The soundtrack of my childhood is straight from Broadway. When I was I kid there was always a musical coming out the speakers on long car trips and one of my favorites to this day is Fiddler on the Roof.
Fiddler is the first Broadway production I ever saw, a touring company at the old Packard Music Hall where I grew up in Warren, Ohio.
Toward the end Tevye, sings to his wife “Do you love me?”
Theirs was a marriage of the times, 19th century Tzarist Russia, arranged and bought and paid for. No choices.
“You’re a fool,” she sings.
“I know,” he sings. “But do you love me?”
“For 25 years I’ve cooked for him, cleaned for him, sewed for him. Twenty-five years my bed is his. If that’s not love, what is?”
Blue skies out there, and the birds and the neighbors across the street stacking stones into a garden wall along the yard. If I didn’t know my neighbors like I do, I'd mistake their chatter sounds outside for a happy family. They sure look content.
But, I know. I know how she thinks about leaving and what it would take to keep them together and how they might be better together apart. I know how she’s depressed by it, just like me.
I sent Sam and the girls off for a daddy day at the hot springs up around Mt. Hood this morning. Wanted the day to myself and here it is, my day, and I can’t think of a thing to do. That’s just like me.
Whole list a list of chores. Clean and wash and shop and walk and garden, get on top of the work that’s gotten out from under me. But all I want is sleep.
Crawl myself back into bed and not think of the things I’m not doing. Or the things I am, which is not much of anything. Not think of how I’d rather be out in the woods with my family or about how if I was out in the woods, I’d be wishing I was right back here.
It ain’t no secret when I left my marriage a few years back, it was all me going and all Sam not letting go. For weeks at the end of it he wrote me a haiku every morning and stuck it to the bathroom mirror on post-it notes. One by one they filled the mirror, but I couldn’t pull them down, they spread and covered until there was just enough glass exposed to see myself and nothing else.
He said don’t go and it will be different and he met with a mortgage broker about buying our house. We lived in a little rental with a big back yard. Roxie was tight with her friends on the block. He couldn’t stop crying and he couldn’t eat and he lost his job because he couldn’t think.
If I could choose, I’d take being dumped over dropping that kind of hurt on him any day of the week. But no one was happy in our house and when it came to leaving, it was me or no one.
My U-Haul wasn’t even out of the driveway and he was begging me back into counseling. And I don’t know why. Why pursue what makes you miserable? But he kept at it.
We were back in the therapist’s office the other night, Sam and I. Same seats on the couch, same therapist sitting across from us on the same floral rug. Same issues we’ve been scrutinizing for years holding the space between us.
My epiphany: The problem is Sam and I are living two disparate realities. We experience the exact same moments, together, and have completely separate perceptions and understanding of what transpired.
It’s like this. During spring break week Nigerian scammers hacked into email and sent my entire address book a desperate plea for $2500 to get me home because I was “stucked in London with out my wallet and the relevant documents.” Actually the only thing I was "stucked" doing was cleaning up after their mess all day. When it was fixed, my 7-year-old turned up with lice and I spent another day and a half dealing with the delousing.
When the fires were extinguished, I’d had about two days of work time.
Sam said, “What do you mean, you’ve done nothing but work all week?”
When I can’t go any further, I go back. I go back to decades and centuries to the poets, Rilke and Rumi, and the ancient truths of being. I go back to the original self help gurus. In their poems, hearts broken open, I breathe deep and slow and wrap myself in the understanding. From darkness, light.
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you; Don't go back to sleep. You must ask for what you really want; Don't go back to sleep. People are going back and forth across the doorsill where the two worlds touch. The door is round and open. Don't go back to sleep.
~Rumi
Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against.
~Rumi
No mirror ever became iron again; No bread ever became wheat; No ripened grape ever became sour fruit. Mature yourself and be secure from a change for the worse. become the light.
~Rumi
When I read these blog posts and when I listen to my friends and when I hear stories about, well, anyone, wrestling with the divorce question, 9 times out of 10 my answer is "end it." Mostly I keep that to myself.
If I’m jaded, I’m jaded. I see no benefit in prolonging relationships which aren’t healthy or that bring more suffering than they alleviate. So we stay together because that is our tradition – marriage for life – and we believe a broken commitment is failure. For better or for worse.
Most of us meet young and marry before we are 30, we don’t know ourselves. And then we grow and change and, thank the gods, we are not the same two people who flirted and dreamed and swore till death do we part.
I look at my parents. Most of my life they haven’t even seemed to like each other. 50+ years of marriage. In moments their love is obvious, visible even in the constant ways they peck and pick at each other.
The only thing in my head this week is a thick lingering pain from the face-splitting headache I had four days into the flu. That was Tuesday. Now it’s just dull pressure behind my eyeballs when I move them too quickly in any direction.
I was going write up a few nice Flu survival tips here. Things you can do, especially if you’re on your own, to survive the nasty respiratory influenza infestation everyone in the country seems to have right now.
The standards: drink plenty of clear fluids and keep hydrated, blah, blah, blah.
Winners for any illness.
Truth is, there’s only one way to battle this beast. One thing you can do, whether you're single or in a relationship or somewhere in between.
Nothing.
Do nothing.
Lots and lots of nothing.
Find a snugly blanket, find a comfy spot on the couch, find someone, anyone, willing to help care for you and do not move.
