Assumptions. It is a weighty word. The sound thunks in your throat like a rock dropped in a lagoon. 

 

My personal take on them has swiveled over time. Before John and I married I dared not assume he would make time for me in his packed post graduate schedule. Now I do. 

 

Our children assume I will be here when they wake up, and so far my thirty year track record is squeaky clean. 

 

Assumptions are like ropes. They are neither good nor bad. It is up to us to use them prudently.

 

Ropes hold a ship to the dock. My childhood family had a boat for a short time. It had been dredged from the bottom of the Long Island Sound and we scrubbed her clean and christened her Skol. When she rested in the slip that was her home the ropes tethered her against the tides. There was a pompous yacht named Big Jim who ruled the marina. His wake would shudder through the water with waves slapping against the poles, ropes whining under the strain. But Skol was there when we came down the ramp. The ropes held fast.

 

Marriage is a symbiotic assumption.

 

"I will stay."

 

"I will stay too."

 

"I will hold the course."

 

"Me too."

 

Ropes become more than decorative when the swelling surf threatens to yank you away. The tugging forces that pull couples apart ebb and flow with the moon. In the nighttime of our marriages, it is the ropes we cheerfully lashed in daylight that keep us from drifting out to sea. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photo by Andy Sullivan

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