Finishing Growing Up
Together
When you are 19 years old it’s in the back of your mind that
every new thing you see or do may be the start of something big. Your inner
dialogue says in the voice of someone as if on TV, “Historians look back at
1975 as a turning point year in the life of the young Tanga Bea or the young
Mike.” That year our inner dialogues were correct. I realize I am assuming we
think alike, which is admittedly a shaky proposition.
When we met we were still 18 years old. You had taken the
ferry to Indiana and seen the Reds at Crosley Field, but you had never been
more than 200 miles from Covington, Kentucky where you were born. Compared to
you I was a world traveler, having ventured as far east from my birthplace of
Greenville, South Carolina as Goldsboro, North Carolina, as far south as
Columbia, S.C., as far north as Cincinnati, and as far west as Frankfort,
Kentucky. By the time you met me my head was still spinning from all the
travel.
We were apparently on the same football field with our
respective bands, Pendleton County and Lee County, in 1971, at Eastern Kentucky
University in Richmond, Kentucky, you with your flute and me with my tuba. You
could charm snakes from beneath the porch with your flute, but I only made my
spine more crooked with the tuba.
I first met your mother in the Fall of 1975 or Spring of
1976, in other words, when she was 57 years old. It seems I knew her much
longer but it was only about 25 years. Of course, to know her for a minute was
to know her for a lifetime, she was so steadfastly herself. I met her and
probably Aunt May and Aunt Sylvia when the choir came to Falmouth to sing. You
can correct me on this later.
Just think, in the Fall of 1974 we wandered around Weatherby
Gym picking up class cards, not knowing we were wandering around in one
another’s presence. In fact, we were wandering around among what would turn out
to be lifelong friends, Evans, Aschcrafts, and Wilsons were wandering around
Weatherby too.
What are those times? They no longer exist and therefore are
as dead as the people who have literally passed and lie in state from that era,
but we continue to recall the scenes, the conversations and the faces. Only
those usually pretty bad pictures they took as we left registration remain as
proof that it happened, those and the records we made with our grades, kept in
file drawers in the administration building.
Even the pictures and paper records would be impeachable in
a court of law. Some slick attorney would be able to cast a shadow of a doubt
as to their authenticity. The fact that we rehearse those times regularly with
the people who shared them with us allows us to keep them fresher in mind. My
guess is, those who have not kept in touch with friends from that era find most
of it a total blur. But the fact that we work so hard to remember is testament
to our understanding of how tenuous our claim to times passed really is.
We give accounts to make ourselves more comfortable with the
memories, supplying lost details with current biases. Maybe that’s why we find
ourselves so often wondering which year something happened, or exactly who was
there or where we were living at the time, or later on, which grade the kids
were in. If we can establish these things, the whole account gains needed
credibility. The love we have for one another does not permit us to be overly
honest. We are generous to a fault. We tend to say to one another; you were,
back then, what you apparently remember yourself to be and I will defend your
right to go on believing that, especially if you will help me do the same.
We finished growing up together. Two can live more cheaply
together than the two can live separately -the cliché is worded more
informally. Two can finish growing up together more efficiently than the two
can finish growing up alone, except, when two people complete their ascent into
adulthood as marriage partners, they run the risk - or merit the benefit - of
not fully confronting their individual adjustment shortcomings. They may become
sociological or psychological crutches for one another.
I will never know what it might have been like to work my
way through graduate school depending only on interaction with other graduate
students or just other people for my emotional health. As it was, neither of us
had to contend with the difficult-to- accommodate nuances of other people. If
we did not like someone with whom we found ourselves having to spend a good
deal of time, we could always retreat to our relationship and soften the blow
for ourselves. “I don’t like the personality adjustment this person demands of
me”, we might have said, “Will you help me get through this time without making
that adjustment? You will? Thanks. Yes, I will do the same for you.”
At the time I must have thought such ongoing accommodation
of others would be an unnecessary use of my mental and emotional energy.
Whether it would have been or not, we will never know. Every meaningful
relationship we have had since 1977 has been absorbed by both of us, never
privately.
As the years go by it becomes more difficult to recall the
earliest days of our marriage. The time around the wedding and honeymoon stand
out and I can remember big things like part of the wedding cake falling, how
long it took to open all our gifts, my family being late, how full and hot the
church was, not getting you a wedding present, the Pinto being permanently
painted, your mom’s Malibu, the Days Inn, the Best Western in Bardstown, the
honeymoon suite in Caves City, playing put-put golf, and Long John Silver’s
chicken planks.
The pictures we had are fading and scattered. I wonder where
the audiotape is, the one you would listen to repeatedly to hear Raleigh hit
the high note in the Lord’s Prayer, with the baby yelling. You even knew which
baby that was, a baby who is now around 40 years old.
All these years of shared experience are so meaningless to
anyone but us, so intense with emotion at the time but so easy to just let
slide from our conversations these days. They even threaten to fall completely
out of our minds. Looking back on them leads me to both nostalgia and the
recognition that time makes fun of self-importance. It turns us into
repositories of images and notions of the past, headed for a horizon over which
our passage will be accorded little attention. But we were there and we are
here now and holding our lives up to the light one more time seems useful, at
least it does to me.
Music
Music has been important to us. Our first song together was “I really want to
see you tonight” by England Dan and John Ford-Coley. For a long time we were
not sure whether they were saying “I’m not talking about Meridian” or “I’m not
talking about moving in”. We admitted our uncertainty, stayed persistent and
eventually figured it out together. It was a relief for us both to not feel
pressure to understand every lyric to every song. Couples these days would just
Google it.
It must have been the Spring of 1977 when we drove to
Lexington to hear England Dan and John Ford-Coley and Neil Sedaka in Concert.
Who knows how we had the money. Of course, concerts were not nearly as
expensive back then. You kept the tickets to that and other things we did
together for a long time. My inability to keep up with such things must have
rubbed off on you.
Follow Me, The Wedding Song, Evergreen, The Lord’s Prayer,
(did I leave one out?) we worked out this selection during the summer of 1977.
I drove to Falmouth virtually every weekend that summer, once or twice bringing
Earl along. At the beginning of the summer, when it appeared I would not have a
job in the oil fields, I wound up at Tommy and Brenda’s and we talked late at
night about the Beverly Hills Supper Club fire, both watching national news
coverage of it.
Over the years we bought a couple of “borrowed” milk crates
full of vinyl music albums. Some we had before we married, mostly things I had
bought like Blood on the Tracks by Bob Dylan or Born to Run by Bruce
Springsteen. Together we bought John Denver, Neil Sedaka, Neil Diamond, Paul
Simon, James Taylor, Carol King. I realize, recounting these albums, that you
did more listening than you did selecting.
You loved music, you just never spent as much on it as I
did, but then you did not have the money I did J. Cowsills, Johnny
Rivers, and Strawberry Alarm Clock, you had their 45s. My 45s included: How can
you mend a broken heart by the Bee Gees and Trying to Hold on to my woman by
Lamont Dozier.
Concerts were everywhere. Over the years, after we married
we saw John Denver, Kenny Rogers, The Righteous Brothers, Dan Fogelberg, James
Taylor, Charlie McClain and even Andy Williams.
Your favorite group while we lived in Indiana were Graham
Russell and Air Supply. I liked Supertramp and their song “Take the long way
home”, which played on the car radio the night I came to get you at Zales after
having forgotten to pick you up from work five hours earlier. All the times I
have recounted the fact that this was the song playing, you have never seemed
to see the humor in it.
The Journey
When two people marry it is as if they are starting on a
train trip from which they vow to be carried off. No matter where or how many times the train
stops to load or unload, they continue their conversation, planning the next
time they will get up to visit the bathroom, or when they will walk to the meal
car and get a box of food.
Once the meal is eaten, the bathroom is out of the way, it’s
back to the seat by the window and the view of the country side. Out the window are sometimes parts of the
world they have not seen before. He nods
in the direction of something interesting so she can see it too. That way they
can later talk about what it was.
Sometimes they sit headed forward and sometimes they head
backwards. If they have to change trains
at a station, they may wind up sitting temporarily in separate seats, but their
eyes remain connected and as soon as someone moves, they are back together
again, talking quietly.
The train goes places and they get off together and explore,
but eventually the time for sightseeing is over and they return to another
train and its back across the wide-open spaces again, through the city, over
the mountains and the rivers with their high bridges.
One perspective on marriage is that it is a trap, a place
where pathetic people become mired in an interminable day-to-day. The other
extreme is that it is a haven, a place of sanctuary where love is the eternal
bed. The truth lies somewhere in between.
Those who give up on marriage after a short while do so
sometimes because they become something like claustrophobic, I would
assume. They need elbow room, something
fresh and new.
But one can never leave oneself and therefore nothing is
ever completely fresh. The sights I see
tomorrow will be seen by the eyes I use today. When I look at the world, I
don’t just see it psycho-perceptually, but I see it with perspective, my mind
adds meaning to it. The tendency to see
the familiar as less attractive than the unfamiliar is not necessarily a part
of the human condition, but rather something that reaches epidemic proportions
in certain societies, in some people’s lives.
To continuously see the new and fresh with the same person
may be the greatest delight of marriage.
It is indeed a sad marriage when neither is any longer capable of
appreciating change or embracing new habits or taking on better ways of being together
and alone. It may be an even sadder
marriage when only one is willing to continue investigating experiences.
It’s really this nimbleness, this openness to sharing more
than the same old thing that allows two people to not just continue to live in
the same house but to live in a way that is beneficial to both of their souls.
Anticipation of progress has been a theme in our life and to
a certain extent we have seen it happen.
Our lives together remain open-ended.
We still look forward to what may be coming next year, even though we
tend to know the containers it will be shipped in and who will be the
supplier. That is, we may visit the same
restaurants next year that we do this, or we may still be spending our Friday
evenings reading, but as long as we keep a youthful and expectant viewpoint, no
two Friday evenings will be the same.
That show Mystery Science Theatre sort of sums up what I am
talking about. The character’s heads
showed up on the bottom of the movie screen and they talked all the way through
it, sometimes making fun of the plot or the actors, but always keeping the
banter witty and light.
I am reminded of Aunt May and Uncle Bill or Aunt Sylvie and
Uncle Ivan. They were sort of like the Mystery Science Theatre troupe, sitting
there watching the movie of their lives, making cute little comments and
smiling at one another’s demonstration of defiance in the face of the threats
of boredom or irrelevancy. I say bring
on the many days and evenings we have yet to share. I think we are up to it.
What do you think? Just a hint of a
smile on your face is usually enough to reassure me things are okay. But, on
occasion we may get greedy and laugh right out loud. And they said you were a
saint for staying with me. Little did they know, right? Right?
