Keeping love's promise.
Remaining true to the promises we've made to one another, especially as spouses and parents, can reaffirm our belief in God's promises to us.Is there anything more sterling than fidelity, anything more uniquely and gloriously human than a promise made and kept? Within a universe of uncertainty, of stars searing into being and dying, mountain ranges rising and falling gradually away, continents shifting on their tectonic plates, of species of flora and fauna appearing and vanishing, within the uncertainties and dangers of life that have always been acknowledged--death and sickness, natural disasters, human cruelties, deprivations--how very necessary that human beings exert their ability to crease something secure, a stable, dependable place of faith and love, a place where the strength to carry out constructive acts of generosity and compassion is engendered. Such a place can be created by an enduring marriage, by adherence to the life-promoting power of the promise of fidelity made and kept by husband and wife, and by both to the children of their union.
I sometimes think that everything we esteem in this life, all that is good of the earth, is composed of promise, the promise embodied in all seeds--pine, chestnut, nannyberry, ash--in the kernels of barleys and oats, iris corms and crocus corms, all pips and spores, the promise established in the repeated waxings and wanings of the moon, in the constant return of the sun, the covenant recognized in all eggs--noddy, razorbill, squid and lumpfish, violet-tail damselfly, in the multiple jelly egg-nets of toad and frog--plus the promises made by those sacred figures and symbols we trust, the rainbow, the early promise of a messiah, the promise of salvation announced by Christ.
If we do not take seriously the promises we make as human beings, how can we legitimately invest the promises made by God with meaning? How can we demand that the promises made by the earth and divinity be kept if we do not keep our own promises? When we fail to honor the promises we make to one another, we are breaking faith as well with all those elements of life on which we depend, all those we hope and trust will honor the promises inherent to their being and definition.
In our contemporary art, literature, music, and media, we have ample depiction and testimony to the passion and beauty of new and early love between a man and a woman. This love of passion and energy is rightly celebrated. It too is replete with promise. However, we have a dearth of testimony to the equal beauty and power and affirmation of lasting love, the love between a man and a woman that embodies a common and long history, one that spans an evolution of growth and change, a love of continuity composed of both the tangles and the serenities of daily life lived together and the tolerance and respect that comes from such constant intimacies.
Although new love is splendid in its mystery and first discovery, there is no man that a woman can love with more passion and depth and complexity than the man who is the father of her children, who has been with her during the births and growth of those children, who has been equally concerned and invested with her in their welfare, the man she has been with in despair and in success, with whom over years she has debated and argued and resolved and made crucial decisions, the man who has aided and helped her, one with whom she has fashioned her life, a compatriot of the spirit. This love is a love that contains depth and span, nuances, varieties, and forms of mystery and wonder only generated with the passage of time.
There is a peculiar love even for the well-known imperfections of the spouse with whom one has shared life-shaping experiences. The Japanese poet Issa wrote:
My grumbling wife--if only
she were here!
This moon tonight...
And what bond can be stronger than the common concern two parents have for the child they have created together, that miracle, the child they will love throughout their lives, more than they love themselves? As John Milton wrote in his poem "The Eternal Bond":
Flesh of flesh
Bone of my bone thou art, and from thy state
Mine never shall be parted, weal or woe.
And, too, there is a rare knowledge, a rapture, a comfort, a realm of sexual union that comes only with an old and familiar love. These lines from "The Ageing Lovers," by Bhikhaji Maneckji, speak of that love.
They move with deference, as being aware
Each that his body is his, and is the other's,
And to comfort the other, must be moved with care.
Life is not forever. We are lent one another until death.
A broken promise
Many assert today that marriage is an outdated institution, an arrangement that came about for economic reasons in the past, and that in our contemporary, industrialized society it is no longer needed or desired, and, further, that to promise fidelity to one person for life is unrealistic, unnecessary, and ultimately stifling of individual spirit and fulfillment. Many who never bother to verbalize these opinions nevertheless bear children with first one person and then another, creating by their own choices unwieldy, fractured, and complicated conglomerations of children, stepchildren, stepparents, step grandparents, half-brothers, half-sisters, second and third fathers and mothers, as if believing this discontinuity were a better way to arrange a life.
I once had a distressed graduate student at a university where I taught tell me how difficult the holiday season was for her and her spouse, both of their parents having divorced and subsequently remarried. This circumstance necessitated visits over the holidays not to two homes but four, in different parts of the country, in order not to displease any member of any one of these mixtures of families and stepfamilies (many of whom were virtual strangers to one another). It was not possible to deny that there was a great deal of stress, jealousy, animosity, and awkwardness present in this arrangement.
This was not a joyful time for these grown children, not a time, as it should have been, when they could return to the remembered and stable home of their childhood. Where was their childhood? Who was maintaining that entire history for them now? Where were the mother and father who could say together, "Here is where you came from. We can remember with you through your infancy and childhood. This is what we all did together. This is who you were. These were the mistakes and these the successes we made together"? It is affirming, an aid in self-realization, to retell the stories of family with each other, the sustaining myths created together. And how is a new spouse to understand or join the family he has entered if that family is split and scattered, rearranged, and chaotically patterned?
I frequently travel and often see children being shuttled back and forth between families that are divided by broken marriages, a lone mother or father saying good-bye to a child boarding a plane by himself. I was recently in an airport rest room and noticed a woman with a young girl around 4 or 5 years old. I knew immediately that the woman wasn't the child's mother--the closeness and intimacy, the understanding of one another wasn't present in the woman's tone of voice or the child's manner. The woman was instructing the child, very pedantically, on the proper way to wash her hands. The little girl said, "That's not the way Mommy does it." In an impatient voice, the woman answered, "This way is the right way. When you're at my house and your daddy's house you do it this way. When you're at your mother's house, you can do it her way." My heart turned to ice. I shudder now as I recall the scene.
What was being done to this very young child? How was she to interpret this implication about her mother made by a different woman who had authority over her? How was she to understand who she was, just beginning to learn of herself and others, of the world she lived in. Who was Mother? Who was Father? Who was right and who was wrong? Whom could she trust implicitly, as she must trust, being so young? Why was she out on her own, having to determine these things without the maturity or experience necessary to do so? I could imagine her fear and uncertainty.
Children can certainly survive imperfect parents who make mistakes as long as they are confident that those parents love and care about them and each other. What is more difficult for children to survive with health and viability is indifference, insecurity, resentment, splintered devotions, and, even more damaging, new, strange adults coming and going in Father's house, in Mother's house, one or another of these strangers perhaps in bed with Mother or Father. This is a situation difficult even for adult children to accept. Remember that Hamlet's troubles first began with the deep distress he felt at his mother's hasty remarriage, at seeing his uncle in his mother's bed so soon after his father's death.
How extremely difficult it must be then for a small child to accompany Daddy and his new, young girlfriend on a trip while Mommy is left at home. I witnessed a child face this situation in a preschool where I was teaching. And I once heard a relative of mine, a young daughter, trying to persuade her mother not to divorce her father because "Isn't he handsome?" and "Isn't he funny?" and "Isn't he good?" Children generally want to be with both parents, want to see both parents working together, trustful and devoted to each other. They naturally want to love, respect, and esteem both parents. Why make such a healthy and good impulse difficult for children to achieve? Poor hurting child. Poor hurting mother. Poor hurting father.
Marriage is liberating
These are my reasons, on the practical side, in favor of stable, enduring marriages and for the value of working at maintaining stable, enduring marriages. First, children deserve a mother and a father functioning together to provide a secure physical and emotional shelter for them. Once a child is born into a marriage, all decisions and considerations of the parents, in my opinion, should be first for the well-being and soul-safety of that child. The child, as an adult, will either be strengthened or weakened by his childhood experiences, his ability to act generously and to make full use of his talents either enhanced or diminished by his childhood experiences.
Second, stable, faithful marriages are not restricting; they are abundantly liberating. Trust, love, and respect between wife and husband liberate them both from the anxieties of loneliness, from the burden of making important decisions alone, and from the stress of being without consistent consolation and concern during sickness or failure; they liberate them from the very destructive and weakening wounds of betrayal and from the fear of such wounds. Each is thus free to turn attention and energy to creative and constructive acts. There is both pleasure and space in constancy.
I'm not certain anyone can give helpful advice on how to create a stable, loving marriage. We are all far too uniquely complex, whimsical, and unpredictable for any general advice to be very meaningful. And a long marriage is composed of many kinds of marriages. Changes occur through the years, demanding new roles be filled by husband and wife--the first days alone together, then infants, growing children, adolescents, times of financial difficulties, the deaths of parents, grown children leaving home, retirement, failing health, old age.
Each new circumstance brings with it responsibilities requiring the development of new qualities in wife and husband. Circumstances constantly alter. But belief in marriage, its beauty and righteousness, devotion to the idea of marriage, belief that stable, loving marriages are possible and life-engendering, that marriage profits the world, benefits the world, that marriage is in harmony with the workings of the earth--such belief can always remain strong and steady and convincing and become the first step itself toward achieving the reality.
By Pattiann Rogers, a poet who lives in Colorado. Her most recent book is Eating Bread and Honey (Milkweed Editions, 1997).
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| Author: | Rogers, Pattiann |
|---|---|
| Publication: | U.S. Catholic |
| Article Type: | Cover story |
| Date: | May 1, 1998 |
| Words: | 2085 |
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