" When my life is through
And the angels ask me to recall
The thrill of them all
I shall tell them I remember
You."
-- Johnny Mercer
The world was still so very young when I came strolling back from whatever I’d been up to that afternoon. I’ve often wondered what I was thinking about at that exact moment … what song I was humming, what plans I was making for the evening ahead. Whatever the thoughts, they fled forever the moment I ducked ‘round the corner to head through the door of the building that held my new office.
She was ducking out that same door, around that same corner, headed in opposite directions. We bumped into each other.
It was a long while, after that, before we were able to get our ducks so nearly in order again. But that was the moment my world changed … for better, and for good.
A few hours later, after some intermittent and engaging time in her rarefied company, I walked into my apartment, heart and mind already full to overflowing, and stood at a window, watching the last remnants of late summer sun slide below the horizon.
“Lord,” my soul said, “if it’s all the same to You, I would like to be a good friend to that girl.” A pause, and a knowing. “If it’s all the same to You, I’d like to be much more than her friend.”
Never, never doubt that our merciful God gently hears, and abundantly answers, our prayers.
Now, sit right back and you’ll hear a tale
A tale of a sweet courtship
That started when he fell in love
And she didn’t give a flip.
She didn’t give a flip.
We came up with those lyrics for a special occasion, early in our wedded life. They actually work to the tune of Gilligan’s Island, and there are other, less musical parallels. My beloved knows something of what it means to go out for a short excursion and then find yourself marooned with a singularly goofy guy forever.
We were still on our first date when I paused in the moonlight to look deep into her eyes and tell her the simple truth of my soul. “I love you,” I said. For I did, already.
She looked deep into my eyes, too, and gently said, “That’s fine.”
It wasn’t the last time I thought she’d misunderstood something. “No, I mean it,” I said. “I really love you.”
It wasn’t the last time she’d have to bear patiently with my slowness on the uptake.
“I mean it, too,” she said. “That’s fine.”
And so I learned, as the poets promise, that the way of true love is not always smooth. I waited a long time for her to say the same words to me, and even then, she phrased them differently.
She is not an easy flier, I learned on our first air trip together. Much fretting about times and terminals and gates and seats. Finally, we were ensconced and buckled in, shoulder to shoulder, takeoff survived, beverages on the tray table before us, awaft on friendly skies. She squirmed happily on her seat, snuggled her head against my shoulder, sighed a happy sigh, and said:
“You’re the weirdest person I’ve ever known.” And with that, she slept the sleep of the just. While I gazed out on the passing clouds, with wonder.
The bride was the pride of Idaho
A Boise girl gone south
Bemused by the boy with the funny voice
And the always open mouth.
The always open mouth.
The West, pioneers used to say, was brutal on women and horses. I don’t know about horses, but from my observation, marriage, too, is pretty tough on the gentler sex.
Most good marriages I’ve seen work because of a fundamental injustice: the woman is willing and able to change. To suppress or surrender something of herself, for the sake of something of his. Men change, too, but in smaller, subtler ways. Gradually, gradually, we come to our dim realizations of how sorely we need this woman who has sacrificed so much to save us, in large measure, from ourselves.
The best thing about the best women is that each knows, going in, what she’s up against. That she’s going to spend the rest of her natural life wrestling this great, stubborn, ox-like oaf toward something resembling his better nature … that she will probably be, at best, only marginally successful … and that he will little note nor especially appreciate the depths of her efforts.
She is the Lord’s own partner in honing this creature’s dull soul – in return for which he sometimes looks up from the TV to ask if she thought to buy chips.
A man does marvel … at the grace of her ways, moving in the kitchen, making the bed … at her patience, and her listening … at “the shadow of her smile” … that she remembered the chips.
And a woman settles – strangely, peaceably – for the contentment of a shoulder to snuggle against, a familiar voice rambling about familiar things, the little clues of faithfulness found in a glance, a gift, a coming home at the end of the day.
The boy was the suave, romantic type
Her doubts he finally cured
With poetry, a song or two
Red roses by the score
All this and more
She gave her hand – ain’t love grand?
And life is never a bore.
Life is never a bore, though my wife’s husband can be. She has, for 30 years this week, been kind enough not to acknowledge it, to keep my regular company, to light the winding path before me just by walking down it with her hand soft in mine.
God is good. And His mercies, indeed, never cease.
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