“Do you remember the color of that sweater I gave you when I was a sophomore in high school?” my wife nonchalantly asked me. “You remember, don’t you? It was the first real gift I ever gave a guy. I was so proud of that.” We had been admiring the sweater our daughter had given me for Christmas. I stroked the sweater as my mind raced back 30 plus years, trying to remember and think of a proper response to her question. I could hear Ulysses Everett McGill (George Clooney) whispering in my ear the same words he spoke to his endangered companions in the film, O Brother Where Art Thou, “We’re in a tight spot!”
Trying to avoid hurting her feelings and at the same time wanting to appear as her romantic repository of cherished memories, I struggled between confessing my ignorance and rolling the dice to guess the color. The color of the sweater our daughter had given me was brown; perhaps the odds were in favor of brown for the sophomore sweater. But then again, maybe it was the crew neck collar that reminded Lori of her love gift.
Fumbling for the right words, I sputtered; I stalled; I stammered: “It had a crew neck just like this one, didn’t it?” I asked, still holding the new Christmas sweater in my hands and hoping my question would spin our conversation in another direction. No such luck was mine. “Oh, yeah, it did,” she responded. “But you don’t remember the color, do you?”
Now her cards were on the table. But it was possible I could recover with a royal flush by coolly expressing my surprise at her question. “Of course I remember, you silly,” I could say. “It was brown, just like this one I got for Christmas. Do you really think I would forget the first gift you ever gave me? C’mon now!”
But if it weren’t brown---be it any other color--- my bluff would be called, the truth would out and my royal flush would morph into a pair of clubs. And I would be emotionally indebted for days, weeks, months, who knows---maybe years.
And so there I was--- the cowardly gambler, beads of sweat forming on my brow, my lips quivering, all the time thinking, Lord, why do women ask such questions? Why does it matter to them? And, how do they remember these things?
Men---we are different. John Gray underscored what most of us knew in his best seller, Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. “Without an understanding that men and women are supposed to be different, it is such a temptation to think that men shouldn’t be ‘that way’ or women shouldn’t react ‘that way,’” Gray wrote in the introduction of his book. Since then, Walt Larimore, M.D., and his wife Barb, have co-authored, His Brain, Her Brain, that documents their thesis that, “there is ample scientific evidence that supports the fact that many of the dramatic differences between his brain and her brain are inborn.” In other words, there is no unisex brain. We are wired differently in areas that include sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch. So, there was a difference in how we saw that sweater. “Rod-shaped cells (rods) on the retina are photoreceptors for black and white, while cone-shaped cells (cones) handle color. Women have a greater proportion of cones than men. So women can see colors better than men,” the Larimore’s point out. No wonder Lori could recall the color of that brown sweater when I couldn’t!
But the biology didn’t matter in that moment. I couldn’t say, “Oh, Lori, you remember the color of that sweater because you have more rod-shaped cells on your retina and poor pitiful me, I have fewer to act as photoreceptors on my retina, and therefore, compared to you, I virtually see in black and white. Silly girl, did you really expect me to remember the color of that sweater?”
No, even if science were on my side, I had to come clean, and so I folded, “I’m trying to pull that up, but I just can’t recall. Tell me about it.”
And she joyfully did. It was from the Surrey Shop, where I used to work in high school. And yes, it was a brown crew neck.
And to think my hunch had been right all along.
“And by the way,” she continued, “you do remember what you gave me that Christmas, don’t you?”
Okay, Ulysses Everett McGill: time for your line again, “We’re in a tight spot!”
Life Matters is written by David B. Whitlock, Ph.D. David’s email is drdavid@davidbwhitlock.com, and his website is DavidBWhitlock.com.
Showing posts with label marriage. Show all posts
Showing posts with label marriage. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Thursday, June 17, 2010
“Al and Tipper: After all those years, Smash!”
Barney Fife is steaming, once again. In an effort to make Barney suffer for having taken her for granted, (“I’ve got that little girl right in my hip pocket,” he boasted), Thelma Lou goes out with Gomer Pyle. Barney is nonplussed; then he is completely unglued, and Andy Griffith comes to the rescue. Trying to calm Barney down, Andy first asks, “Barney, is anything wrong?
“Wrong?” Barney sarcastically responds. “Just that everything’s gone smash, that’s all! We’re all through, Thelma Lou and me. It’s all shot. It’s all come to an end. After all these years, smash.”
You can’t help but wonder if anyone ever asked the Gores that question, “Is anything wrong?” It seemed to us, on the outside looking in, that the question needn’t be asked. After all, theirs was the placid, stable, almost boringly steady marriage, solidly anchored in a love that safeguarded them in the turbulent sea of American public life, while the marriage of their counterparts, the Clintons, was rough, unsteady, stormy, and seemingly adrift. Yet, the Clintons are still “Together,” while the Gores are “Split.” This doesn’t mean the Clintons necessarily had or have a better marriage than the Gores; it only means the appearance of “better” is no guarantee of endurance.
“This is very much a mutual and mutually supportive decision that we have made together following a process of long and careful consideration," the Gore’s email said.
Does the Gore’s breakup spell trouble for baby-boomer marriages? Does their separation signal a new trend for late-stage marriages? The fact is, even under the best of circumstances, marriage has always been a precarious institution because the people who enter into it are so often unpredictable, subject to the emotions that make them who they are: sometimes passionate, sometimes passive, often careless. Not every picture perfect marriage is what it appears to be, once you step inside the picture frame.
Let’s face it: no marriage comes with a warranty, not even, as with the Gores, after forty years, four children, and three grandchildren. When someone stops paying attention, eventually the relationship goes “smash,” more often with a silent “smash,” or in the words of T.S. Eliot, “not with a bang but with a whimper,” so that the news, when it finally comes, surprises and shocks, as if it were something that happened that day and not as it is, a death that occurred long ago.
Maybe the Gores are causalities of love’s slow fade, where love itself is taken for granted and once taken for granted, assumed, then ignored, and finally, missing. Like sandcastles on the seashore, swallowed by the retreat of each outgoing tide, so love can be eroded by neglect and strewn across the sun bleached beaches of moribundity, desiccated by apathy. Multiple factors---sometimes money, sometimes differing values, sometimes a lack of interest, sometimes someone more exciting or just different---serve to gradually pull two people apart until they awake, and upon discovering themselves strangers to one another, decide getting reacquainted is too much effort. Saying good-bye becomes as antiseptic and dull as the marriage itself, “a mutual and mutually supportive decision that we have made together following a process of long and careful consideration."
Do I hear a yawn? Apparently, the Gores did for quite some time.
How then can you make love last in a marriage? Before his death on June 4th, Hall of Fame basketball coach John Wooden was asked that question. Not only was he the greatest college basketball coach in NCAA history, winning 10 national championships, including seven straight (1968-1973), Wooden also had a successful marriage to his wife, Nellie, who died in 1985 after 53 years of matrimony to Coach Wooden. Until his death, he would write his deceased wife a love letter on the 21st of each month and gently place it on her pillow. So, what was his key to making love last? “Only one way,” he said. “Truly, truly, truly love. It’s the most powerful thing there is."
I take it from the repetition of the word, “truly” that he meant: genuinely, consistently, devotedly, wholeheartedly.
Wooden’s degree of love for Nellie is extremely rare. For most of us, living love day in and day out is much easier said than done. But it is possible, especially when it truly is love. And when it comes from the heart, truly, and is more than empty words, it’s right, so very right, even if we get it just right only now and then. After all, the adventure is in the striving.
So, “Is anything wrong?”
“No, Andy, everything is right, just right.”
Life Matters by David B. Whitlock, Ph.D. is published weekly. You can visit David’s website at davidbwhitlock.com or email him at drdavid@davidbwhitlock.com.
“Wrong?” Barney sarcastically responds. “Just that everything’s gone smash, that’s all! We’re all through, Thelma Lou and me. It’s all shot. It’s all come to an end. After all these years, smash.”
You can’t help but wonder if anyone ever asked the Gores that question, “Is anything wrong?” It seemed to us, on the outside looking in, that the question needn’t be asked. After all, theirs was the placid, stable, almost boringly steady marriage, solidly anchored in a love that safeguarded them in the turbulent sea of American public life, while the marriage of their counterparts, the Clintons, was rough, unsteady, stormy, and seemingly adrift. Yet, the Clintons are still “Together,” while the Gores are “Split.” This doesn’t mean the Clintons necessarily had or have a better marriage than the Gores; it only means the appearance of “better” is no guarantee of endurance.
“This is very much a mutual and mutually supportive decision that we have made together following a process of long and careful consideration," the Gore’s email said.
Does the Gore’s breakup spell trouble for baby-boomer marriages? Does their separation signal a new trend for late-stage marriages? The fact is, even under the best of circumstances, marriage has always been a precarious institution because the people who enter into it are so often unpredictable, subject to the emotions that make them who they are: sometimes passionate, sometimes passive, often careless. Not every picture perfect marriage is what it appears to be, once you step inside the picture frame.
Let’s face it: no marriage comes with a warranty, not even, as with the Gores, after forty years, four children, and three grandchildren. When someone stops paying attention, eventually the relationship goes “smash,” more often with a silent “smash,” or in the words of T.S. Eliot, “not with a bang but with a whimper,” so that the news, when it finally comes, surprises and shocks, as if it were something that happened that day and not as it is, a death that occurred long ago.
Maybe the Gores are causalities of love’s slow fade, where love itself is taken for granted and once taken for granted, assumed, then ignored, and finally, missing. Like sandcastles on the seashore, swallowed by the retreat of each outgoing tide, so love can be eroded by neglect and strewn across the sun bleached beaches of moribundity, desiccated by apathy. Multiple factors---sometimes money, sometimes differing values, sometimes a lack of interest, sometimes someone more exciting or just different---serve to gradually pull two people apart until they awake, and upon discovering themselves strangers to one another, decide getting reacquainted is too much effort. Saying good-bye becomes as antiseptic and dull as the marriage itself, “a mutual and mutually supportive decision that we have made together following a process of long and careful consideration."
Do I hear a yawn? Apparently, the Gores did for quite some time.
How then can you make love last in a marriage? Before his death on June 4th, Hall of Fame basketball coach John Wooden was asked that question. Not only was he the greatest college basketball coach in NCAA history, winning 10 national championships, including seven straight (1968-1973), Wooden also had a successful marriage to his wife, Nellie, who died in 1985 after 53 years of matrimony to Coach Wooden. Until his death, he would write his deceased wife a love letter on the 21st of each month and gently place it on her pillow. So, what was his key to making love last? “Only one way,” he said. “Truly, truly, truly love. It’s the most powerful thing there is."
I take it from the repetition of the word, “truly” that he meant: genuinely, consistently, devotedly, wholeheartedly.
Wooden’s degree of love for Nellie is extremely rare. For most of us, living love day in and day out is much easier said than done. But it is possible, especially when it truly is love. And when it comes from the heart, truly, and is more than empty words, it’s right, so very right, even if we get it just right only now and then. After all, the adventure is in the striving.
So, “Is anything wrong?”
“No, Andy, everything is right, just right.”
Life Matters by David B. Whitlock, Ph.D. is published weekly. You can visit David’s website at davidbwhitlock.com or email him at drdavid@davidbwhitlock.com.
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