with respect to John D. MacDonald...
Recently one of the civilian contractors I work with a lot over here was commenting on her single status, about how she was happy enough as things stood, but she didn’t want to be single forever.
“I don’t want to get married just for the sake of getting married, though.” She said. “I want a marriage like you and your wife have, Wanderer.”
“How do you mean?” I asked.
She pointed at the pictures of Life-happens and our awesome kids on my desk, the computer wallpaper of Life doing upside-down aerial stunts on the trapeze, and the poster/calendar of herself Life sent me last Christmas, and said “it’s been obvious to me since I met you that you’re crazy in love with your wife. You’re always bragging about her, and telling us about her cool adventures. I just hope that someday I can find someone that I feel that way about, and feels the same way about me.”
I told her not to give up hope, but that coming to an Army camp in the middle east was probably not the best place to look. She asked me how we did it, how do Life and I, despite being on different continents, stay happy with each other?
I wish I had an answer. Heaven knows neither Life nor I are perfect people, and we’ve had our share of fights and hard times, but I think we’ve both come to realize that we are better off together than by ourselves. I don’t think there’s a fixed formula, but we work together at making our marriage work. And it’s true, I am crazy in love with her.
Yesterday Life and I celebrated our tenth wedding anniversary. We got to talk briefly on the phone, and that was fun, and we talked about plans for romantic get-togethers when I get home, to make up for being apart on the special day. I thought back over ten years, and think about where I was before I met her, and once again marveled about how lucky I am. Her presence in my life has made me a better man.
In one of those coincidences that usually only happen in novels, I happened to be reading a book last night called “Pale Gray for Guilt”. It’s one of John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee novels, all of which I try to re-read periodically. In the novel, the hero, Travis, is trying to explain, as a bachelor and notorious lover of women, his relationship with his married friends, when he says: “…I am aware of what every single unwed person knows – that the world is always a little out of focus when there is no one who gives the final total damn about whether you live or die.”
And there it is, put so eloquently I can think of no better way to say it. My life was changed by Life’s arrival in it, because it finally came into focus. I’d found someone about whom I gave that final, total damn, and she did the same for me.
Happy anniversary, Life-happens.