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No regrets | page 1, 2
Whither marriage?
For a week, Mothers Who Think examines the battered but unbowed institution
No regrets
I was an unashamed mistress.
Wisdom ancient and new
That was Then: Keep it clean
This is Now: Ask the madame: Two days of foreplay does the trick
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The winners of "Is this marriage doomed?"
First place
His pain was layered and mysterious. He worked at maintaining his mystery, but our intimacy loosened his grip. Whatever his burdens were, at some point our relationship became another one, and he started to sink. I prayed for him to stop drinking. I'd become increasingly alarmed at how much he'd isolated himself from everyone else, how often he spoke of death, how recklessly he could sometimes behave. One Sunday I prayed again, this time that he would find the strength to live. It seemed to me that he'd fallen into a black hole of No, and even my love wasn't going to change it to Yes. Paradoxically, my religious faith never wavered during this whole affair. In fact, it grew stronger, reinforced by what I saw as a real-life demonstration of the tenet that Jesus loves the sinner more. Perhaps it was just self-justifying pablum, but I felt that God had somehow put us in each other's path for some sacred purpose -- a notion that was not exactly endorsed by my Episcopal priest, to whom I'd gone for counsel, but wasn't dismissed by her, either. My prayer that Sunday, Palm Sunday, came from some depth that I didn't even know I had. It felt like I'd tapped a direct line to the Divine and all I had to do was ask. "Let him live," I whispered, and my entire being was filled with what I can only describe as divine light. And in some miracle of redemption that wouldn't read true in fiction, on Easter Sunday he left, boarded a plane for a hospital in the desert where he could get sober and begin to live. These days, I hover at the edge of understanding for a long time, and then some small breeze of an incident will propel me forward when I least expect it. Last night I stopped at a McDonald's to rush my son into the bathroom, and on the way out caught a glimpse of a woman, well-dressed, alone, staring into a cup of coffee. Her eyes were red-rimmed and puffy; she'd obviously been crying. Completely out of the blue, I was electrified by a sharp jolt of recognition. A woman, sitting alone in a well-lit public place, with coffee she doesn't want, crying. I was that woman, three years ago. I had completely forgotten how it had been for me --- that sometimes I would dread going home so much that I would stop somewhere, anywhere, to pass the time alone. One swift glimpse of a lonely woman set off a domino-line of memories that left me stunned. That was where he found me, back then -- a place so desolate and featureless that I hadn't even recognized it as a place. I'd been living in a dead marriage and working at a lifeless career and together, they had sucked all the vitality out of me. It had been my reality for so long, I was insensible to it. Somehow, he recognized the better parts of me more readily than I did, took me on a tour of them and introduced me to myself. He made a different life seem not just possible, but essential. We were both so broken in those days; it continues to astound me, the miracle of our finding each other, and the even greater miracle of the law of physics that somehow makes the addition of two negatives equal a positive. I healed, and left my marriage. He healed, and stayed in his. I don't know how that is for him, now. We talk sometimes, and we flirt at the fringes of intimacy but never quite go there. His wife found out about us and knows who I am; I wonder if I continue to exist
as a ghostly presence in their marriage, echoing in the background of every small disagreement. I know he continues to be a presence for me, the man who gave me back my life when I didn't even know I'd lost it.
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