I saw my ex-husband in the street. I was sitting on the steps of the new library.
Hello, my life, I said. We had once been married for twenty-seven years, so I felt justified.
He said, What? What life? No life of mine.
I said, O.K. I don’t argue when there’s real disagreement. I got up and went into the library to see how much I owed them.
The librarian said $32 even and you’ve owed it for eighteen years. I didn’t deny anything. Because I don’t understand how time passes.
- Grace Paley, Enormous Changes at the Last Minute, “Wants”
I have started to re-read Paley’s book. I read it a couple of years ago in Mike’s class and was blown away by it. Arguably, the best short stories I have ever read. At least, the best amount of consistently fantastic stories in a collection. There are a couple of other good stories out there.
I am finding that being married is a weird thing. Last New Years Eve, I went to an old ex-girlfriends wedding. How and why I was there isn’t really that important. It was a good party. This June I got news that she was already getting divorced. I was upset with her. I said, They haved dated and lived together for the last four years. What really changed since then? I was wrong. Marriage is different. I know that now. Not that I have any interest in divorce as an answer to problems (especially after 6 months), but I have begun to understand, as time goes by, how it changes, the weight of the commitment made.
I think one of the most interesting things about marriage is time or more notably–past, present and future. And today, I am thinking about the past. And even more peticularly, Leah’s past. Because I have my past, but now, as a new couple (I need a bigger word than couple) I sort of assimilate her past as well.Â
On Saturday, we walked down 8th Ave (Stephen Avenue) and I had never really done that before. I felt like a tourist. I felt like Calgary really wasn’t my city. Leah, on the other hand, has lived here for some five years. It is much more her city. So she got to tell me different things, different memoriese as we walked through Calgary’s downtown. And now that history is my history too.Â
Although, time doesn’t really exist, right Tracy?
I didn’t like to go to a movie without your mother and enjoy myself. They didn’t have babysitters in those days. A wonderful invention, babysitters. With this invention two people could be lovers forever.
“Oh!” he gasped, “my darling girl, excuse me . . .” Faith was surprised at his exclamation because the tears had come to her eyes before she felt their pain.
- “Faith in the Afternoon”
Oh time, you are so fickle and folly.
Right. There only is…
Without time, you are lovers forever.
“(I need a bigger word than couple)”
Couplet.
I am not sure about this assimilating each others past idea…
I think that we are a couple, made up of two individuals – which are each the sum of their past. But I can never really have your memories, even if I can hear the stories.
Perhaps a “couple” being the sum of two individuals is not enough though… Like we don’t just become 1+1=couple. It’s like this couple thing becomes something bigger, something more than just 1+1. It is a living entity, having a personality of its own.
And the two shall become one flesh…
Is this what we feel?
Well then. Closed Couplet. “Two successive lines rhyming aa and containing a grammatically complete, independent statement. It is “closed” in the sense that its meaning is complete within the two lines and does not depend on what precedes or follows for its grammatical structure or thought.” (Willian Harmon, C. Hugh Hloman. A Handbook to Literature, Seventh Ed. Prentice Hall, 1995.)
Brenda =
Rhett, I think you have asked an interesting question about why marriage seems so different from years of living together. I’ve wondered the same thing. You should explore your thoughts more, because very soon you will not be able to remember what it was like not being in a committed relationship. Only in this briefest of time can you reflect — without the lens that time and faithfulness will bring.
I love Grace Paley.