• Tag Archives marriage

  • Nocturne

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Summer                                                            Most Heat Moon

    As the night settles gently here, Kate is home and has taken Kepler with her to bed. He sleeps in his own bed near ours.

    There’s a dynamic when she’s gone, a bit unsettling, but also affirming. Let me see if I can be clear about it. We are, together, more than two, but also two. When we are apart, the twoness remains in memory, but the day-to-day facticity of it shifts. There is no other body in the bed. Nor at breakfast. Nor as the day goes by. The simple joy of a dog’s antics, wonder at some passing insect or cloud, soothing of a momentary mood, a reminder of each other’s value just by being present one to the other is lost. Only for a while, but lost anyhow.

    The affirmation comes in knowing these things by their absence. The unsettling rises with this third phase certainty, some day one of us will leave and not come back. What then? The facticity of the relationship will be gone and with it all those subtle, ordinary, sacred moments that make up a common life. Death brooks no return and the loss will be in that sense total.

    That is not now, for us. And I’m glad. Happy that we had this day together. And hopeful that we will have tomorrow. We do, after all, have that move to prepare.

     


    📂This entry was posted in Faith and Spirituality Family Feelings Third Phase 📎and tagged

  • A Third Thing

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Imbolc                                         Waxing Bloodroot Moon

    We went to the St. Paul Grill tonight for our anniversary dinner.  Our first date was coffee there after a St. Paul Chamber Orchestra Concert.  I learned Kate was a physician and she learned I was not a lawyer, but a clergyman.  Both surprised.

    Tonight the place was hopping, full of an odd mixture of opera buffs and hockey fans.  The state high school hockey tournament is in town at the Excel Arena and the Opera is at the Ordway Theatre, both next to each other only a block away from the St. Paul Hotel, location of the Grill.

    In addition, just across the block on the diagonal is the Landmark Center, where, in 1990, on this day, Kate and I tied the knot and stomped on a glass in a silken napkin.

    Over the meal tonight (lamb chops, medium rare for both of us with a creme brulee for dessert) we talked about the South America cruise to which we committed yesterday.  37 days, an Inca discovery theme, with ports of call all along western South America and up the east coast as far as and including Rio.  This is a retirement present for Kate, a thank you for all her years of hard work as a doc.  I’m just going along for the ride. (Ha.)

    Marriage has a palpability, is a third thing in and of itself.  When two come to anniversary, the thing they celebrate is not themselves, but this third thing they have made together.  It is, in every way, as precious and significant as a child, as difficult and rewarding, too.


    📂This entry was posted in Aging Family Travel 📎and tagged

  • Marriage

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Imbolc                                          Waxing Wild Moon

    Marriage has some of the tango, some of the waltz and quite a bit of rock and roll.  Over the years of our marriage Kate and I have learned to dance to our music, to the beat of a different drummer.  In practical terms this means talking when needed, listening when needed, forgiving when needed, bucking up when needed, coasting when needed and the wisdom, as Niebuhr so famously wrote, to tell the difference.

    This has been a week of waltzing, close dancing to a slow song.  In just two weeks  we celebrate our 20th anniversary.  Not long in the “greatest gen” terms, but in baby boomer terms 20 is the new 40 as far as marriage goes.  Life has a strange way of twisting and turning, choreographing the unexpected.  We have come to need each other, two former strangers from small farm-belt towns meeting in the big city.

    This is a big shout out to her…hey, sweetie, you’re the greatest.


    📂This entry was posted in Family 📎and tagged

  • Leaving A Profession Well Engaged.

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    28  bar steady 30.34 0mph SSW dewpoint 24 Spring

                 Waning Crescent Moon of Winds

    “If you’re strong enough, there are no precedents.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald

    In spite of the perhaps down note I struck in Climbing the Wall yesterday, most of the time I realize that the decision I took when I met Kate, that is, to leave the ministry and concentrate on writing, took a kind of courage and strength many folks have, but never exercise.  At 40 years of age, to leave the comfort of a profession well engaged and one in which your prospects appear (at least to others) bright, is too much for most of us. 

    Without Kate I could not have pulled it off, but I did find this remarkable woman at just the right time.  She has supported me every step of the way, including times when I thought I was climbing the wrong wall again.  Between the two of us we have managed to defy acculturation with her earning the large salary and me at home.  Both of us have brought necessary and key gifts to our marriage, neither more valuable than the other, though, again, the what it means to be male messages of my childhood and those what it means to be female messages from hers could have created shocks too strong to overcome.

    It took strength on my part to pull away from the church, but it also took acceptance by Kate of an unusual, even aberrant path for me.  It took, in short, the strength of two of us.  As most of you who know me well know, this path has not been without difficulty, but it has been worth it.


    📂This entry was posted in Faith and Spirituality Family 📎and tagged

  • Serial Monogamy

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    14  bar steady  30.43  0mph S  windchill 14

       Waxing Crescent of the Moon of Winds

    Today is our 18th anniversary.  At the 15th we passed the total time I’d been married before, 5 to Judy and 10 to Raeone.  Now we’re pressing forward to the 23rd when Kate will pass her years married to David.  This is arithmetic that, it seems, our generation has to calculate more than any other.  It was turbulent times for marriage between 1969 and 1995 or so.  My impression is that divorce has declined in recent years, an impression buttressed by the Family Law Center on the internet.

    It’s an odd sensation to have practiced serial monogamy after learning about it in Anthropology in 1968.  Even stranger is the fact that this marriage seems to blot out the others as experiments, or missteps.  Kate and I have developed an intimacy and collegiality that I had hoped for before, but not found.   The level of joy and comfort that comes from having her in my life grows with each passing year. 

    So, in the end, I’m not sorry I took so long to figure out who I was and what I needed in a relationship because it brought me to this wonderful woman in time, in time for a life together and in time to grow old together. 

    Looking forward to 18 more plus a few.


    📂This entry was posted in Family 📎and tagged