On Monday my mom turned 64, and tomorrow so will my dad. I don't know the exact age they were when they began dating, but it's been something close to 40 years since then. When I called to talk to my parents on my mom's birthday, they told me about their shared morning; how my dad woke my mom up with a blueberry pastry adorned with a candle and then played the Beatles song 'When I'm 64.' They explained that at some point during the early stages of their relationship, my dad heard this song and pointed out that one day, they would listen to it together on their 64th birthdays.
My heart melted. And I've been thinking about it since then.
For a while now I've been considering the price we pay for our independence. I've been thinking about all that we give away with each relationship. I know that we learn and grow from each shared experience, but what has lingered with me is the sense that there are parts of me that I've given to others in the hope that it would be the one that lasted, and that those parts of myself are lost now, in the way that I know I carry parts of others who have loved me. They aren't scars or wounds or markings. To me, the things I keep from each relationship are alive and need tending and call for attention at times. They are feelings and memories and an ethereal presence. I imagine that in a marriage, these same feelings exist. The memories and feelings of time past, hurts healed, and shared joys and losses linger in each and in between both partners. The difference is that they are collected and shared in a sacred union between two people. That the burden of all of the things and people they have known and have been are shared.
When I recently wrote about love, I wrote this:
LOVE is a burden. Love is a heavy burden. Sometimes someone comes along and helps us with it, the way my twin brother would walk behind me on the stairs in high school and lift my back pack just enough to make it weightless on my shoulders. But when there isn't someone to lighten the load, we carry it alone on our backs and in our pockets and it's all quite heavy. When we give it to someone and they don't accept it, what they give back weighs twice as much, so often we get heavier throughout our lives. Some people take it and keep it. When they do, they put it somewhere special and admire it often, like a painting or a sculpture. They keep it safe and it makes them feel good. Everyone is lighter then. Babies always do this, and our truest loves do too, but even they sometimes misplace it in a move.
I found a way to excuse myself from the commitment of marriage when I was younger, and what I've learned to do since then and in every relationship I've had is run when it gets uncomfortable. Turn away when it stops making sense or reject when it feels like it's coming too close to taking anything away from my life. What I've called strength, in choosing to avoid marriage and it's constraints, has been an avoidance of obligation, commitment, and full acceptance of another. I wonder how this manifests in my relationship with self?
Maybe it's a lot to take away from a really beautiful moment and story. I'm not missing the good in it. I am beyond proud and honored to have the parents I have. As an adult I am constantly seeing more clearly the people they are and just how lucky I am to know them. I am grateful. And I am grateful for the reflection this has brought to me.
I'm already more than half-way to 64, and I haven't found my love. I'm not even sure that I've ever wished for it, or believed it was possible. But now I do, and I do.
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