Conference quark::human_relations-v1

807.0. "Article: some thoughts on love" by HOTJOB::GROUNDS (Chronological liar) Sun Jul 30 1989 01:56

[The following article is reprinted without permission from the The
Sunday Independent  (Acton, Mass) July 30, 1989.]

          Romance and love are joys knowing no age boundaries
                      Commentary by Joyce Maynard


    For three weeks now, I've been telling you about my mother
Fredelle Maynard, whom I've been caring for in her home these past two
months since we learned she's suffering from an inoperable brain
tumor.  Today, I'm going to take a break from my acccount of the
difficult times we're going through  to tell you a love story.

    When my parents separated in 1972 my mother was 50 years old.  She
had lived in the same house with the same man for 25 years.  Her life
with my father may not have been easy or happy, but it was familiar,
predictable (even in its pain) and, therefore, in an odd way, safe.
So when my father left (having just retired from his university
teaching position, and believing himself to have fallen in love with a
young student), the bottom fell out.

    My mother had known my father since she was 18 years old - and so
when she found herself alone after more that 25 years of marriage, the
prospect of her finding someone else in that little New Hampshire town
where she'd lived so long seemed remote.  I figured (with the
presumptuousness of youth) that the course of her life, from this
moment on, would be fairly predictable:  busy career, the occasional
dinner with old friends and a gradual easing into grandparenthood.
What more could happen to a person (or a person's gray-haired, size 14
mother) after 50?  Well, it turns out that answer is "Plenty".

    One night 15 years ago my mother's telephone rang.  "This is
Sydney Bacon calling from Toronto, Canada," said the voice on the
other end of the line.

    "I've just read your book" (a volume of memoirs about her
childhood on the Canadian prairies) "and I want to take you out to
dinner."

    Well, said my mother, she wasn't planning to be in Toronto anytime
soon.  "In that case," said Sydney Bacon,  "shall I fly down to have
dinner with you there?"  And before she had time to think about it
(and come up with all the sensible reasons why reasonable people don't
do things like this) my mother heard herself saying yes.

    It was not love at first sight.  My mother greeted Sydney's
airport limousine in a buttoned-up navy blue suit with a prim bow tie
and talked loftily about literature.  Sydney - a formal-looking man 64
years old, recently divorced after a 30-year-long marriage - told her
about his basket-importing business, his worldly success.  Dinner was
almost over when he reached over to her and said quietly, "You have
beautiful eyes."

    He was staying in a hotel, but she invited him the next morning
for breakfast.  She was beating eggs in the kitchen, making small talk
(my cheerful, brisk, efficient, businesslike, invulnerable mother,
playing the role she knew best), when he took the bowl from her, put
his hands on her shoulders and said, "Where are you?"  Not all at
once, but gradually, over the months of weekend visits and talks on
the phone that followed, she allowed him to find out.

    A few months after meeting Sydney she wrote this in a letter to a
friend:  "You ask if I'm 'in love' again.  No, it's not that.  'In
love' was the experience with Max,  so many years ago and for so long.
'In love' was feeling one would go anywhere, do anything, give up
everyone else to be with the beloved.  It was wanting to fuse
completely with the other, be part of him.  I am deeply glad to have
had that experience, but I couldn't be in love again.   I know now
that no other person can complete me and make me whole.  That I must
do for myself.  I know there is no freedom in a relationship based on
the mutual need.  I would not give up my family or my friends for
love, or my work, because those things are part of me and I would be
fatally changed and lessened by their loss.  I do not say 'never' and
'always' anymore.  In love?  I love Syndey.  That's quite different."

    They had been having their weekend visits and trips together for
just over a year when he said, "If you move to Toronto I will buy you
a house, give you the key and never come unless you invite me."

    And that's what they did for the next 14 years:  Sydney, keeping a
spare, tidy apartment and coming over to my mother's messy house full
of plants and Mexican folk art three nights a week for her marvelous
dinners and staying over weekends.  Sydney carried on his work; my
mother carried on her writing  and her travels  (sometimes  with
Sydney, sometimes not).  As the years passed they continued to be one
of the most genuinely romantic  couples I knew: two strikingly
different kinds of people with very different styles and interests
very independent, involved in the world beyond the two of them, but
delighted in each other's company.

    Of course, the life they lived was close to being a fantasy -
unreachable for most people. (Anyone with children.  Or anyone
operating on a tight budget.)  "He comes over still as a suitor,"  my
mother wrote.  "If we have a difference, it will be over something
real, not the minor irritations that so often tangle the lines in a
marriage.  Our time together is saved up and prepared for.  I would
never appear at his apartment door without calling first to see if he
wanted a visitor.  I don't do Sydney's laundry; he doesn't pay my
bills."

    What they had with each other was deep trust and affection,
pleasure in each other's company, total acceptance of who the other
person was (and wasn't).

    She might have liked him to share her passion for Mexico.  He
would've liked her to go ballroom dancing with him and to the horse
races.  But finally they managed something few couples pull off, and
something I am trying to learn myself:  Neither one tried to change
the other.

    I think that from early on in her days with Sydney my mother would
have liked to be married, but for Sydney it remained important that on
some level he maintained his independence.  Then two months ago, when
he learned that my mother was gravely ill,  she announced to Sydney
that she'd like to marry him.  And he said yes, he'd like that too.

    So we had a big wedding in my mother's garden.   It was a perfect
day; friends came from all over.   And the looks on their faces
throughout the ceremony were ones of triumph and celebration, not
grief.  As he finished the seven blessings - just after my mother took
a swig of the wedding wine and pronounced it delicious, just after
Sydney shattered the glass with his foot - the rabbi said,  "There
never was a couple like this one, and there never will be again."
Both of which statements are true.

    Thanks, that was very nice reading for this 50 year old!
    
    

    
    	Yes, that was very nice to read. It's nice to hear how two people
    meet just by living in their own lives; she wrote a book, he happened
    to read it and then became interested in who this person was. Perhaps
    the rest was majic or "meant to be" or whatever, as he wanted to
    know and "she allowed him to find out"...
    
    	I found it interesting how she described "in love" as enmeshment;
    "fuse completely" and "give up everyone else" (including yourself?)
    which is a trait of codependancy: when you're willing to settle
    for being _needed_. I liked hearing how she would not give up parts
    or herself for the relationship, because she understands what that
    means to her self.
    
    	Maintaining _some_ autonomy over years, he still doing his thing
    and she doing her's; "involved in the world beyond the two of them",
    resulting in them being "the most genuinely romantic" or couples,
    is just so sweet to read.
    
    	I see consideration and a mature unwillingness to do for the
    other that which they are able to do for themselves. Oh, this results
    in!?!:     
    	
        "What they had with each other was deep trust and affection,
	pleasure in each other's company, total acceptance of who the other
	person was (and wasn't)."
    
    	How_about_that!
    
    	And;
    
    ""There never was a couple like this one, and there never will be again.""

        Sure there will. ;')
    
    	Joe Jas
    	

Thanks for typing that.  It lifted my spirits.

Meigs

    To steal a line from Alan Alda of M*A*S*H fame:
    
    I'm not a hopeless romantic, I'm a hopeFUL one.
    
    Your mom's a smart and great lady...and that Alda line really says
    it all!
    
    Jill