Danny was my first husband. We married when we were two years old, and our parents thought it was cute. They photographed us together under his Christmas tree, as we sorted out boxes with ribbons and boxes without ribbons. I don’t know why that seemed so awfully important at the time, but evidently we had a prescient notion that things should be “tied-up.”
The best part about these weddings was the “taxi ride” that constituted the honeymoon. The “preacher” wore the tailcoat and sometimes doubled as the cabby - changing hats, if there were only three playing “Wedding.” The cabby’s job was to pick up and run the chaise lounge from the top end of Jeffrey’s yard all the way down hill to the peach tree with the bride and groom bouncing and jostling along, trying not to fall off.
Perhaps these early experiences prepared me for the fact that no matter how fun the wedding might be, there’s still a lot of hard work involved. At least, at the bottom of the hill, it was every man (woman) for himself (herself). No one should be made to work so hard as to push that “chaise-cab” back up the hill. Even empty, it was hard, hot work.
My beloved and I will celebrate our forty second anniversary this April. We meant to celebrate Forty in a grand way, but it took us two years to clear and coordinate our calendars so we could go to Machu Picchu and the Galápagos this past January. (see “Four Wet-Landings and a Funeral” posted 2-1-14)
Longevity in marriage is not something either of us saw modeled in our families of origin. Well, except that my maternal grandparents celebrated seventy nine years together - longer than many people on the planet LIVE - let alone live with one other human person - interacting daily, with hearts, minds, and purposes intertwined.
So, to wake up in my sixties and realize that I’m married nearly twice as long as all the years I lived single (except for those fleeting starter marriages at ages two and seven), makes me shake my head in wonderment and thank the firmament for sending me such a fine partner for this lifetime.
We sometimes finish one another’s sentences. Other times we are clueless as to what the other could’ve been thinking...
Real life. Sometimes you’re on top of the wheel, other times you’re being plowed under by it. “And the seasons, they go round and round, and the painted ponies go up and down, we’re captive on the carrousel of time, we can’t return, we can only look behind from where we came, and go round and round and round in the circle game.” (Joni Mitchell)
We all know, life is terminal... we just don’t know which terminal and... when.
Recently, within our circle of friends, campers, and family, there’ve been a lot of dear ones finding their terminal and departing - seemingly ahead of schedule. We don’t like it. It shatters that notion of infinity. Infinite time, infinite space - like billions of dollars or “light years,” or “googolplex” - my small human mind cannot compute unending anything.
But the promise of it is comforting and sweet. Perhaps I taste it on clear nights when there’s no point in trying to count the stars, because their numbers are beyond my comprehension. All I can do is humbly appreciate the vastness, and sense my spec of a presence being grateful in one wee corner of creation.
Ultimately, I suppose, we are both:
Finite and Infinite.
When we were little, Googolplex was Danny's favorite number… that's the year I want to depart… in the year googolplex.
along for the ride.
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