Category: Love

Broken People

On By ednafroeseIn gifts, Gratitude, Love, PainLeave a comment

            My opening photo was taken about a year ago during a visit with a friend in Victoria, BC. It soon became my phone’s background, and I have repeatedly contemplated the interplay of lines, the range of textures, and the subtle dance of muted colors. From the froth of the grass fronds to the mysterious black bulk of the forest and down to the dry grass, lit by the last bright rays of sunlight, the scene delights me. The V-ripples of the few ducks are an unexpected gift; I had focused on colors and clouds, not ducks.

            A life-long prairie dweller, I was an awed visitor here, marvelling that late September could offer such a visual feast for the eyes. All that water, salt water at that. Would one ever tire of it?

            Now in another summer, and still held captive by persistent pain (an angry sciatic nerve, if you must have specifics – see previous post), I see this photo every time I pick up my phone. It comforts me as I try to accept my current status as a broken person. Not fully functional.

            In the last weeks, I have had more than enough time to think about that “not fully functional,” suboptimal condition. I have pondered the ways that humans enter that state:

  1. We are made sick through viruses, bacteria, or harmful substances. Fortunately, Western medicine has become quite adept at treating diseases, discovering causes, finding medicines, developing vaccines, improving hygiene, etc.
  2. We are injured through accident or others’ malevolent actions. Here, too, we have remedies; trained first responders, skilled surgeons and therapists, inventors of mechanical aids of all kinds, and rehab specialists. We can do something about injuries, at least the physical ones.
  3. We are broken—through age that wears out parts, through misuse that makes our organs miserable, through initial genetic misfirings, through . . . . ? We can detect brokenness, in most cases, but have trouble seeing causes, or can’t tell where physical breakage has led to emotional breakage, or the other way around. It’s taken us far too long to recognize consequences of trauma and/or abuse. We’re also not very good at distinguishing between brokenness and difference (should we be talking about a continuum?)

The unknown is frustrating in all three categories, never mind that the categories overlap and won’t stay sorted. Just find the problem and fix it, fast—that’s the mantra of our culture. It has not served me well this time around.

      Then, in my quiet, sometimes lonely, pain-ridden hours came the gift of a book recommendation, serendipitously from the friend whom I’d been visiting when I took the photo that opens this posting. With the quirkiness of grace, the book’s title was The Giver.

      Yet more—it wasn’t The Giver that I really needed to read (although I loved it), but the companion novel that Lois Lowry wrote: Gathering Blue. In that imaginary world, one small scamp of a lying, thieving boy who’s been cuffed and yelled at and beaten and starved, travels from his village—where survival is all that matters and everyone grabs what is available and fights for what is not, and anyone who is sick or injured is promptly dragged to the Field of Leavings to die—yes, this wild little boy named Matt goes off to the “far beyond” in search of a blue-dyeing plant for the only friend who’s ever shown him kindness, and finds a wholly different Village he calls “the place of Broken People.”

      Upon his return with the desired plants and a strange, blind man (resident of the Village of Broken People), Matt is at a loss to describe this place where he was immediately welcomed and cared for after his arduous journey through the Forest. “Them be all broken, them people,” he said, “But there be plenty of food. And it’s quiet-like and nice.”

      When his friend, Kira, a girl with a bad leg from birth (saved from immediate death only by a determined mother who refuses to let the village expose the infant as would be the usual practice), questions Matt further, he shrugs in bewilderment: “Like you. Some don’t walk good. Some be broken in other ways. Not all. But lots. Do you think it makes them quiet and nice, to be broken?” Kira does not know how to answer. Her mother had taught her, “pain makes you strong.” But this tale of people who rescued strangers like the blind man now before her and tended them until they healed baffled her. No one in her village would have ever done that, let alone even known how.

      Lowry, however, does not offer the easy answer that Matt seems to grasp at, that being broken makes people nice. There are other characters in the novel who have let pain and loss turn them cruel and even more ruthless in their fight to survive and gain power.

      In the end, Gathering Blue offers simply the metaphor of the rare blue dye made from woad, which can be found only in the “Village of Healing.” As the blind man explains, his pronouns crucially changing, “There is always someone to lean on . . . Or a pair of strong hands for those who have none. . . . They help each other . . . we help each other.” It is left to us readers to consider how, in our world, we might move from the awed “they help each other” to the voice of belonging: “we help each other. . . . we are like a family.” Both those who are broken and those who are not.

“The village of healing has existed a long time. . . . Wounded people still come. But now it is beginning to change, because children have been born there and are growing up. So we have strong healthy young people among us. And we have others who have found us and stayed because they wanted to share our way of life.”

Lois Lowry

Consoled by a Smile

On By ednafroeseIn Beauty, Forgiveness, Love, MotherLeave a comment
Photo of my mother. Her hair is dark, carefully waved back from her face in the style of the early 1930s. She wears a simple dark dress with a small lace color and a pendant. Her eyes have a clear gaze and her mouth looks as if she might smile but she doesn't quite smile. Her skin appears flawless.

            According to an entry in my father’s diary, my mother gave this studio photo of herself to my father for Christmas in 1931. They had been courting for a few months by then (discreetly, of course, in deference to her strict preacher father), and would marry in October 1934. With about ten dollars in my father’s pocket and with a single cow (or was it two?) in tow behind the buggy, they rode off to a small homestead to begin a dairy farm and their life together. Their first home, a mere shack furnished with apple boxes for chairs, was so drafty their blankets froze to the wall in the winter nights.  

 As the late-born youngest in the family, I was granted only glimpses of the courageous, hopeful woman in this photo, although I do recognize the intelligent humor in my mother’s eyes. The years of trauma in her childhood had left their legacy: she had been only six when the Russian Revolutions tore apart the Mennonite villages in the area now known as Ukraine; she had been twelve when her family fled to Canada as refugees in 1923. In the charmed early years of their marriage, it would have been possible to forget painful memories and ignore immediate hardships in the joy of beginning anew. Much research since then has made it clear that forgetting is not that easy.  

What I remember mostly clearly about her in my growing-up years and later was her focus on endless work on the farm, persistent fearfulness and constant worrying, an unhappy strain of judgmentalism, and eventually repeated illnesses and depressive episodes, none of which I even began to understand until I was an adult with children of my own. Then, dimly grasping the wisdom of playwright Joanna Glass—“If we are women, we think back through our mothers”—I began to research my people’s history and my family’s history.

 What I learned is material for other blogs, or more likely for unpublished stories for our children and grandchildren. Here I wish to take delight in that soft, Mona-Lisa smile on my mother’s face. My childhood self never realized that my mother was beautiful and gifted and strong. This photo reassures me that she was all of those, perhaps never more so than in her older years when she struggled against the darkness with not much help. For sure, her family doctor knew too little about trauma’s long-lasting effects on the body and mind, and her church was too inclined to blame depression and frightened anger on a lack of faith. The former prescribed drugs, and the latter repentance and prayer. Both were likely unaware of the unhelpfulness of their assumptions about women, yet both meant well—of that I’m fairly certain. It seems pointless now to point fingers back into the past, using knowledge that was then not available.

Nevertheless, she persisted. Not consistently, not always obviously, sometimes counter-productively. Artistic gifts suppressed and desires dismissed eventually turn bitter. When responsibility for her elder care fell mostly on my shoulders, I was frequently resentful and frustrated. I had even less to offer her than those institutions to which she had looked for help. I simply did not understand, either her needs or my own.

Against those memories, I now treasure earlier glimpses of my mother, and I choose to celebrate the gifts that I did see in her: her artist’s eye for color in fabric and in flowers, her instinct for words, her innate generosity, the twinkle in her eyes (a family trait).  

That smile, so barely there? I think it’s love, finding a place in her heart. The commitment is growing, the trust increasing. It is the joy of youth (she is 20 years old), daring to reach toward the future. I did not know her then, but I did see that self, every now and then, in the stories she sometimes told, in the pictures she shared with me. I believe, with Madeleine L’Engle that “the great thing about getting older is that you do not lose all the other ages you have been.” That lovely young woman did not wholly disappear, after all.

The great thing about getting older is that you do not lose all the other ages you have been.

Madeleine L’Engle

  In the on-going processing of memories and learning to understand something about all those other ages I have been, I have been encouraged by reading memoirs. One of the best I’ve read is novelist Elizabeth Hay’s All Things Consoled. All stories of human selves are worth hearing and pondering; very few of them are as beautifully articulated as this one.

[Photo from https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/572851/all-things-consoled-by-elizabeth-hay/9780771039751%5D

Its primary chronological focus is Hay’s year or more of being primary care-giver for her elderly parents whom she moved to a nearby seniors residence/care home. As part of that story, Hay also includes a history of her parents, which serves as background for Hay’s own childhood. She makes all her “characters” (family members, friends) wonderfully human; every chapter reveals greater complexities in the larger Hay family and demonstrates the extent to which we all are shaped and bound (and enlarged) by the relationships that have knit us into the people we become.

Photo of the book cover of All Things Consoled.

Although Hay does not minimize the achingly tense dynamics between her and her parents, she tells their stories and hers with love. Regardless of what might have gone wrong in the past, Hay celebrates her parents’ achievements, seeking to understand without glossing over failures. Such gracious acceptance is what I want to learn. That and the capacity to listen well which is so often the good writer’s gift – and the good healer’s gift.

Photo of a bouquet of gladiola
One of my mother’s favorite flowers was gladioli. I grow them often, in memory and for my own pleasure.

A Line Runs Through

On By ednafroeseIn Connection, family, LoveLeave a comment

The last academic conference that I attended—Congress of Social Sciences and Humanities 2011—was held at the University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, NB. My husband had traveled with me this time, a few days before the conference began, so we could have a short holiday before I settled in to listen to many academics demonstrate their prowess with words and ideas.

            We visited the Hopewell Rocks, which we had been told many times we “absolutely had to see.” For land-locked prairie dwellers whose typical holiday was hiking in the Rockies, the mud flats of low tide, stretching endlessly toward the sky, were astonishing all on their own, never mind the mud-and-rock sculptures shaped by the tide, in its back-and-forthing for millenia. They were huge; they were grotesque and majestic all at the same time. Some were named: “Bear,” “Elephant,” “Dinosaur.” We were awed almost as much by the vast quantities of seaweed heaped up and sprawled everywhere. The mud itself had an enticing silky smoothness; I wanted to keep touching it.  

            Eventually, exhausted by sensory overload, we sat down on a clean rock to have some lunch. My gaze shifted down and inward. There is rest in mindful attention to detail. I had begun to appreciate still life photography, thanks to regular visits to Shawna Lemay’s blog Calm Things, which preceded her current blog Transactions with Beauty. I was learning to delight in small things, calm things, gentle juxtapositions, artful compositions. I was beginning to notice shades of color, textures, and lines, sometimes as subtle and beautiful and complex as anything I traced through novels and poems in my classrooms. So here, on a smooth rock in the midst of the ungainly, preposterous Hopewell Rocks, I assembled one small rock and half a kiwi, next to the line through which life was persistently growing.  

            My interest in Mennonite literature, which eventually became my PhD dissertation, began back in the early 1960s when I was in high school, when our small town’s comfortable insularity and piety was disturbed by the grandfather of Canadian Mennonite literature, Rudy Wiebe. His first novel (begun as an MA thesis) Peace Shall Destroy Many (1962) was the first novel in English by a Mennonite writer, and its realistic presentation of Mennonite life, with its hard work, godliness, pacifism, prejudice, and hypocrisy caused consternation among Mennonite congregations across Canada. That’s by way of backstory.

Wiebe subsequently became a major figure in Canadian literature; his best-known novels—Wiebe earned his first Governor General’s Award for fiction with The Temptations of Big Bear 1973—concern Indigenous peoples. He also wrote several novels with Mennonite characters at the centre, the last of which is Sweeter Than All the World (2001).

Photo of a book shelf, holding many of Rudy Wiebe's books. The prominent titles are Stolen Life, My Lovely Enemy, The Temptations of Big Bear, A Discovery of Strangers,, and Sweeter Than All the World.

            It was vintage Rudy Wiebe: a cast of unforgettable characters that spanned the entire history of Mennonites beginning in the 1500s; a central character struggling to make sense of his personal history and his inherited theology; a demanding, thick and powerful prose style that packed clauses within clauses in a breathless avalanche of thought and sensation, thus demanding close attention and several rereadings; and a network of metaphors that knit together not only various plot elements and characters in Sweeter Than All the World but also key themes explored in his previous Mennonite novels. I became aware of those latter connections only as I was working on a conference paper on STAW. As I unravelled and rewove those intertwined images, my heart strings were tugged so often that my writing repeatedly snagged to a halt in the midst of family memories of my own. Our worlds are not that far apart; his Mennonite novels lay bare my world, too.

Sweeter Than All the World may be difficult for non-Mennonites to get through. It takes a certain kind of awareness of both community solidarity and shared family histories of broken family connections to persevere through Wiebe’s seemingly fragmented story lines, so filled with suffering and loss. In the end, though, the fragmentation is undone, as much as it can ever be, by lines: threads of continuity, melodic lines of song, genealogical cords, pulleys and cables, all bound together by crucial sticking points (both those that hold—needles and poles—and those that hurt—knives), seemingly rooted in the earth. Call it grounded community, if you will, unsentimental, essential.

Fiction lets us enter other worlds, try on other identities, evaluate other values. It is thus that we learn compassion – through narrative imagination. Sometimes, too, fiction lets us see ourselves from another angle, from which we can test the strength of our personal connecting lines that let us grow.  

Responsible Discourse

On By ednafroeseIn birds, hope, Love, poetry, promises, WordsLeave a comment
A robin on a dark wire, facing the camera so the red breast is highlighted. The rest of the photo is clear blue sky.
A robin sits on the eaves, a worm in its beak. Some foliage is visible at the edge of the photo.

            This robin “with no Christian name” (see poem below) and his equally nameless mate have built a nest in the clematis vine that shields our patio from the eastern sun and from the curious gaze of passers-by in the back alley. Its density shields the nest just as well from our curious gaze. Our use of the patio will be limited until the young ones begin flying about. Until that time, our garden and lawn serve as an ever-available worm buffet for the growing robin family.

Photo of our patio, with a dense clematis vine along one side, one hanging pot of flowers and a couple of chairs and the edge of a table visible.
A robin stands on the edge of a raised bed in our garden. A worm dangles from his beak.

 In a quixotic, synaptic move, my brain put together my ongoing fretting about discourse (gentle and otherwise), the happily singing robins, and a poem by W.H. Auden – “Their Lonely Betters.” Many years ago, that poem grabbed my attention and eventually prompted me to write a conference paper about language, pretentiously titled “The Morality of Grammar.” Back then, I was much exercised about the changing usage of pronouns. My students were persistently using I rather than me in all the “wrong” places, and I was busy justifying to myself, and to anyone who would listen, my belief that that change was a bad idea.  

That change from me to I now seems a small issue pointlessly pursued in an innocent time, when civility in public discourse could generally be expected, and lies, when exposed, brought suitable disgrace to public figures. I had not yet even heard about disinformation nor understood the power that social media would gain in the not too distant future.

            Auden’s poem, however, has not become irrelevant. If anything, it is more to the point than ever:  

Their Lonely Betters

by W. H. Auden

As I listened from a beach-chair in the shade
To all the noises that my garden made,
It seemed to me only proper that words
Should be withheld from vegetables and birds

A robin with no Christian name ran through
The Robin-Anthem which was all it knew,
And rustling flowers for some third party waited
To say which pairs, if any, should get mated.

Not one of them was capable of lying,
There was not one which knew that it was dying
Or could have with a rhythm or a rhyme
Assumed responsibility for time.

Let them leave language to their lonely betters
Who count some days and long for certain letters;
We, too, make noises when we laugh or weep:
Words are for those with promises to keep.

1950

        It’s a charming picture, is it not? – the poet relaxed in his chair in the garden. Who would not likewise enjoy listening to the sounds of the garden? And who, like the poet, has not longed for letters (or texts or emails) or for certain days to arrive? Which of us has not laughed (a kind of song without a name) or wept (a kind of disturbed inward rustling)? Seemingly alone in his garden, the poet can allude to some painful loss and yet achieve an emotional distance that allows for philosophical speculation.

 What have words to do with all of this? This longing for certain days, this loneliness that is not dispelled by the desired letter (which hasn’t arrived)?  It is easy to conclude at first that the poet is crying inside for his “mate” who isn’t there and might not ever be there. Some kind of promise has been made, in words, which has not been kept.

But the penultimate stanza moves the moment of reflective loneliness in the garden to a broader context. It takes words to tell a lie, and it takes words to articulate the awareness of mortality. Yes, both misinformation and death can be acknowledged through gestures, postures, facial expressions – what we revealingly call “body language.” But there’s more going on here than just emotionally registering loss, of whatever kind. Auden’s deft phrase, “with a rhythm or a rhyme assumed responsibility for time,” underscores the troublesome gift of self-consciousness that is the foundation of human language: words (the speaking aloud of the human capacity for self-awareness) are the articulation of promises.

With words, we promise not only to keep our appointments, to carry out actions, and to listen, but also to understand, to share perceptions, to honor commitments, to keep alive the community that benefits us all. Words depend on the character of their speakers for their informational power and their ability to set consequences in motion. Through words we signal “this is who I am and this is how I will act.” Without promises being kept, whether made implicitly or explicitly, there is no trust. Without trust, Auden insists, we may be still be “better” (a slippery word that here seems to mean “of higher status”) than robins, but we will be lonely. As soon as we move beyond the noise of emotions, we need words, words that can be depended on.

            So let there be not only gentle discourse but what’s more, a discourse of trust. Broken promises are inevitable among fallible humans who are not always in control of their circumstances; nevertheless, we can “take responsibility” for our brokenness and seek to make amends. Words – and people – deserve at least that much.  

Photo of a robin, silhouetted, perched on a chimney. The sky, which takes up most of the space, is cloudy and shades of grey.

We Need a New Word

On By ednafroeseIn Choices, Conversation, hope, Love, peace, possibility, Protest, reform, Words2 Comments

Words are slippery.

They mean what they mean, yes, but they mean always within a context, and contexts change.

            As a child of the Protestant Reformation, a descendant of Mennonites (a radical branch of that Protestant Reformation), and a wordsmith, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about our political language. What on earth happened to protest since the 1500s? Why could I be proud of my religious heritage, yet so much on edge and unhappy now?

The verb “protest” has become more noun than verb. One doesn’t pro-tést these days – one joins a pró-test, and that changes more than just pronunciation and grammatical function.

Photo of my book shelf with the English Oxford Dictionary prominently displayed. The second photo is the opened dictionary with a magnifying glass highlighting "protest."

 So: protest as a verb. It differs from object and from disagree. To disagree means, according to Oxford Dictionary, to “hold a different opinion.” In other words, you and I don’t think the same way about some idea or some thing or some action: cement is a better surface for an urban driveway than asphalt. There are good reasons on either side of that disagreement (cost, labor, endurance) but moral implications are absent.   

To object means, again according to Oxford, to express or feel opposition or disapproval or reluctance. That’s stronger than to disagree because emotion is involved. Whatever happens in the discussion, the one who is objecting feels hurt or offended or even appalled. That would be the distinction that my editing self would make. When my late father used to introduce me to his acquaintances as the “baby of the family,” never mind that I was already an adult with children of my own, I objected strenuously. It felt belittling to me, although I’m willing to concede now that he meant it as affection. We disagreed on the meaning of “baby” and I objected to his application of it.  

But to protest is to bring in not only emotion but moral judgment. Here I’m reaching back in time to try to recover the meaning of the word before it became a noun that means an official demonstration against government or some other powerful institution or leader. That’s the primary meaning now. Even in that noun form, perhaps especially in that form, the word carries the weight of moral judgment. A protest (noun) occurs because enough people judge some action morally wrong. It’s deemed unjust, unfair.

 If we’re talking about unfairness or injustice, it follows that the protester is in a position of less power than the person or institution against which the protest has been made. The protestor may be a direct recipient of the unjust action or maybe not. Many protests have been launched on behalf of those who had no voice or influence. The common thread is the moral judgment. This or that action is just wrong; it violates a law or some accepted standard of behaviour.

 There is something else about the verb “protest” that we seem, as a nation, to have forgotten entirely: it is intended to persuade. The very fact that the objection raised is morally justified assumes that the one who protests and the one against whom the protest is made share (or should share) a common ethical standard. The concept of injustice makes no sense without an accepted definition of justice.  Martin Luther, who inadvertently began the Protestant Reformation, appealed to the standard of the Bible and the tenets of Christianity when he protested against several actions of Roman Catholic clergy. His initial intention was first open discussion, then persuasion, based on a common faith.  

(Generally speaking, it is, of course, possible that the objection has been made in bad faith and is not morally justified; equally possible is that those whose behaviour has been objectionable do not have any ethical standards to which one can appeal. Neither case invalidates the protest’s initial purpose of persuasion. I insist that the ideal not be forgotten.) 

            By this point, given the current political climate, all sorts of righteous stances are doubtless being claimed by my readers, not to mention fervent disagreements with my definition of “protest.”

 So I will retreat temporarily into a simple illustration taken from my teaching years. A student was unhappy with an assigned grade; she felt certain that I had marked her paper unfairly because I was prejudiced against her. That is a moral problem. While some subjectivity is always a factor in marking essays, outright unfairness is unacceptable, not only to students but also to university administrators and department heads.   

As long as my student expressed her opinion courteously and presented evidence for her accusation, she was completely within her rights and could hope to be persuasive. My role was either to offer a reasonable explanation of the grade or to acknowledge her point and re-evaluate the paper (and/or ask a colleague to evaluate it). Either way, we should have been able to end the discussion with our dignity intact. Indeed, it could have been the beginning of an improved relationship.  

 However, if she had insulted me as a person and added threats of character assassination or even worse, she would have crossed a line between protest and blackmail—“you do this or I will ruin you.”  That is not yet physical violence, but it is violence. Her protest would have given up the moral high ground and become intimidation, thus turning the interaction into a power struggle, which leaves no one’s dignity intact, and makes an improved relationship very difficult, indeed. 

 When Martin Luther King, Jr., and Gandhi before him, insisted that any and all protests should remain non-violent, in language and in action, they were aiming at persuasion, which seeks to make clear what the relevant moral principles are and appeals to both a common humanity and a common acceptance of those moral principles. This is not to say that protests against long-standing evils such as slavery are easy. By no means. Many, perhaps most, slave-owners saw the protest marches as intolerable uppity behaviour by those whom God had made to be their slaves. As long as the marchers refused to turn their protest into rebellion, they kept the moral high ground and underlined the principle of a common humanity, something the slave owners had consistently denied. 

            I indicated earlier that I was a descendant of Mennonites, first known as Anabaptists, who refused to bear arms and developed a strong code of pacifism. Other groups like the Quakers have also chosen non-violence. That does not rule out protest. To speak up against unfairness and injustice, even oppression, is a moral obligation, especially if the speaking up is not for oneself but for those who cannot speak up.

But the way of peace refuses violence in all its forms, and seeks reconciliation. That is the ideal. I cannot speak for Quakers but I know that Mennonites have not always avoided violence, either on the national stage or in their own families. The teaching remains, though, challenging us to seek actively to make peace.

 I confess that I am congenitally disposed to avoid even legitimate protest. I will write letters to my elected representatives (not very often), but I do not march or carry signs. My preference is to “guard each man’s dignity and save each man’s pride,” to quote from a 1970’s Christian worship song.  Other cultures value the “saving of face” which is simply a different metaphor for the kind of agreement that allows for gracious exits from the conflict.

            Is that always possible? I don’t know. Some situations do present themselves as inherently impossible, yet I have read many inspiring stories of people who have suffered much rather than use violence and have ultimately brought about lasting change. Stephan A. Schwartz argues that social changes attempted through revolution and violence generally do not last as long as those social changes created through non-violent means. He lists several examples, including universal education, abolition of slavery in countries such as Britain, universal health care. Remember the old saying, “a man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still”?

As Stephen Berg wrote in “Deer in the Mist,” “insisting on angels drives angels away.” Or as I heard in a sermon many decades ago, the way of spiritual grace is always a matter of “gift,” not “grasp.”

Everything real, happens first,
out of sight, in the far away furnaces of courage
which are fueled, not by passion, but love. (Stephen Berg)

Photo of a single clematis vine climbing up a wall with seemingly nothing to cling to. There is one lovely mauve flower.

A Story in Five Rings

On By ednafroeseIn Choices, family, friendship, Gratitude, identity, Love, marriage, memories, StoriesLeave a comment

            No, this is not a story about the Olympics. It’s a love story, an ordinary one. Many couples could tell it, I guess, except that no two love stories are exactly the same.    

Photo of a Valentine's Day bouquet with a mixture of mostly pink flowers but some red and one yellow. Flowers are mostly mums.

            Western love stories have typically followed familiar plots: 1) two kindred spirits fall in love, face and overcome obstacles, marry and “live happily ever after”; 2) follows plot 1, but adds more obstacles after the wedding, which a) may be overcome and lead to a renewal of the happy ending, or b) may not be overcome and lead to an unhappy divorce, or to affairs, or to divorce and then remarriage for an eventual “happily ever after” ending; 3) either version 1 or 2a is continued into old age with even more obstacles to be overcome. In all variations, some major drama is needed to make the story novel-worthy or memoir-worthy. Add WW2 or clashing cultures (see Romeo and Juliet) or national borders or cancer or Alzheimer’s or a pandemic or death or . . . .

 But this story is made of plain stuff-of-life events—the kind that cause no gasps and raise no eyebrows. Yet I would insist that no lasting relationship is ordinary to the ones who live it. For them, the story in five rings (or three or four or many) is a jewel of great worth.  

The first ring – May 3, 1968  

Photo of a ring box with my black diamond ring.

            It was an early birthday gift, given just before I left for a summer job in another province. That was our first experience of letter-writing instead of dates. Our years-long “ordinary” friendship had only months ago deepened into romantic love. No dramatic “falling in love,” no electric glance across the room from a stranger, just increasing warmth in the familiarity of being comfortable together.  

Promise rings hadn’t been officially invented yet, although high school rings were often exchanged (we had not done that). Nothing was actually promised over that black diamond ring, not that I recall. Nevertheless, I quickly discovered why lovers give one another rings, besides to make their commitment more public. A ring is always there, always beautiful. Always a silent affirmation: we love and are loved. That is always a miracle.  

It’s been decades now since I’ve worn it. The thin gold band proved too delicate to tolerate the chores of a household and garden, and the black diamond itself, with its tiny gold clasps, too likely to get caught in sweaters or in fine baby hair. Still, it has not lost its worth as a symbol of our beginning love, even after its place of honor on my left hand was taken by a symbol of much deeper commitment.

The second ring and the third: April 15, 1970 and August 28, 1970.

First photo is of a ring box with our wedding bands (my wedding band together with my engagement ring). Second photo includes a tiny wedding picture, two wine glasses and the ring box with our wedding rings.

            My engagement ring and my wedding ring were welded together within weeks of our wedding day, after I had caught my hand in a heavy door as I rushed to my university class, and bent both rings badly. I could have taken that as an omen. I didn’t.  

 The engagement ring had been slipped on my finger several days after a long evening spent in a 1958 Chev, parked in a favorite spot by the river. We talked about our future. Both of us were going to be university students in fall, each living on a shoestring budget. No doubt we remember the evening differently: at what point did our half-spoken dream change into a definite plan to share our shoestrings? I couldn’t say.  

Surely it was foolish to become engaged in the middle of exams at the end of my third year of university. I still smile when I remember sitting in some stifling exam room, tension palpable everywhere, and staring in astonishment at the diamond ring on my finger. It’s a wonder I could focus on the exam at all.  

 We began our life together on one scholarship plus one student loan, in a furnished basement suite. We were so confident in our love, so sure that we knew exactly what we were doing and that we were mature enough to face whatever difficulties came. Oh, yes, we did say that. We had no illusions that life “happily ever after” was going to be simple or certain. Of course, there would be tough times. I know now that we had not grasped at all what “tough” would feel like or how long it might hang around.  

That’s a good thing, actually. Love is known best in the midst of loving, not in the fear of what might be. Strength is found in the doing and recognized later in the remembering.   

With this ring, I thee wed

            We exchanged wedding bands in a small church service in the summer of 1970. I was so very happy and proud. We loved and were loved.

Over the years we had to learn to straighten bent conversations and adjust attitudes as we got our rings straightened and strengthened when work or accident tested the gold. No marriage escapes stresses. Those “tough times” we’d been so confident we could handle? They came in guises we hadn’t anticipated. There were some very dark days, when we seemed to be functioning in separate spheres, partly because we were each adapting to new roles on the basis of different family backgrounds.

It is not easy to shift from being single independent adults to being parents of our own children (though they brought us so much joy). Nor was it easy for me to become more responsible for my parents—a change that called for considerably more maturity and self-awareness than I had. A return to graduate studies added more stress and demands on my time. Were we to do it all again, we would make some other choices and seek out more support.  

The fourth ring: August 28, 1995       

Photo of both our left hands with focus on our wedding bands.

Twenty-five years after our wedding, we went shopping together for new wedding bands. My husband’s ring had worn too thin through years of hard work to tolerate any more straightening; mine also needed repair. It was not only the rings that needed repair. We had traveled a rough road, and it was time to re-evaluate who we were together, and to renew our commitment to love and be loved. Our new wedding rings were simpler, also much wider and stronger, appropriate for our resolve to walk on together in however many years we were granted.

 We have now passed the fifty-year mark of our marriage. It came in the middle of the first pandemic year and right after major cancer surgery for me. Tough times? Yes, indeed. Good times? Absolutely.  

Birthday ring, May 24, 2021

Photo of my hand, next to an aloe vera plant. Focus is on the silver ring on my right hand.

            Although it was a so-called special birthday, the number being somehow significant, I hadn’t expected anything particular. We had had no celebratory parties in the pandemic years. It was enough to have an occasional lovely dinner for two in our house or in the backyard, grateful for our health and for being together. As for gifts? We have what we need, really. Why add more stuff?

 So the ring was a total surprise, yet the longer I wear it, the more meaningful it becomes. It’s silver, not gold, a softer metal, easier to shape I’m told, and comfortable on my arthritic hands. It was made by a local silversmith, who creates jewelry in her spare time. In the years since my husband took up the hobby of making chain maille jewelry, we have learned to appreciate the work and community of local artisans. It is an honor for me to wear this ring.  

In the midst of recent “tough times,” it matters more than ever that commitment has lasted, that the circle of love is there. I’ve heard love defined as an act of the will as much as a feeling; a policy decision as well as a relationship. I agree.  

Love is an act of the will, a policy decision, a long commitment in the same direction.

The story of five rings has an ordinary plot—first dates, engagement, marriage, jobs, children, grandchildren, retirement. Its moments of joy and glory, like those at the Olympics, are made possible through hard work and self-discipline, evident in thousands of ordinary small actions. It’s a story that has been told in some form or another in millions of families, I am sure. Yet every story matters to the ones who live it.

Happy Valentine’s Day to my friend and lover of almost 52 years!

First photo is of a fancy heart-shaped box of chocolates; second photo is of a Valentine's Day bouquet with tiny white mums, green-centered red daisies and green mums plus sparkly red hearts.

Love is known best in the midst of loving, not in the fear of what might be. Strength is found in the doing and recognized later in the remembering.