On sharing your life....

My French language discussion group seems to be coming together. I have also managed to see many of my friends, and this has meant that I have had to eat 3 meals a day. I am so happy to see my friends again. And I am starting to understand why Americans are fat. Not only do we eat much more than the French (larger servings, as far as I can remember French serving sizes in general and greater frequency), but I find myself thinking about food a lot even when I am not hungry. It is as if there are radio waves in the air, like a dog whistle that you can’t hear, putting thoughts of food into our heads at all times.

About 2 months ago, Elizabeth’s father died after a long struggle with cancer. She asked him not to die on her birthday, but he was very weak that day, and passed shortly after midnight, the day after her birthday. Her parents never married. They had an affair after one of Larry’s students, who Wendy was dating, “gave” her to him for a passing grade in the class. (This is probably not actually true, but it is a family joke. Probably she just liked Larry better and Larry felt sorry for the guy bc he stole his girlfriend. The guy, incidentally, was the brother of another of my mother’s best friends.) However, Larry and Wendy shared the rest of their lives as parents of Elizabeth, my oldest friend.

Wendy was sitting at Larry’s bedside the moment he died. She watched him go. Now, if that isn’t sharing a person’s life then I don’t know what is. All of us, I imagine, wish to grow old and die with someone we love. But, maybe, it doesn’t have to look like anything in particular or have any certain label. As Elizabeth said to me yesterday, maybe in order to share your life with someone, you stay with them.

This issue is touched upon in some of the popular television programs that Elizabeth and I love. In Friends, Ross always wanted a traditional wife and family but finds himself with 2 children with 2 different women he deeply loves, neither of whom can be his “wife” (later he and Rachel decide to be a couple, but on a political level, I found this profoundly disappointing, although we all knew all along that they were each other’s lobsters). In Sex and the City, Miranda and Steve have exactly the same experience.

True partnership is sharing your life with a person, regardless of whom you sleep or eat or bath with. Sometimes, in these cases anyway, this occurs because a baby is made but it can also be based solely on commitment to being with people. Thinking about this, talking about it, I feel like a real turkey running off to Europe for half the year. I find it frustrating that the only ones that most people commit to are the person they sleep with and their children. But h*&l, my parents don’t even do that.

When you choose your life partner, you have to agree on some basic principals. Will you move away for work? Do you have to stay close to your aging parents? Your friends? Where will you live? What language will you speak at home? Who will do the laundry? Will you have a cat or a dog or a fish? Will you have children? What time will you go to bed? (And I am not even getting into sexual issues, which can be huge.) Some of these things you may feel really strongly about (I cannot live with a cat, unless he is genetically modified to be hypoallergenic, or, for that matter, a carpet) and some you may not care about at all. You might not even know how strongly you feel about going to bed at 10 every night until you try to live with someone who likes to stay up until 1. It seems like such a small matter. But just because you can’t agree doesn’t mean you don’t love each other and want to share some kind of life.

I am very happy for all my friends who have found a common ground and are getting married and having babies right and left (or, really just left in their case, but lots of them anyway), and I do feel a bit left behind. But I am sorry – I reject any conservative ideas of relationships. I love you, and I want to be near you. (Slight caveat, I might still run away for half the year on a regular basis).