THE ASTERISK AND ATTACHED STRINGS

COUNTING BLESSINGS.

Is CYA a real thing in the lawyer lexicon? I gave it a Google and sure enough, in a website of the "California Lawyers Association" I found an article about C-ingYA.

Does everything come with "Terms and Conditions"? You know: small-print? Is the asterisk the emoji for Caveat Emptor, which is translated: buyer beware?

If I send you a note like this in the midst of a rough time in your life: "I'm sending you thoughts and prayers.*" Do you assume there might be a footnote with some terms and conditions at the bottom of the page; something like: *This is mainly sentiment and does not constitute any promise of concrete support or action on my part. The offer is good as long as your situation is fresh on my mind.

I'm in the throes of finding a Medicare plan for My Amazing-Missus and myself. Maybe you've noticed the ads on TV. If you haven't, then your TV hasn't been on. Imagine trekking a path that for seniors should be clear, wide, flat, true, honest and well-lit; but instead it's winding and full of forks. There are roots growing into the path that trip you up. There are moss-covered rocks to make you slip and fall, and old signs nailed to trees with rusty spikes warning you to beware, because once you choose a plan, there's no turning back. The path is strewn with old people murmuring about regret over choosing an "advantage" plan or the wrong "medi-gap" plan. There is a place along the path called the "donut hole" which sounds delightful, but apparently is dreadful. I don't know what it is or how to avoid it, and the only answers seems to be embedded in the small-print that old eyes can't read.

But, this isn't really a post about all that malaise. This is about searching instead for something that comes freely and in full measure; WITHOUT CONDITION. In others words: unconditional, no asterisks.

That's risky business though. No lawyer, no politician, no business person is going to enter into any contract without a page or a hundred of CYA small-print. Do those Terms and Conditions come from a lack of trust? Maybe they come from hard lessons-learned. Maybe we're all just a little too jaded, bruised and burned to go into anything unconditionally.

My sage and beloved friend, Doug Manning, tells of a Justice of the Peace that would start each wedding ceremony at his courthouse with these questions to the bride and groom:

"So, you want to become ONE!?"

"I have a question for you: which one?" The point being that there's got to be some give and some receive from both.

I highly and strongly recommend you read a little book by C.S. Lewis called The Four Loves, which are affection (storge), friendship (phileo), romantic (eros) and charity (agape), which is unconditional love.

Speaking as one who is and has been loved unconditionally, with more than 50 years of marriage in the books, the answer to the Justice's question is: a relationship that includes all four of Lewis's ingredients will create a ONE that is born from both persons.

It is a journey though; a quest, a voyage--becoming friends, becoming lovers, becoming a team to take on the quagmire of stuff like medicare, to be there for one another for better or for worse. It's love in spite of, because of, not: love if... A relationship isn't a contract with terms and conditions. That doesn't mean it isn't without risks and hurts. Lewis offers this small-print:

"There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket—safe, dark, motionless, airless—it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell." --C.S. Lewis.

This Thanksgiving season I am grateful for unconditional love. I'm thinking and praying that I can do better at giving and making as I am at taking.*

*As the small-print in the home internet brochures say, upload and download speeds may vary. When it comes to love, grace and peace I tend to upload a lot faster than I download. Just so you know.

TOO SOON?

I WATCHED “The Crown” on Netflix. If it’s to be believed, the Queen and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh didn’t have what we might think of as a typical marriage. Maybe he was no “prince”, but it strikes me that the Queen wasn’t ever what you might call warm and cuddly.

Now that she’s single again, could there romance in her future? I’m sure there’s probably a royal rule of decorum that dictates an appropriate time of mourning, but at 95, she doesn’t have long. And, her pool of potential suitors is drying up fast. Of course she is the Queen Mother. I guess she could pick a younger, healthier object—I mean subject.

Writer, David Sedaris, reflected in a recent essay in The New Yorker on the issue of how much younger a prospective mate can be than you:

“There’s a formula for dating someone younger than you,” my friend Aaron in Seattle once told me. “The cutoff,” he explained, “is your age divided by two plus seven.” At the time, I was fifty-nine, meaning that the youngest I could go, new-boyfriend-wise, was thirty-six and a half. That’s not a jaw-dropping difference, but, although it might seem tempting, there’d be a lot that someone under forty probably wouldn’t know, like who George Raft was, or what hippies smelled like. And, little by little, wouldn’t those gaps add up, and leave you feeling even older than you actually are?

---

For me that’s irrelevant.

The day of our 49th anniversary is fast-approaching. How is it possible? I think I understand and appreciate how wonderful that it is, but I don’t know that I can. The significance is too deep and beautiful. While My Amazing Missus and I are two individuals, for me at least the lines of individuality have blurred and I am totally fine with that. So my thoughts and views are colored by hers, so much so that I honestly don’t know how I would perceive the world had I not spent my life with her.

At 70, I’m not taking it for granted, but I’m resting in a fairly strong sense of confidence she’s not going to leave for some guy with more hair and less BMI.

I don’t want to experience the heartbreak of Washington Hogwallop (O Brother Where Art Thou?) when asked where his wife was:

Washington Hogwallop : Mrs. Hogwallop up and R-U-N-N-O-F-T.

Ulysses Everett McGill : She musta been lookin' for answers.

Washington Hogwallop : Possibly. Good riddance as far as I'm concerned. I do miss her cookin' though.

I have been the officiant of many weddings. Officiant: that’s a weird word. It is a person who officiates at a wedding—almost as if the he or she should be wearing a stripped shirt and a whistle, which might be appropriate in the upcoming days of the marriage.

Every time, as I’m meeting with the young couple to talk about marriage and plan their wedding, I wonder about their chances of making it. Sometimes the unions I’ve felt most confident about have dissolved, and then the ones when you hope someone saved the receipts for the wedding gifts, have endured to this day.

What is it that makes the difference? Can you see it in their eyes? Can you count the odds against or in favor? Is there something at work in it all: luck, fate, providence?

I have a friend who has counseled many, many, many struggling couples. He says that experience has taught him that if a person’s second marriage is a success, the first one wasn’t necessarily a failure. I have another sweetheart of a friend who calls her first marriage her “starter marriage” and highly recommends them.

For me, I’m happy with just the one.

Unless you were born into a culture where your marriage is arranged, and you choose to marry, you take the journey of finding, of discovering, of learning, of giving, of having, holding, of loving and being loved. You navigate things like: getting to know one another, differences, lust, passion, learning to like one another.

In most every wedding ceremony I do I quote C.S. Lewis, “Lovers are normally face to face, absorbed in each other; Friends, side by side, absorbed in some common interest.”

It takes both. Be lovers and be friends.

Is there anything more tragic than a loveless marriage, one where the two aren’t best friends?

Love is risky.

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”

― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

Recently, I’ve been looking through my folder of poems and writings about love and such. I found this one, called “Waiting”. Every time I read it, I am grateful again for my own marriage—to have found My Amazing-Missus more than 49 years ago.

WAITING
By Raymond Carver

Left off the highway and
down the hill. At the
bottom, hang another left.
Keep bearing left. The road
will make a Y. Left again.
There's a creek on the left.
Keep going. Just before
the road ends, there'll be
another road. Take it
and no other. Otherwise,
your life will be ruined
forever. There's a log house
with a shake roof, on the left.
It's not that house. It's
the next house, just over
a rise. The house
where trees are laden with
fruit. Where phlox, forsythia,
and marigold grow. It's
the house where the woman
stands in the doorway
wearing the sun in her hair. The one
who's been waiting
all this time.
The woman who loves you.
The one who can say,
"What's kept you?"

Shared Name

THANKFULLY I HAVE A DAUGHTER-IN-LAW. Initially the first sentence of this post was going to be, “Thankfully I have a daughter-in-law who reads this blog,” but when I typed those first seven words I had to put a period, or as the Brits call it, “A full stop.” First and foremost I am so thankful for our beautiful daughter-in-law; period. I am also thankful (in a less profound way) that she reads this blog because she read my recent post on ideas for Father’s Day gifts and bought me something leather—this wonderful leather journal cover. Perfect.

Her husband, our son, then screenprinted the cover of a few Moleskin journals for me to use in my new leather cover. Perfect.

He chose to put on the cover a quote, a line from a song by the Avett Brothers called “Murder In The City”. It is a haunting song both in melody and lyric. I had not heard the Avett Brothers play the song before but it sounded vaguely familiar. Then I realized one of my all-time favortie artists, Brandi Carlile, recorded the song on her album, The Firewatcher’s Daughter.

Always remember there was nothing worth sharing
Like the love that let us share our name.

In a few days now, vows will be exchanged, born out of shared love. Names will be shared, and I will be humbly thankful to have a second, beautiful daughter-in-law.

Thank you Kara & Corey, Brooke & Kyle.

Love Stories

WARNING: This is going to get pretty sappy. But, Love Stories can be like that. I’m not really an expert on love or stories, but I thoroughly enjoy both. Speaking as a layperson, so to speak, I’m guessing that the Love Story is the oldest and most enduring of any storyline. Let’s hope it stays that way, or as The Beatles sang: sometimes, “All you need is love.”

LOVE STORY No. 1.

Ours began in June 1972. Well that’s not really true. It started before that. That’s just when we formalized it all with public vows, rings, flowers, cake, punch, etc.

Back in the day when our romance was emerging, there was a little slice of pop culture that in some ways became a part of the 70s courting lifestyle. It was a cartoon series called “Love Is…”. Here’s an example:

Love Is… is the name of a comic strip created by New Zealand cartoonist Kim Casali in the 1960s. The cartoons were published in booklets in the late 1960s before appearing in strip form in a newspaper in 1970, under the pen name “Kim”. They were syndicated soon after and the strip is syndicated worldwide today by Tribune Media Services. One of her most famous drawings, “Love Is…being able to say you are sorry”, published on February 9, 1972, was marketed internationally for many years in print, on cards and on souvenirs. The beginning of the strip coincided closely with the 1970 film Love Story. The film’s signature line is “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” --Wikipedia

By the way, as it turns out, the movie was wrong; the cartoon was right. Love does from time to time include being sorry. (I’ve learned something in 44 years.)

Even though we will be celebrating 44 years of the marriage part of our Love Story in a few weeks, we’re really just getting started, relatively speaking.

LOVE STORY No. 2.

Tomorrow we will celebrate Anniversary Number 70 with my Mom and Dad. That’s a lot of togetherness. Not only can they finish one another’s sentences, they can actually start one another’s sentences. I am grateful for the wonderful way they prove the beauty of marriage, still.

Their story began in Okmulgee, Oklahoma. Mom grew up there. Dad was in town as a part of an assignment as a young soldier during WW II. They both happened to be at the local skating rink one night. He asked her to skate, and as my Dad likes to quip, “We’ve been going around together ever since.”

What do you buy the happy couple for their 70th according to those anniversary charts? Google, google, google. The lists seem to skip from 65 to 75, like 70’s not significant. As I was searching the lists though, I peeked at the anniversary category for #44, hoping it isn’t “Hearing Aids”. 

“Groceries”. “Groceries”??? What the what? So, I guess on June 16, you’ll find us at Whole Foods. We’ll splurge; it’s our anniversary.

Even though we’ve been married almost 44 years, we’re partying like it’s #10. The 10th year is the “Aluminum” anniversary. And since we now adventure in our tiny, aluminum love shack on wheels, it’s like we’re young and broke again.

LOVE STORY No. 3.
Our oldest son and his beautiful wife Kara, just celebrated anniversary #11. Corey posted this on the Facebook:

He must have thought this was the “Groceries” anniversary. How do I know that 11 years later their story is a Love Story? You can see it in the kids.

They have three happy, confident, tender-hearted, wonder-full little girls. That kind of stuff sprouts and grows in the fertile soil of loving relationships.

LOVE STORY No. 4.

In a few weeks, we’ll celebrate the formal start of another amazing Love Story. This is one that I never would have seen coming. It’s one of those that if you had any doubt about Providence, you wouldn’t now. Our youngest son, Kyle is engaged to Brooke. If you know these two, you have a glimpse of how special this is. If I lived in one of those country’s where the male of the family still got to pretend like he’s the All-Knowing Patriarch, in a country where the marriages are all arranged, this is the way I would have arranged it.

Turns out they didn’t need my arranging anything. It’s like they have discovered something that was there all along. Maybe that’s what Love Stories are really all about.

And they all lived happily ever after.