had a short story published in The New Yorker. He uncle died of bone marrow cancer and left her with a dozen cats.
She was not afraid to play the stock market, though often she lost. She wasn’t aware–or perhaps she simply had no use for–the rules of the game of Life: whosoever hath the most by the game’s end wins.
And the game would certainly end, though she nor her plastic contemporaries cared to acknowledge that fact as they sped along, the plastic wheel spinning, always spinning. But it would come and it did: the Day of Reckoning. And all of her wealth was spread out before her and she was awarded a lump sum for each child she had bourne and raised and it was all about money–it had always been about money.
But she would have none of it. Her life was not a game of Life, she knew better. And with great satisfaction she broke the spinning plastic wheel into pieces. It was just that simple.
All I learned about marriage I learned from J.Lo (in a roundabout way.)
Sunday, February 4th, 2007
I will now admit: one of the most profound ideas regarding relationships–marriage in specific–I gleaned from a Jennifer Lopez movie. I’m tempted to write a paragraph to explain why I was watching a Jennifer Lopez movie in the first place, but I’ll fight the urge. All I will say is that I had just completed a sentence in which I mocked my mom and sister for getting so into the movie (Shall We Dance if you’re wondering) when I was hit by the following line delivered by Susan Sarandon’s character:
[on marriage] We need a witness to our lives. There’s a billion people on the planet… I mean, what does any one life really mean? But in a marriage, you’re promising to care about everything. The good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things… all of it, all of the time, every day. You’re saying ‘Your life will not go unnoticed because I will notice it. Your life will not go un-witnessed because I will be your witness’.”
In fact, thanks to the joys of Youtube you can see for yourself.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdBATA_Ag5s]
(Thanks Susan’s character, I will quote you.)
Anyway, I think there is a lot of truth that that. Who would have thought, buried right there in the middle of an awkward J. Lo/Richard Gere vehicle? We marry a person to assign value to our own life. I know that’s not one of the reasons that they will list in the wedding vows, because unlike the oft quoted passage from the book of Corinthians (Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs) the aforementioned idea, that of having a witness to your life, is largely a selfish one. And marriage is supposed to be about selflessness, and fundamentally I prefer that reason, the Corinthians reason. Because it sounds so noble. But realistically I don’t know. Realistically–and I’m not proud to admit this–I’m more interested in knowing that my life will matter to that one person than I am about submitting myself fully for the good of my husband. Maybe that just means I’m not ready for marriage. Or maybe I just have to admit, at the chagrin of my good taste, that this forgettable romantic comedy struck a cord with me.
