And By the Way: E. is Back

Image by Jose P Isern Comas via Flickr

Last night on flight 4667 from Salt Lake City, where the Air Gods put her for 30 minutes to taunt the old Mormons with the fact that a harem of dozen is nothing compared to her, a collection of crumbs after the cake is gone.

When she came through security and I saw her as beautiful as a girl (or as beautiful as a girl should have the good fortune to be, having been burnished by time), naturally Wordsworth came to mind as I strained to capture the moment. (My heart leapt up, you know?)

Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive.

It was nine at night and not dawn, but you get the idea. You can be too literal. Love is not literal, not the kind that finishes the marathon.

Man's Work

Image by h.koppdelaney via Flickr

Went online and chose seats for E.'s return tomorrow. Checked in her bag and printed her boarding passes, which I then faxed to her.

Look up "helpmate" in most dictionaries, and you'll find my picture.

Bare-Faced Truths?

Shaved my beard off today, and my wife hasn't noticed.

Hmmmmm.

Laughing at Our House

Image via Wikipedia

Because my distinguished dean so deftly employs the phrase "Well, there you go" to punctuate our conversations (because it means .... Who the hell knows what it means?) I now employ it frequently in conversations with my wife.

I have explained my own understanding of its meaning. When I employ it, she knows I mean, "You have just said something. I heard what you said. Whether or not I agree is a topic for further discussion. Indeed, it's beyond agreeing or not agreeing. All I am committing to is an acknowledgement that words have been said -- that is, sounds have been uttered -- not that I have a notion of the denotative or connotative meaning inherent in those sounds."

I believe some men say this to their wives with even greater efficiency by wordlessly rustling the newspaper behind which they hide. And, of course, wives do the same.

But as far as the using the phrase currently before the dock, I have explained to my wife how evasive it is, which gives her the option, the opening, to say, "What do you *think* of what I have just said? I would prefer something more than what is equivalent to a multi-syllabic grunt."

Most of the time she does not ask for that elaboration, though she is grateful that I have acknowledged the evasion. I have opened the petals of my soul to her. Well, you don't go crushing somebody's petals, right?

Anyway this morning she is reading from the Financial Times, describing the obit that described the career of the splendid Dutchman Willem "Pim" Kolff, who invented the dialysis machine and about every other damn thing, at the end of which account she said, "and he was dyslexic."

And I said, "Well, go you there."

Which showed I was listening. And we rustled our newspapers and lived happily ever after.

Not Bad. Not Bad at All.

Today we celebrated our 43rd wedding anniversary by going out. E. is off to Florida shortly to see the sister who is her 97.5-year-old mom's caregiver through a hip replacement. We needed some calm before that storm, so we didn't eat in and invite.

It doesn't seem as if we've been married 43 years, though that particular statement suggests we've had other 43-year-long experiences by which to measure, and this experience seems different.

Not the case at all. I suppose we mean that we imagine that the weight of the passing of time should have some special metric, that duration must effloresce some sort of incremental meaning, that somehow it does not feel as if we have been together that long even though we are not sure just how that feeling should feel, that we still have much to learn about each other and procedures to work out and treaties to ratify, that the sense of relish is still fresh, that the well of pain and wonder is not dry.

I don't know. We have been married a long time, and I still remember the first time I saw her -- walking away from me with a superb articulation of her constituents of motion that seized my attention and caused my lizard brain to bark at the moon.

Which is a considerable image. That of a lizard. Barking at the moon. Everything starts somewhere, and if it keeps going, why second
guess?