Not that everything around here is perfectly blissful, of course, and my husband may question whether I really am less anxious than usual or not, and maybe it's just the combination of hormones that last trimester pregnancy generates to facilitate labor which result in a sense of well-being, or maybe it's just time. On a walk the other evening, my husband and I were reminiscing about our naivete during our engagement when people would tell us how much work marriage was, and we'd just laugh. We perhaps put off the work of marriage for a few years of newlywed bliss, but certainly these middle years of marriage have required a far amount of exertion to plough through the rough spots. If we were still doing marriage prep, we'd have more experience of both the work of marriage and its reward, these periods of peaceable companionship. Saints talk about the consolations of faith; these moments are what sustain and strengthen faith and love in marriage and faith.
On the Image blog the other day there was a query about television and film writers depicting healthy marriages. The writer was particularly interested in film imagery - I couldn't think of anything offhand except "Cheaper by the Dozen," but I think the author, Brad Winters, had more serious dramas in mind. My daughter and I just watched "Little Women" from the 1970's after she finished the book. Lots of happy marriages there. And if book adaptations count, there are the films of Jane Austen's books, but she also has some unusual matches. The book I just finished shows happily married Mormons. Because a good drama involves conflict, troubled relationships make better movies. But healthy marriages are the ones that endure conflict and distress even with very few consolations.
Melanie posted a poem by Joseph Mills, "The Good Nights," that describes a simple moment of consolation - a late-night glass of wine: "this evidence/ even after all these years/ of the unquenchable desire/ for each other's company."
It reminded me of this poem of Galway Kinnell's making - - this is what good marriages are like; this is what makes marriages good.
After
Making Love We Hear Footsteps
For I can snore like a bullhorn
or play loud music
or sit up talking with any reasonably sober Irishman
and Fergus will only sink deeper
into his dreamless sleep, which goes by all in one flash,
but let there be that heavy breathing
or a stifled come-cry anywhere in the house
and he will wrench himself awake
and make for it on the run—as now, we lie together,
after making love, quiet, touching along the length of our bodies,
familiar touch of the long-married,
and he appears—in his baseball pajamas, it happens,
the neck opening so small he has to screw them on—
and flops down between us and hugs us and snuggles himself to
sleep,
his face gleaming with satisfaction at being this very child.
In the half darkness we look at each other
and smile
and touch arms across this little, startlingly muscled body—
this one whom habit of memory propels to the ground of his making,
sleeper only the mortal sounds can sing awake,
this blessing love gives again into our arms.
- See more at:
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15927#sthash.JXK7764N.dpuf
