Learning from the past

There’s poetry to life. When you’re graced with the opportunity to live beyond the mayhem of the city where the wind can get at you, you discover that for yourself.
It’s lain within you like a latent gene for years but it takes the open land and the ability to dive right into the heart of perfect mornings like these mountain mornings to really let it breathe.
Sometimes, it seems to me that such thinking reflects a certain maturity gleaned from thousands of mornings cast in varied light. At other times, I think I’m just getting old and soft, more romantic maybe, more melodramatic with the years.
But I got married recently. I’m 53 and I tied the knot for the third time. My previous marriages were failed experiments in permanence. In the one I was far too young and immature to deal with the implications of love and loyalty. In the second I was in the depths of an alcoholic binge and sobered up to find myself trapped in a loveless, skewed relationship.
This time it’s far different. Deb and I have been together going on seven years. In that time we’ve learned about each other, discovered each other by degree. We’ve been though trying times, hard circumstances, tough situations and emerged intact, bent and bowed some but never broken.
We’ve been married, in the full context of that word, for sometime really, we just never did the official ceremony. Last weekend we did. (not sure of accuracy if this is an old column)
Because we’re such homebodies and because we love the nature of our life in the mountains we held the wedding at our home. Friends came from near and far. We set up a pair of small party tents and a table festooned with flowers that served as the center piece for the marriage. The house was set up for a feast and the pot-luck meal that came together was marvelous.
Like all grooms, I suppose, I hold that day in my heart. I’ve never been much of an emotional historian but the day of my third and final marriage is bookmarked and highlighted by significant things I cherish.
There’s the first sight of my new bride in her gown and veil. There’s the sight of a sea of smiling, emotional faces watching us; the drum song I sang that caught in my throat; the words of our friend Victoria, a marriage commissioner, who performed the service. There’s the sound of the vows, the full enriching sweep of promises made from the heart that made me want to cry and the feel of my woman’s arms wrapped around me as we stood in the company of our friends and family – joined.
But what stays with me the most happened a day or so after. Deb’s children had camped out in tents and when everyone was gone I was home alone taking down the tents and neatening things again. There were only the sounds of the birds in the trees. I bent to the task of packing up the tents and the brunt of my chore hit me like a tidal wave.
I felt crushingly lonesome. Oh, I’d been lonely many times in my travels but this was a hybrid creature I’d never encountered. It was an aching feeling right in the middle of my chest. I folded the tents slowly and the feeling refused to go away. When I finished I sat in a lawn chair and lived with it a while.
I missed everyone. Suddenly and hard. I missed the feeling of being connected to all that joy. I missed the energy of other people, the light they cast, the bubble of their voices, the hard and indisputable push of emotion that bound us so closely together. I missed their eyes. It was sad and jubilant at the same time.
When we wed, we marry the soul. That’s what I know now. We are tied forever to the spirit of our love just as we are bound to the community of those who celebrate with us. This is what I know. For an uprooted and transplanted kid who spent a lifetime lost and alone, it’s a transcendent thing to discover. Joy connects us. Ceremony unites us. Love defines us.
I’m 53 and it took that long for the teaching to take root in me. In the ceremony of my marriage I discovered that the risk of loving completely offers a very human salvation. We are bound to each other. We are one. The poetry of it is compelling and we are never lonely.