I might even draw some political conclusions from the easy yet spirited and loving marriage of Michelle and Barak Obama, suggesting that he would be a leader who would respond to the country’s needs in a thoughtful and caring way:
Then look at the Bush marriage. Laura and George existing in separate worlds even as they inhabit the same space; the sad disconnect of a cheerful looking couple who have only
Having said that I have to step back a little for nobody, and that includes this writer, has the right to pass too harsh a judgment on other people’s loves and marriages, which doesn’t mean that I don’t do so from time to time. What I do know is that marriage is occasionally an arrangement, sometimes a marvel, often a mess, and always a mystery. I have observed that love ties us up in its amazing contradictions and confusions, and never more so than in a marriage.
Yes, I know divorce is often necessary and I don’t fault those who end a hopeless, abusive, or destructive relationship. Doing that takes its own kind of hard courage. We have all seen that long, loveless duet of death between two married people whose only bond is their inexorable anger towards each other. And we all know of the terrible loneliness within a bad marriage, the emotional isolation that makes it seem like Sartre on steroids. But the unwillingness of so many married people today to “make a go of it” as my folks would say in the nineteen thirties, can as often lead to sorrowful future lives as much as it does to fresh starts.
Having lived more than a little while I can testify that the promise of the new (as in a new marriage and a new life) is often a cruel deception as well as an ecological threat as it trashes the old relationship for landfill. The new car, the new religion, the new man or woman, the new iPod, the new flat screen TV,
My wife and I will have been married for fifty-five years this month. This number staggers me. On a good day I refuse to believe that I am even fifty five years old. Despite that number, I have no professional wisdom to offer about longevity in marriage, but I recognize my good fortune, knowing that I still feel delight when she enters a room and concern when she is too long away from me. The fact is that I see the world more clearly in the light of her presence. I know she will object to my saying this because she feels that a public declaration of love is highly suspect; a movie star fakery like jumping up and down on Oprah’s couch. Okay, I’m off the couch now. A little personal history follows.
When I look back on the past years I think not only of all the laughter my wife and I have shared – both of us are fools for laughter - but of the sorrows we have endured. No, I haven’t found the secret of life, or of marriage, mainly because there is no single secret that I know of, and if there was I’ve been too busy working on the projects I love to go looking for it these past fifty five years. But I do think the capacity for accepting change in another is one of the requirements for keeping a marriage strong. Although I place a high value on marriage, I do not condescend or feel sorry for those who live alone by choice or necessity. I have single friends, male and female, who truly enjoy busy, productive lives, full of gratifying relationships and rewarding work, lives which are in no way solitary. There is no one route to a good life. What I do know is how lucky I’ve been to have had such a splendid companion for so many years, luck playing a huge role in every relationship. For us, love has been a renewable source of energy, one that has seen us through so much joy and sorrow. And I realize how easy it is today to dissolve a relationship when trouble comes, and it will arrive regularly with bump and a thud.
I am a lover of history, fascinated by the layers of people, events, and change that have occurred in a given place over time. This applies to the history of a marriage as well. And so on this notable anniversary as I look at the photograph of that ridiculously young couple at their traditional June wedding, she, so beautiful in the long white gown, me, so uncomfortable in the rented tails, both so certain that we would always be young with an endless future before us, it pleases me to say that we have kept our word to each other, and that in the decades that followed we remain the best of friends. And so to my wife on this great day, “Amo, Amas, Amat, Amamus...”
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Contributing writer, Sherman Yellen, screenwriter, playwright, and lyricist, has won two Emmy Awards and a Peabody Award, first for his drama John Adams, Lawyer in the PBS series The Adams Chronicles, and later for An Early Frost, a groundbreaking drama about AIDS in America. His Beauty and the Beast was nominated for an Emmy and won the Christopher Award. Yellen was nominated for a Tony Award for his book for the Broadway musical, The Rothschilds. Yellen's other plays include Strangers, December Fools and Josephine Tonight! Sherman Yellen received a lifetime achievement award in Arts and Letters from Bard College.
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Labels: Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Cindy McCain, Ecology, Environment, George W. Bush, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Laura Bush, Living, Marriage, Michelle Obama, Politics, Sherman Yellen