Marriage Moats-Fast Track
Published: Tue, 06/21/11
| Marriage Moats | Caring for Marriage | ||||
 My daughter, the one who aced Multivariable Calculus, understands the Doppler Effect better than I do. She has a red bumper sticker on her car that says "If this sticker is blue you are driving too fast." She explained it to me, but I forget how it works.
I do know that Time changes its mind. When the median age of Odhnerettes hovered around six, days were as looong as a freight train. Each tedious bout of potty training dragged on, and on. I was probably supremely boring on the phone to my sister, who wanted to chat about current events and I droned on about undies. She resisted the urge to ask, "Didn't we have this conversation last year? And the year before that?"
Looking back though, the years whizzed by as fast as an express line.
"Learner's permit? Already? Can you even reach the pedals?"
"Mom I am taller than you are."
When my five kids took me around Paris, they showed me which subway to take, and paid for my croissants. On their credit cards, for crying out loud. Wasn't I the one doing the shepherding just last month? I even sprung for their overdue library fines.
The song that always captures it for me is Turn, Turn, Turn.
Turn around and you're two,
Turn around and you're four,
Turn around and you're a young man going out of the door...
The discrepancy in velocity does not mean that I am inconsistent. It is the speed of life that shifted. Einstein told me so. Marriage Time follows its own schedule. The
honeymoon began on slow mo, lounging on the veranda gazing out over the
Catskills. Then the tempo picked up with each bouncing baby. By the third birth I was so
exhausted I could fall asleep mid sentence, which I sometimes did. I
remember seeing a woman out for a walk whose kids were grown. I held her
in contempt.
"How can she waste time like that when I have a boatload of dishes and laundry to the ceiling?"
Oops. I was talking about marriage. But where did the marriage go for all those years? It feels like we are in a wormhole, that sucks you up when there are roses in your cheeks and transports you to gray hair and turkey waddle arms. Even though the tunnel is fast and blurry, it does take you to another reality. John and I are touching down on new turf. I cannot quite explain how we got here. But the words that we dreamily wore on our wedding garments thirty one years ago today have come true.
He is mine. She is mine.
|
|||||