1/9/2011 - what it means to love. . .

Today is my parents' 34th wedding anniversary.  I've seen one picture from the event, of two people in the 70's, smiling and toasting friends.  A man and woman I recognize, but don't really know.  I would not come to know them for another four years, but it would be another couple of decades before I actually took the time to know them.

It has always been difficult for me to think of my parents as anything other.  Not as spouses, nor friends, and definitely not as lovers (even without the obvious, uncomfortable connotations).  I doubt I am alone in this.  Lately, though, as I learn more about adult relationships, how to be in one and how I did not know as much about them as I once thought I did, I often think of my mom and dad as teachers. 

When I tell people of the first time my dad saw my mom (or at least how it was recounted to me), I always find myself proudly embarrassed.  His story is of a fairy-tale caliber, a staple of the chick flick repertoire.  When he was a teenager in Taiwan, 14 or so, he was on the train to school one morning when he heard the sound of a girl laughing behind him.  My dad now describes it as this incredible sound of laughter and life intertwined.  He turned around and saw a girl he had never met, but would eventually marry over 10 years later.

This story has become something of an idee fixe for me.  I am obsessed with origins, how people meet and the moment they each realize that the other person is somehow more than just another in an endless stream of people.  The "once upon a time. . ."

But as critical as those beginnings are, there is still that tricky "ever after" to be maneuvered, something much more complicated than any fairy tale ever let on.  In this, I look to my parents as well.

I don't think it would be fair to say that their marriage was easy.  They endured the deaths of my mom's mother, then her father, and finally, my dad's mom, each plagued with lingering illnesses that required superhuman caretaking, caretaking that my mom and dad both lovingly took on themselves.  They were together when I came out to them during an adolescent spat, and stayed together in the subsequent years as they tried to understand this strange new world in which they live.  (A gay son!)  Surely it all must have felt like Bizarro World to them.

I do, however, think it would be fair to say that their marriage was simple but for one reason: they gave themselves no choice but to be together.  They had a tremendous amount of sticktoitiveness, of an amorphous, fluid kind of love.  When they were without children, they were romantic lovers.  As caretakers, they were compassionate partners.  As struggling parents, they were functional allies.  Always allies and always ready to redefine love to fit their situation, but always love.

I often wonder if this tenacity still exists in the world, could ever exist in mine--if I could ever exhibit such a steady kind of love. 

I actually have already failed the several opportunities I've been given to demonstrate that I could.  In each of those relationships, for better or worse, I can look back and recognize the moment where I quit, where I threw my hands up and relinquished any stake or responsibility in the matter.  But I also feel that the world is different now, relationships are different.  It is hard to remember the meaning of love and its ever-changing definitions, yet so much easier to abandon it.  I don't even know if I have it in me to try and remember more often than I don't.

As I sit here in my parents' living room, writing this piece and watching my mom and dad bake their weekly round of chocolate biscuits, tease their dog, stand together in comfortable silence 34 years after they stood together on their wedding day, I don't know much except to hope that this will help me remember what it means to love when I need to most.