Miscellany And Marriage

 

It’s been a low energy week for me, home with COVID. One day with energy to bake muffins, the next day spent entirely on the couch reading, although still well enough to sit at my home desk for my three weekly work days. A short walk that would normally leave me feeling energized, left me fatigued instead. 

I’ve been one of those very cautious people over the past two years, masking indoors even when mandatory masking was lifted. Maybe some thought I was being too cautious, but, as I suspected, I was susceptible to picking it up. And I did, after one outing where I let my guard down. Thankfully, my symptoms have been fairly mild (although the low level fatigue continues) and I know it could have been a lot worse had I not been vaxxed and boosted.

 I will continue my cautious ways. As our medical experts keep reminding us: learning to live with COVID doesn’t mean it’s no longer among us.

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This week I finished reading the book, Foreverland: On the Divine Tedium of Marriage, by Heather Havrilesky. One might ask – why is a single person (with no desire to re-marry) reading a book about marriage? It’s not only for the writing but also for the way HH bares it all. In a conversational tone, she tells us about the grumpiness, frustration, irritation and annoyances of every day domestic life, and how we, as flawed human beings, are easily prone to gritting our teeth and hating our partners even while loving them. Daily living with another adult is tough.

The book might not be for everyone. I’m not on Twitter but I heard that the book caused quite a furor, people berating her for referring to her husband as a ‘smelly heap of laundry’. But she doesn’t go easy on herself either, often making herself the villain of the piece. She allows us to enter her head and see her (sometimes murderous) thoughts. 

Who among us, living or having lived with another adult, can’t relate to the exasperation at that loud throat clearing, snorting or leaving kitchen cupboards ajar? HH shows us that it’s not the end of the world (or the marriage) to love someone and sometimes find them intolerable. The two aren’t mutually exclusive.

She doesn’t attempt to paint a rosy picture of marriage where everything is overcome with love and tenderness. While movies often end with the happy-ever-after, HH shows us the real ever-after, warts and all. But she also says that her husband is her best friend and believes that the only way for her marriage to survive and thrive is to tell him everything; to show him all the dark, smelly bits of her insides, allow him to see her ugly truth. Then she knows that she is deeply and fully loved for who she is.

The writing is superb and HH is very witty in her over-the-top-metaphoric style. I highly recommend it to married and non-married alike or those thinking about getting married. Wedding season is approaching, might it make a good gift?

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Today, April 8th,  would have been my parents’ anniversary. They are both long gone, my dad died in 2012 and my mum in 2016. There would have been both tedium and fireworks in their marriage, theirs being a love match in a time and culture when arranged marriages were common. I’ve heard the story of their courtship, of how my father, a gregarious, outgoing young man, relentlessly pursued my mother, a quiet school teacher, going home to his own mother’s bedside the night he met my mother, and saying, “I’ve met the girl I’m going to marry.” Heady, romantic stuff, followed by a long marriage of yes, love, but also the usual domestic difficulties. 

My father came from a family of 11 siblings. This week another one of them, an aunt, died. Now there are only 3 of those 11 siblings left. Between them there are a multitude of stories and storytelling, a gift all of them seem to have shared. As my generation gets older,  it is natural to look back at those stories, to our parents, and wonder who they were when they were the age we are now (Of course, we thought they were old then!).  I think back to my own parents and what their story was. I don’t believe that we ever fully reveal who we are inside to those around us.  There’s always an interior life that remains partly concealed. It’s how we survive, how we live when we are alone. I think I knew my parents, but did I really?

What is it to truly know someone, to expose all, even the dark parts inside?

In her book, HH shows us. She’s not afraid to reveal her murky shadows to her husband and, in writing the book, to the world as well. It’s a form of bravery that few of us would be comfortable with in today’s world of the mostly carefully curated images we present of our lives.

Whether you agree or not with how Havrilesky has written about her marriage (or marriage in general), one must admire her candour.