Marriage

The word for today is MARRIAGE. What do I know about MARRIAGE? Not very much. I was married for three years in my twenties, in what now seems like another lifetime. I arrived in that MARRIAGE with all kinds of personal preconceptions--that my husband and I were supposed to do everything together (everything I wanted to do) and that my husband was supposed to love everything about me while I could change whatever I disliked about him. Given those preconceptions, it is no wonder the marriage didn't last. At the time I thought it was my husband whom I could not tolerate, but it was really the person I had become whom I could not stand.

So now when I look at MARRIAGE, it is from the outside, a view from which it is easy to be judgmental. I look at couples quibble, disagree, put one another down, I look at them respond to each other with silent frost or angry heat and I think, never in a million years would I want that kind of relationship. I idealize about a relationship based on mutual respect, honesty and admiration, in which partners treat each other with reverence, care and kindness. Then I get slapped back to reality by none other than my very own wunderdog, the one and only Rosie.

This morning, mid-March in Chicago, was one of the warmest days of the year. Rosie and I took a walk to the neighborhood coffee shop and I tied her up to the tree outside, as I have done many, many times. I went inside and ordered my cafe au lait, and she began to bark. I wondered if she was bothering the other customers, some of whom looked up from their laptops, so I went outside to tell her "No Bark." When I returned inside to wait for my order, she began to bark again, so I returned outside to wait with her next to the tree. She was definitely the one in charge.

Once I had my cafe au lait in hand, I untied Rosie and prepared to head home. We made it just past the coffee shop and Rosie decided she didn't feel like going home. She didn't feel like going anywhere. After all, I had gone inside a place where food and drink were available and I did not emerge with anything for her. What was I thinking? Obviously I had been inconsiderate of her desires and therefore did not merit her cooperation.

So she sat and stared at me as I tried to get her to walk. She was having none of it, and as she glared at me I imagined her thought bubbles (no way, why should I, who the hell are you anyway.) "Let's go Rosie," I said, "let's go home. Time to go. No, honey, you can't stay. Sweetie, let's go now." And as I began to lose my patience with her, I realized that this game between us has been going on for nine years. Rosie and I have been together--dog and master (or more accurately human servant)--for nine years. We've been going to this coffee shop for almost four years and we're still having the same "conversation" on the street. Oh no, I thought, it's like we're married! Any one observing us would think we looked ridiculous, but we're in a pattern, we've been doing the exact same thing with each other for so long, that it feels natural.

That's just what my parents had been trying to explain to me about MARRIAGE. Mom and Dad, I'd ask them, how can you treat each other this way, how can you stand the disagreements, the arguments, the standoffs. In his and her own way, each of them told me, Amy, that's what marriage is like, that's what happens after 54 years. But I am single and sanctimonious. Until this morning that is, until my dog set her butt on the ground, stared up at me and taught me that I too am blind in the most intimate of my relationships.