Waiting Room Thoughts: Marriage

The other day, I had to bring my wife to the hospital for surgery. This is usually way more difficult (emotionally) for me than it is for her. As a nurse, she is at home in the hospital and her familiarity with procedures and the overall atmosphere makes her sort of nonchalant about the whole process. (She's home and doing very well now.) 

Me? They say: "We have your phone number. The surgery will take about two hours. You can go home or to a Starbuck's and we will call you when it is done. She'll be in recovery for an hour anyway." Nope. Ain't happening. 

I have to stay in the waiting room. Something feels wrong about being farther away from her than necessary during a major operation. So, I spent three-and-a-half hours (she took longer than usual) pacing, watching awful morning TV programming (why are soap operas lighted so minimally?) and absently reading a Star Wars book that a student had given to me. ("You HAVE to read this Mr. Mat. It's great." Any decent teacher knows that this means I really did have to read it. Fortunately, the dude who wrote it is, at least, a pro; the book is what my favorite professor used to call "chewing gum for the brain" -- not a bad time-killer, in the end.)

It's always an emotional moment, sending one's loved one back into surgery, especially now, at the tail end of COVID, when one is not allowed into the pre-op room. (For my wife, it's "Meh. It's surgery." For me, it's, "Things happen. Anaesthesia is dangerous. People get infections...")  I always feel a quick, strong rush of emotion after she is gone. As I sit down, I usually reflexively say an "Our Father" to myself because, while I have never really been the religiously demonstrative type, I have always been faithful. It's at that point that I am generally able to pull myself together. And fret...with some modicum of dignity. 

Sitting in waiting rooms does lead one to think, though. And think, I did. 

We were the first ones there, arriving at six in the morning, so I watched husband after husband bring his wife in. I saw at least five long, affectionate, embraces goodbye. I heard accompanying, whispered, I-love-yous. I saw the husbands sit (they didn't want to leave, either) and wring their proverbial hands, staring uninterestedly at morning talk shows. They cared, as I did. They were in love, as I am. They were married these women, in the truest sense of the word: joined together, body and soul, and the breaking of that connection hurt. Daily life might not do it, but risk (or, at least, perceived risk) brings out the bond. 

Of course, these five husbands and myself are only anecdotal evidence (only a sample of the massive population of the world) but it raised a question: If these randomly-gathered people and myself are so clearly in love after so many years, how real is the media portrayal of the decline of marriage?

TV and Internet are dangerous windows. They are, in the end, a tiny portal of information, filtered through a tiny representative portion of the world's population, represented by the producers, writers, presenters, etc. They are the gatekeepers of information. They don't represent the collective voice of the world, at all. And neither do we six husbands represent all of the husbands in the world, but a quick, random sample might just imply that marriage and love are okay and they, the media, who have always favored the grim over the optimistic, might just be forcing a tainted characterization. 

If fifty percent of marriages fail, it doesn't mean the other fifty percent are not good, real, good-old-fashioned bonds, right? There is a lot of love out there. Maybe it's not so dire. 

Of Marriage and Broken Beams

Good relationships can take some damage; this applies to friendships and romantic relationships as well. And it certainly can (and must) apply to marriages.

I see deep, time-grown relationships like this:

This bridge is made entirely of wooden beams, many of them redundant. If one cracks or rots, the structure will say intact. In fact, the functionality of the bridge will most likely not suffer at all. (I'm no engineer, but stick with my metaphoric physics, if you will.) And if, especially back when a bridge like this was built, the beam was unreachable, things would have to just go on as they were -- which they could safely do.

Too many relationships fail because of an event or a statement. Or even an action, Sure, one can simply set fire to the bridge (a spouse commits infidelity or becomes abusive, for instance) and it can all burn down. But disappointments -- even very big ones -- in the actions or words of our friend or lover or spouse, while they may permanently break one or two of the beams, need not necessarily compromise the whole structure.

I think it is okay to have unmendable breaks in a relationship. Just because there is something within that can never be fixed, it doesn't mean that the numerous other good components can't take the stress until death do we part. And it doesn't mean we can't walk life's walk happily, together.

My Wife Is Not My Dream Girl

My wife is not my "dream girl."

Karen in a hat.

The girl I used to dream about was...different than my wife. She was very visibly artsy. She had an English accent that was probably more of an American actress's approximation of one than it was real. She looked cute in hats and wore floral summer dresses year 'round. She read the Romantics every night before bed. She was as obsessed with creativity as I am. She was a character that I had "written;" she wasn't a person.

I even met this girl. In fact, I broke up with my wife (who I was dating, at the time) to go out with this girl. My wife had (clearly, with complete accuracy), stepped back and taken a "you'll be back" attitude. She was right. It took about three dinners with my dream girl for me to realize I was...bored. We had plenty in common; she was attractive and intelligent; she was sweet. We got along great. But...after a few great conversations, we had sort of run out of stuff to say.

My wife-to-be, no doubt having sensed the perfect time for the coup de grâce, showed up at a crowded gig looking stunning (to say the least) and that prompted my stream of consciousness into a realization that I had, indeed, made the wrong move. The rest is history -- including my "dream girl."

Karen and I are very happily married and have been for nearly seventeen years, now. I know it is unfashionable for creative types like myself to be happy at all, let alone happily married. (I almost feel I have to be apologetic for not being an alcoholic or an insomniac.) But just as I realized that I don't have to fit the artistic cliches, I eventually realized we are all making a mistake when we set out in search of a "dream" partner. We're bound to paint a two-dimensional picture and where's the satisfaction in hugging a cardboard cut-out?

Can Viral Proposals Lead to Marital Sniffles?

I keep seeing these articles and posts about the "most amazing" boyfriends in the world and how elaborately they proposed to their girlfriends. Some guys jump out of planes; some guys propose on the Monstervision at baseball games; some guys hire entire flashmobs; some guys write "Will you marry me?" in fifty foot block letters on Hawaiian beaches and fly their girlfriends over them in dirigibles; some guys get Justin Bieber to ask from the stage...the list goes on.

I get it. Dudes have been doing variations on this for ages, except, now, it all seems so uncomfortably public. "Viral proposal" is, in and of itself, a disturbing (and possibly prophetic) phrase, is it not?

A historical mess, was Braveheart -- but, this...

Look -- people need to make their own choices and we all need to do, in personal matters, what feels right to us, but, to me, certain things are better kept private; even some things that don't fall into the category of obvious. For me, a proposal is something that ought to be private. The world seeps too much into our daily affairs; maybe we should keep it out of certain places.

Pre-Nups Make the Impossible Impossible

I guess a lot depends on what you think marriage is.

There are a lot of highly educated people out there who will smile a wry smile and tell me that marriage has, historically, been all sorts of things, not the least of which is a business arrangement. I do understand that, just so everyone knows.

But it is hard to refute the fact that, in Western culture as well as in some others. marriage has come to be known as a commitment born out of love; a promise of eternal fidelity and loyalty. A "till-death-do-we-part" kind of a thing.

Even though people seem to be treating it, of late, as a kind of not-really commitment, the general principal; the poetic vows; the expensive clothes and copious flowers adorning alters and daises seem to belie the fact that we still think, at least by definition, marriage is supposed to be a profound commitment.

If it were not so, why would the gay community, at present, be fighting so hard for recognition in the area. Business? Tax breaks? Partially. But most would argue there is more to it.

Just today, though, I was sucked in, as I usually am, to one of those listy sites that shows us stuff we didn't know about celebrities. This one was about pre-nuptial agreements.

I have to weigh in. I don't care if you are are a billionaire (or a thousandaire, like myself). A pre-nuptial agreement is an invalidation of the marriage vows. A pre nuptial agreement the "just kidding" below the last l uttered promise at any ceremony.

You can come at me, if you want, with a million practical reasons why pre-nups are a sound idea. It won't work.

The Gravy Doesn't Just Come When You Cook The Meat

In Neil Simon's The Odd Couple, Oscar angers Felix by coming home very late for a double-date dinner that Felix is cooking. By the time Oscar ambles home, beer on his breath, the roast is dried-out. Felix, already angry, asks what he is supposed to do -- the dinner is ruined. Oscar makes the mistake of suggesting that they just pour gravy over it.

FELIX: Where the hell am I going to get gravy at eight o'clock? 

OSCAR: I thought it comes when you cook the meat. 

FELIX: When you cook the meat? You don't know the first thing you're talking about. You have to make gravy. It doesn't just come!

This popped into my head today as I was thinking about the sort of laissez-faire attitude people seem to have toward their own lives. They expect the gravy just to magically make itself, when it comes to life, in general -- especially in terms of marriage and kids.

Searching for Ballast

The ship of society needs ballast, don't you think? I'm not saying that everyone needs to think exactly the same. In fact, the possibility of such a condition is horrifying to me. But, a ship without ballast lists and it can eventually founder. Maybe the ballast of society's ship is some kind of consensus of the way things should be in certain areas.

I know many accuse traditional values of being foolish and anachronistic (or even damaging [and some are]) but some of these values have served as "ballast" for quite a long time. Some of them are not only, in my opinion, good, but, they are necessary for smooth sailing. For societal harmony.

I was listening to a morning radio show today and they were discussing the conditions of revealing important life information to family members: pregnancies, engagements, etc. What they were batting around was people's reactions to such stuff -- anger at not being told "first," etc.

Two callers had me chewing on my steering wheel.

Now, many of my more astute readers have warned me against listening to morning talk shows, but, where else would I go to get a grip of the mind of the average dolt?

One caller told a story regarding her four-year engagement to her current husband. The host of the show asked, "Why did it take so long for you to get married?" Her response? "Well, a year into our engagement, I got pregnant, so..."

What's Marriage For, Anyway?

I was wondering, yesterday, what, for the most part, makes a couple decide to divorce. I mean, ruling out beatings, infidelities, late-discovered homosexuality and things like huffing addictions...

For your average couple that has been married for a long time, what is the trigger?

I know this sounds like a simplistic question, but nothing is simple.

If a couple have never been in love, I get that they might eventually "call it quits" -- when their life together gives them no comfort; no sense of union; no romance or sensual fire... A time comes, I suppose, when they have seen what some couples have between them, emotionally, and they don't and they decide to go looking for fulfillment.

One wonders, of course, why they got married in the first place if this feeling didn't exist, but I'm in no position to speculate about specifics. Could have been a lack of experience; not knowing when things were lame because of a lack of comparison. Could have been the result of falling into a routine with someone and then going the next step, to marriage, because it was expected. (My dad did always warn me about falling into a comfort zone and becoming blind to what was wrong in a relationship.)

Some "hang in there" until the kids are in college and then they drop the hatchet.

The Tale of Ned and Honey (A Parable)

Once upon a time (okay, it was last Friday) a guy named Ned was clicking around on the Internet and he saw a picture of a tattoo: it was a snake (a cobra, to be precise) and the cobra was wearing a cap emblazoned with the logo of his favorite football team.

I deeply desire that tattoo, thought Ned. Alas, he thought, further -- my wife dislikes tattoos deeply.

"Honey," he said, flipping around his iPad. "Look at this. Isn't it cool?"

Honey (seriously, that was her name) dropped her reading glasses down low on her nose and glanced over from her chair. "Eeeewuh. Gross. And, besides, you know I dislike tattoos deeply."

Ned was vexed. He'd always loved tattoos. His cousin, Ted, had had a great one: an image of Curly, from the Three Stooges, smoking a marijuana cigarette. Ned had always coveted it.

He was further vexed because marriage had taken away his freedom. His freedom, do you hear? Who was she to tell him what to do?

'Til Hair Do Us Part

The other night, I was in the emergency room of a hospital. (Not for me -- for someone else; and everyone is doing okay...)

As I sat there, I watched two teams of ambulance people roll patients in. They unbuckled and lifted and bellowed (one of the patients was hard of hearing) and finally finished delivering their befuddled-looking charges.

At one point, both teams were standing in the same area, writing on clipboards and punching things into iPads. A corpulent ambulance man in his fifties -- with grey, woolly hair and a grey, woolly moustache -- looked up at his ambulance counterpart from the other team; she was younger, a little "thick" in the body, but attractive.

The older man looked up: "Hey. You got a hair cut."

Hamlet's Plan: Thoughts on Marriage

The thing with revolutionary thinking is that it doesn't accomplish much if it isn't revolutionary enough. The gay marriage debate, for instance. Maybe we need to think less about who should be able to marry and more about why the hell we allow the government to determine what a valid relationship is. If we are going to change things, let's change them.

For a different reason (and from a different perspective) than Hamlet, "I say we will have no marriages."

Why do we think it is okay for the government to tell us if a union is valid? -- heterosexual or homosexual? I say we get the government out of the marriage business altogether.

I'm not much for argumentation by precedent. "Well, Chris," someone might say. "You have this pie-in-the-sky view that marriage should be all about love. In the past, it has been more of a business arrangement, from the Middle Ages forward..."

I know that. I do not care. We should have evolved past that by now.

An Open Letter to Selfish Jackasses

Dear Young Couples of the World:

You have to start thinking. Really. 

I'm not going to hit you with my cosmic beliefs, though they are pretty firm. I'm not going to talk about religion. I'm not going to define marriage. But I am going to ask you to stop being a bunch of selfish jackasses.

You believe what you believe about marriage -- a blog post isn't going to change that. You either think marriage is sacred or you don't; and whether you believe it is meant for only certain people or whether you believe a person should be allowed to marry anyone or anything in the world, you have to start really considering one thing: commitment (especially as it relates to having babies).

Bill, Disconnected

The man ventured forth into the night, leaving his beautiful wife behind in the glow of lamplight. It was cold and the streets were wet with melting snows.

He shivered and pulled up the collar of his coat and punched the button to unlock his minivan. He opened the door and stepped in and then drove off into the darkness on his mission: ice cream. "Mint pinky-berry swirl" for her, "chocolate chewy candy chunks" for him. The usual.

Halfway down the dark suburban road, lined with spooky houses that glowed blue from the windows as television screens flashed, he reflexively and then violently felt his coat's breast pocket. His heart rate quickened. It wasn't there. Where was it? It was always there . . . where had he put it?

Back to Back

What if, when we got married, we stuck with some of the "till death do us part" and some of the "forever and ever" stuff but we added some things that are a little more prosaic. I'll bet if we added these vows, more marriages would last a lifetime:

1) When I'm mad, I promise to tell you what I am mad about instead of making you guess out of vengeance for something you probably don't know you did.

2) I promise never to walk in to the house without saying hello to you.

3) I promise never to complain to my friends about you. Little betrayals are still betrayals.

4) I promise not to separate from you the second we walk into a party, as if there is a rule that says we can't talk until we get back into the car.

Marathon (A Parable)

There once was a man who had dreams of running. As a boy, he would run, of course. Boys must. But as things became more complicated, he ran less and less. Running was often not allowed. Running was sometimes considered cowardly. One couldn't run and do homework. One couldn't run and write out the bills. One couldn't run while changing babies' diapers. Sometimes, as a father, he ran two or three steps, but only in order to catch his toddlers as they stumbled.

As life became still more complicated, the man ran even less, until, eventually, he ran no more. Regardless, he still dreamed of running. One day, he thought, I will complete a marathon.

The Days of Wine and Toothpaste

Oh,things were hot, back then. John had a hot car with a bass speaker that throbbed like the very heart of lust. Mary thought he had sexy hair. She wore shirts that made people blush or stare, depending on their up-bringing. When they walked into a club together, everyone else could only imagine what it must be like to be "that couple."

They were playmates, John and Mary. They talked on the phone and saw each other a few times a week for vertigo-inspiring trysts. They drove home thinking: Wow. When each was alone at home, they thought about marriage. This was the one.

On the weekends, they went to dinner. She'd raise an eyebrow, he'd raise an eyebrow. They'd sip red wine. She'd take a saucy bite from her fork and then lick the tip of her finger, dangerously. He'd give her a "naughty girl" look and shake his head, feigning that the boyish embarrassment that made her think he looked so insufferably cute -- so deeply desirable. She'd move her foot under the table, drop off a strappy shoe and run a toe up his jeans leg. He'd cough and blot at his mouth with a napkin. "Check!" he'd say out loud to a waiter who wasn't there and they would laugh at his cleverness.

The Simple Truth

Harry is a man with a round, shiny face.

He sits across from a co-worker, having morning coffee. He wears a blue tie and a white shirt. "Jim," he says, smoothing his blue tie, his words heavy with meaning and trailing down in chromatic condescension, "Life is simple. Simple. Things are black and white, and everyone complicates everything . . ."

Meanwhile, Harry's wife walks the kids to school. Again, she sees that dad with the two little girls; the handsome father with the dark hair. She sees him every day. Every day, he talks to her and looks her in the eye and they walk back out to the street together, the sound of the children fading away behind them. Every day, they stand on the corner for a half hour, talking. Talking. Every day she wonders what is would be like to have a husband who looks her in the eye. Who talks to her. All day, cleaning or working in the kitchen, she thinks of this man until the slamming of her husband's car door makes her heart sink.

Dear Albrecht: III

Albrecht Soothspitz (b.1327)

Well, Albrecht is back with his latest advice column. The weeks after Christmas were a little busy for him. After getting a Wii under the tree, he has become addicted to Super Mario Brothers. Unfortunately, when he first played, horror forced him to drop the Wii remote and run out the door, screaming in fear of what he called "evil gadget wizardry." It took us three days to find him cowering under the pews in a church a few towns away. Fortunately, he got over his apprehension. Now he responds to emails in-between levels. Slow-going, in so many ways. Nevertheless, installment three: