Two Couples

One night in the house that we used to own, Mary and I sat in the middle of the dining room floor talking while drinking a bottle of wine from Argentina. We chatted about hopes, dreams, and crazy schemes; of living each moment as if it were the last, as indeed it could be. Though it was dark outside, we laughed and smiled and looked at each other as if in the fresh morning light.

We were that other couple that night. The couple who had just met. The couple that thought and believed and lived like all was possible, like the energy of their union could power them through this world like a speeding train traversing new lands filled with wonder and adventure. We were the two who would be greater than the ones could ever be.

This morning we were the couple that has to do the things it has to do: get out of bed to go to work, clean up the detritus left abandoned on the kitchen counter top from last night’s dinner, stepping around one another with eyes not meeting while trying to get into the bathroom. We were the sleepwalking couple, accomplishing what must be accomplished, unconscious to the mysteries all around us: the earth hurtling through space at 67,062 miles per hour, the birth and death of millions of beings occurring simultaneously, and the unlikely chances that bring two people from so far apart together.

We are both couples, the two who shine as one, lighting the way for a fearless tear through life, and the two who do the dishes and try not to let their reactions to the other’s behavior erupt into careless words. If these two couples sat down to dinner, I wonder what they would talk about? Would they find some common ground? Perhaps they might agree that the challenge of a relationship is in learning how to nourish the things you cherish about each other while bringing loving acceptance to everything else.

Based on a journal entry from 2.28.13