Jumping into the Same River Twice
Winter Solstice is the shortest day of the year in Alaska-maybe five hours of light. The sunrise this morning-all pinks and blues against snow-topped mountains-shone like a blessing over the mountains as I pondered the fact that I would be getting married in less than five hours-for the second time to the same man I married the first time around, Stewart.
Can your first love also turn out to be your true love?
This first time we married, it was August 1974. I was twenty-two years old, a baby. My father had died four months earlier at the age of forty-seven, an unexpected shock. Stewart's hair was red, and he had a walrus mustache I found incredibly sexy. Our hearts were filled with idealistic dreams: A cabin in the mountains instead of a tract home, handmade pottery dishes instead of china, working at our passions-his is painting, mine, as you know, is writing-instead of nine-to-five jobs with rigid rules and dress codes and cranky bosses. He couldn't balance a checkbook to save his life. My best dish was a heated up can of Spaghetti-O's. We'd each lived on our own for maybe six months, but we were in love and lust and couldn't bear to be apart for more than three days. It seemed like the right thing to do, even if we didn't know exactly what it was we were doing.
The day of the wedding I was so nervous and upset I was high on Lomotil, champagne and the kind of fear that turns one's stomach inside out. I'd lost so much weight I had to be sewn into my dress. Two hundred guests would watch our ceremony. To be so closely scrutinized embarrassed me to my core. My dear Catholic mother made it clear she wanted us to tie the knot in church, instead of outdoors where we'd hoped to have a simple ceremony, maybe go barefoot, let loose our inner hippies, as it were. The organist refused to play Erik Satie's Gymnopedies, so we walked down the aisle to the traditional wedding march. Stewart and I made it through the trying day, though I remember very little about it. We honeymooned in Big Sur, California, along the most beautiful stretch of coastline California has to offer.
We lived together for years, had our son, bought and sold houses, remodeled, endured life's joys and sorrows, worked hard at our careers, even if it meant continually postponing our passions. Somewhere along the way we grew so far apart we were more like roommates than spouses to one another.
As we look back at our time apart, I'm sure it will appear brief, but the memory of that period still pulls, like the tendon in my thumb that I have to take care with if I still want to be able to type. However painful, much necessary growth came out of that discomfort. To say we're the same people we were before it happened is not really false. We're just a little more seasoned in our hearts, which have definitely become more open.
The slow collision of our coming back together has been the biggest gift. I treasure the time we began dating again. The long, deep conversations that led us to see that love was still there, lurking inside us. When you have history with someone, it's as if all you need to do is scratch the skin to uncover intimacy. It was a mutual decision to leave behind our old lives and make a new one here in Alaska, where right now the wintry white hoar frost looks like whiskers on the bare trees, and sparse though it is, we have enough snow for a white Christmas. We're beginning the life we'd postponed for too many years. Stewart's painting full time, oils and acrylics, and he recently won a design award for the Sitka Whalefest. I'm deep in writing novel number seven, and planning number eight. It seemed logical to marry again, imperative to once again take that risk of fully committing to one another. Finally, I think I understand the need to do this in the presence of others. Witnesses, surely, but also to acknowledge fellow travelers along the marriage road-a wedding ceremony causes both sides to take stock. So we asked our new friends and our now-grown son, Jack, to be there to share with us.
This time, instead of fittings with a seamstress and yards of white lace, I bought my red dress at a secondhand shop, and instead of satin pumps, I wore my old red Larry Mahan cowboy boots. I invited people I've only just met, but somehow feel will over time become treasured friends. Jimmie Eskridge and his lovely wife Helen; Annie O'Hara, the redheaded spitfire who lives to drive her new snowmobile from here to the Yukon; her husband Paul McRoberts, a man so in love with Annie there's an aura around him that rivals the aurora borealis; Kelly Baker (see previous December essay), who smiles at me knowingly, having been through many of the same trials; her gentle husband Jerry McKenzie, who runs the Secondhand Store near the rodeo grounds, and gives me discounts that I try to discourage since his merchandise is already so reasonable-and Jack, with whom we've had dark periods of estrangement, yet who is now the most devoted son any parents could ask for. Jack's engaged, too, to Olivia Barrick, an ocelot of the first order. I can't wait to have her for my daughter-in-law, but if they want to get married outdoors let me go on record stating that it's perfectly all right with me.
Here's an excerpt from Stewart's vows to me (from Washington Irving):
No man knows what the wife of his bosom is until he has gone with her through the fiery trials of this world.
Here's mine to him (from a Medieval poem, with my own personal touches):
You and I have enjoyed so much love
That at times it burned like a fire.
In that fire, we baked a lump of clay
Molded into a figure of you and a figure of me.
Then we took both of them and broke them into pieces.
Now we have mixed the broken pieces with water
And molded again a figure of you and a figure of me.
My husband, I am in your clay. You are in my clay.
In life we share a single quilt; in death we will share one coffin.
Here is part of what Jack said to us (from Rumi):
Life freezes if it doesn't get a taste of this almond cake.
The stars come up spinning every night, bewildered in love....
God picks up the reed-flute world and blows.
Each note is a need coming through one of us,
A passion, a longing pain... your note be clear. Don't try to end it.
Be your note. I'll show you how it's enough.
Go up on the roof at night in this city of the soul.
Let everyone climb on their roofs and sing their notes!
Sing Loud!
Branching out from from Spaghetti-O's, I made ropa vieja, or Cuban pot roast; vegetarian chili (for Jack); bread and salad; and for dessert we had a two-tiered chocolate cake with three layers of sinful icing. I carried three red roses, one to honor our past, one for the wonderful now, and one to bless what I hope will be our long and loving future together. We feasted.
Of all people to remark on love, Maxim Gorky once said: When a woman gets married, it's like jumping into a hole in the ice in the middle of winter: You do it once, and you remember it the rest of your days.
I don't know. I think sometimes you need to jump twice. The sting one feels as they hit the water is indeed shocking. Marriage is a huge step. Sometimes your first love is your true love. But it might just take a big knock in the head to realize that.
Now we have a winter anniversary to celebrate, the solstice, which may be the shortest day of the year, but also boasts the longest night.
Stewart and I, we made good use of every hour.
The adventure continues,
Jo-Ann
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