Nineteen

11.13.2024

Our marriage is nineteen years old today. Were it a young person it would be away at college. Living in a dorm, drinking lots of coffee and acquiring a personal philosophy. Chances are it would love used bookstores, long walks and rainy Sundays. It would be old enough to marry, and old enough to vote, but not old enough to run for office (though chances are it would do a better job than some elected officials.) If on the other hand our marriage were a mourning dove, it would be improbable, far-fetched, a preternatural anomaly. For most mourning doves do not live into the double digits. In the long history of this planet, only one is known to have seen the dawn of his third decade. If our marriage were a mourning dove, it would be in perpetual mourning, because predators, disease, inclement weather and  humans with a predilection for hunting. But on its sleek wingtips would still be found a stutter of small black dots, like ink stains from a perverse fountain pen. It would still feast unobtrusively on seeds, and object to sudden disturbance with a signature whistling flutter. And every night, our marriage would fall asleep in a tree, feathers all fluffed up, head sunk sweetly between soft shoulders. And since we are considering hypotheticals here, let us consider another: if our marriage were starlight, it would originate from Gliese 229, that stellar trinity composed of one red and two brown dwarf stars, located in the constellation Lepus, nineteen light years away from our home and yours, invisible to the naked eye, but readily glimpsed through a telescope. To look at it is to look back in time. That shine you see? The start of something extraordinary.

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Our marriage, assuming you care to know, happens to be at once, all and none of the above. A thing unto itself, unequalled and alive. Curious, fragile, mourning. And full of song. Watch as it croons through the darkness, addling time and bearing, such a wild light.

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(From the archives)

11.13.2014

Our marriage is 9 years old today. Were it a child it would be in 4th grade now. Chances are it would have lost its front baby teeth, and have memorized the names of all the planets (minus Pluto, which got demoted). It will have been informed that our Earth circumambulates the sun, but will not yet have been introduced to trigonometry or taxes. If, on the other hand, our marriage were a medium-sized dog, it would be 56 human years old today. It will have acquired, after years of frenzied puppyhood, an air of gravitas. It will have lost some hearing and declared a truce with the squirrels. It will spend inordinate amounts of time asleep in golden swaths of sunlight wearing a smile. And now seeing that we are considering hypotheticals, here’s another: if our marriage were a sturdy oak somewhere on a windswept hillside, it would still be waiting quietly for its first acorns (yet a decade perhaps two away). But hidden deep in its heartwood, it will have already begun a stunning and concentric collection of rings.

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Our marriage, assuming you care to know, happens to be at once all and none of the above. A thing unto itself, unfolding and alive. Teachable, warm-bodied, deep-rooted. Mortal. And somehow more — so much more — than I dared ever ask of this dazzling world.