I was just reading an article - well, not so much reading the article as wondering about the title - "What Makes a Good Marriage?" This year, I will celebrate 30 years of marriage, and I will say that it is as simple and complicated as easy and as difficult as this: it takes work. If you want it to work, you will work at it. Yes, I understand that it takes two - if you love someone, and they just want to screw everything that isn't nailed down - and some things that are - or they prefer smoking crack to having an intellectual discussion, obviously, the relationship has issues. Barring such glaring need-someone-even-greater-than-Dr. Phil problems that need resolving, the sowing will result in the harvest. What, how much, how far you are willing to give, grant and go is entirely up to you, but the investment can truly offer rewards. It can be worth the time and the effort. As mentioned in Prime, however, you might want to think at least a half-dozen times before investing in a game console or World of Warcraft membership...I'm just sayin'.

Heath Ledger died today. I do not understand why the passing of a movie star - and I use the phrase fairly loosely - should have such a profound effect on me - except that he and my child are about the same age and his very young daughter is left to face the world without a father, I really do not get it. But I don't have to understand the whys of everything - it just really makes me very sad.

...if you bring off adequate preservation of your personal myth, nothing much else in life matters. It is not what happens to people that is significant, but what they think happens to them.

Anthony Powell

Books Do Furnish a Room

Grateful

So, my daughter dedicated a recent blog posting to gratitude, and she posed the "what are you grateful for?" question. Not declaring my areas of thankfulness directly on her blog is a conscious (conscience?) decision - better to just list that stuff here - I'm not saying that it makes sense; it just is.

* I have a wonderful child with whom I have a quite outstanding relationship.
* I have a good marriage.
* My remarkable husband is so precisely due to his unremarkableness.
* Wine is back in my life.
* Strength to leave it all behind - and actually happier as a byproduct.
* Getting over myself.
* No longer wishing that I had sisters.
* Never being hungry, without the easy opportunity to feel filled.
* Being healthy in my body and my mind (thank you, Juno soundtrack).
* Freedom to practice whatever religion I desire in whatever fashion suits me.
* Truly fabulous friends - very few, but really fabulous.
* To have the chance to simply say, "I am grateful."

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

...if you chose to go into someone else's reality, you had to be willing to walk. There were no shortcuts.

alice sebold

the almost moon

As I was wandering through Costco (I believe that I have alluded to, if not directly mentioned, this sickness that I have), I heard someone call my name. I turned around and there was this little old woman - really, little and old and woman - who I have known practically all my life; she is a good friend of my mother's. So, "I'm here avec your mom, but I said, 'I don't care; I'm going to say hello.'" And she did, and she wagged her little-old-lady finger at me and made certain that I understood, "If you see me and I don't see you, you come and tell me hello!" And I will, and I am grateful.

All I knew was that in not speaking to her, it felt as if I were storing nuts or bullets. I grew stronger every day.

alice sebold

the almost moon

another year over and a new one just begun

Stuff - I have too much of it, and quite frankly, I am ready to do a massive cleansing, body, soul and spirit...and, yes, a deep, unsentimental purging of the home as well. I need to be grateful for all that I have; less on the shopping front is a good place to start.

Finding that place inside myself to store away the emotional enemies that I no longer need - maybe I never did - should help in this process as well. In doing so, it is possible that I will uncover other shoved-down feelings that could use a good airing out. Out with the old (bad) in with the new (good).

Continuing on the precarious road to complete, honest and true forgiveness will, I believe, lead me to the milk-and-honey land where I can love my neighbor as myself; accomplishing love of self is the first step; I must take that one in order to progress on the journey.

Off, I go then.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

I did not want to leave my children. I had loved them both immediately. They were my splendor and my protection, both something to safeguard and something to safeguard me.

alice sebold the almost moon