State of the Union

They're all around me, in the Facebook profile pictures of peachy couples smiling, their heads angled just so, daring you to think of any other caption but 'Happy', in the late night phone calls and blushing text messages I've received from the worse half of some of these same couples, in the familiarity of stories whose endings I don't need to hear any more, about a man once or twice divorced, who once or twice fathered, and who is twice the age of the child in whom he now seeks refuge. They abound all around me, signs that Marriage has lost its sheen.

But that's not speaking statistically, of course. Maybe I could ask the two young couples I know who I actually do believe to be in love (my grandparents would be an unfair selection in my survey sample, as after 40-something years together you too would probably feel as bonded as conjoined twins, finding it hard to sleep at night if the other is not neatly tucked in at your side) for another opinion. But who wants to talk to exceptions?

I think they all felt quite external to me, the movie plots, the single parents at family reunions, even my own parents' separation. They all felt external to me until my peers started getting married too. And I knew of the stories behind why they jumped the broom and in some cases, the gun. He settled for the next best option because he didn't get the love of his life. Or she felt that she was slipping beyond the child bearing age and something must be done. Or he thought that she's a good kid and he might as well, since they've been seeing each other for over 20 months now (not that he's counting). Or she's pregnant and to save her childhood dream he must agree to it before she starts to show. The engaged and married men of whom I know have tainted the Union forever in my eyes.

Let us suppose that my premise isn't quite so and that I am simply growing up. That I have come to a realization that life is not perfect and that we can't all have what we bargained for (our cake, eaten while still being had, however that works). That war at all levels is as inevitable as children do fight and that these battles are more often that not, between the sexes. That life is not as laid out as a straight line. But what then? Should that make it easier to bear? I picture the Me of fifty years old reading this and shaking my head (which with any luck will, as my dear maternal grandmother's own, naturally retain its colour) and smiling at my present bewilderment, recalling vaguely how young I must have been to not have yet fully accepted this (or have I?). Time is as cruel as it is rewarding.

By then, fifty that is, I hope to be settled, knowing who I am and what I am about. I hope to not be relying on a pension but some steady source of income that would come about from some financially successful venture which I have yet to see materialize. I hope to have children- two boys and a girl- whose names I have already chosen (but will not disclose here, dear Reader). And the most wretched part of it all is - herein lies the rub: To give them the childhood memories that they deserve, that at least I had, to give them a chance at not being fatalistic in their thinking till at least their teens, to give them someone to fish with, a back to ride on, a stern voice that will sometimes admonish and sometimes go gentle, for they are just children, to give those three a father (and the same one), indeed to legitimize all this, I hope at some point, for at least a while, to be married.