Caveat: I started this post on September 8th. So the "this morning" I speak of was then, not today, September 13th. I considered chucking this post. Wasn't sure I was "feeling" it anymore. But for now, given my relative lack of output, I am trusting that anything I start deserves to be finished. "Feeling" it or not. And, sure enough, I'm still feeling it plenty.
So, this morning I had breakfast with my sisters in a small town diner. At the table next to us was an elderly man and women. I presume married because they were sitting next to, rather than across from, one another. I watched them peripherally for most of their meal, and just before they got up to leave I leaned over to my sister and whispered to her, "have they said a single word to one another since we've been sitting here?" "No," she whispered back. She had been watching too. Later, she did observe that the woman had put creamer in the man's coffee. But nothing else. No words. No touch. Nothing but two people eating, looking everywhere but at each other.
Tonight as I was driving, "Missing You" by John Waite came on the radio. I have loved that song since it first came out when I was a teenager. It resonates perfectly with my history of unrequited love. The song is more about a love lost rather than unrequited, but the words fit for both: "I hear your name in certain circles and it always makes me smile. I spend my time thinking about you and it's almost driving me wild. And it's a heart that's breaking, down this long distance line tonight. I ain't missing you at all. Since you been gone away. I ain't missing you. No matter what I might say. I ain't missing you at all. I can lie to myself." That perfect juxtaposition of devastation and the desperate attempt to deny it.
As I sang along to my unofficial anthem, I found myself thinking again about the couple from this morning. Was there ever a time in their relationship when they would have felt that life-wrenching loss if one of them had turned away? "And there's a message that I'm sending out like a telegraph into your soul. And if I can't bridge this distance, stop this heartbreak overload. I ain't missing you at all." And if not, if their love was never intense to the point that losing it would trigger "a storm that's raging through my frozen heart tonight," is that a tragedy, or a blessing?
Seeing them made me feel sad. For them. For me. But perhaps unfairly. Perhaps this man and woman sat there in utter contentment. No words being needed. Not because their relationship has withered but because that is just who they are as people, perfectly suited to one another's silence. Or maybe they are angry at one another. Maybe we looked through a window into this moment in their lives and found them at odds, but loving one another enough to keep their weekly breakfast date. Loving each other enough for her to offer, and him to accept without resistance, the wordless endearment of the exact right amount of creamer in his coffee.
It is so easy to look at others and think we know. We know exactly what we are seeing. We resist when others are so presumptuous in drawing conclusions about us, but we are so quick to do it ourselves, frequently to total strangers. And why? Why this reflexive tendency to interpret and catalog each other? Why do we even care, even when the events or people we are deconstructing have no bearing on our lives? That scene at the diner: utterly inconsequential to my life. And yet consequential enough that my sisters and I discussed it. And it was still in my mind hours later, triggered by a song.
What does it tell me about me? The sadness I felt seeing them, assuming that their silence reflected a relationship gone dormant, devoid of vitality. If I am thorough in my self-assessment I recognize that it triggers a fear- a fear that love cannot remain vibrant and passion-filled. That too many years together will lead to dullness and complacency and silence. And I have plenty of examples of love affairs much longer than any I could have now, starting halfway through my life, that are still glowing from within, where the familiarity of 40 or 50 years together has resulted not in complacency but deep contentment. My aunt and uncle, married almost half a century, seem that way. Playful. Joyful. Alive.
But how do you know which you will be, should you be lucky enough to make it that far down the road together? It is choice? Or personality? As with most things, I suspect it's both. And if I am blessed to have that chance, I will fight with everything I am to stay awake and alert to love. My aunt and uncle are grateful for one another. Of that I am certain. And I suspect that matters more than anything.
By the way, here's a lovely version of Missing You as a duet between John Waite and Allison Krause.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plFRyYVDw7I
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