Pluses to Bill. At the ripe old age of twenty, he could distinguish, at least at an intellectual level, between lust and love.

An activity this past week brought that occasion back to mind. Three mornings a week I exercise at the CardiacRehabilitationCenter. A primary activity requires walking on a treadmill. This is probably the most stupid and boring task of ever invented. It would be intolerable if we didn’t have some fun conversations and a television going.   One morning my neighbor on an adjacent machine and I paused our conversation to attend to two curvaceous young women in minimal clothing who appeared on the television screen. When that vision disappeared, I asked my neighbor, “Do you think they can cook?”

That is the heart of our current problem with the divorce rate. Too few people recognize the difference between lust, love and marriage. We all know what lust is, let’s jump beyond that. Love is something more, it is a caring which goes beyond friendship. We all have many friends whose successes please us and whose difficulties cause us to grit our teeth, but love goes beyond that. A loving relationship is one in which you stand ready to assist and make sacrifices for someone else in times of trouble in addition to rejoicing in their successes. You are concerned about them, and your concern goes beyond words.  People have many friends, but relatively few loves.

Marriage is a step beyond love: it is a partnership. As a partnership, it does not necessarily include either lust or love. Two sisters lived a block from me: one a year younger, one a year older. I thought of asking the younger for a date, but never did. I was surprised when their parents divorced following the departure of the last daughter from home. Later I learned that for years those two people had never spoken to each other. It was a working marriage, but a loveless marriage. Such marriages, I hope, are rare. 

In marriage, first comes friendship, then comes love and, finally, if we are lucky, then comes marriage. Lust is mixed in there also. Sheila’s showed signs of irritation on our way home following our two minute wedding ceremony - I invited my son Bill and Sheila’s two friends who had attended the wedding to go to dinner with us. When I quizzed Sheila about her slightly concealed unhappiness as we were driving home, she said, “I didn’t marry you to go out to eat.” 

Unfortunately, even good marriages fall apart. During the years I taught at college, too many older students said to me, “I had a good marriage, but I blew it and it’s too late to go back to it now.” At the time I attributed their failures to the fact that for the first time these young people were living on their own, irritated at and blaming the other for the often dreary tasks that accompany adult life. But I now think such problems are a minor cause of divorce.

I believe that our society, as it has evolved, bears a responsibility for the high divorce rate. In today’s world, both men and women are employed, rarely in the same workplace. In the morning, the man gets in his automobile and drives off to his job, the woman does the same. They each spend the day doing different things. Each has workplace acquaintances and friends, largely unknown to the other: not out of any deliberate act, but as a consequence of their working lives. Young couples who, as a consequence of living in the same area, attending the same schools or attending the same church and evolved through the pattern of lust, friendship and love become strangers to one another. Or, if not strangers, at best acquaintances. 

However, this estrangement provided by modern society can be overcome, and overcome happily. In this, I’ll defer to my bride, who has provided me with the happiest thirty years of my life.

Let us begin by saying that I have loved to swim since my brother Joe taught me how when I was nine. I swam at every opportunity. When I first came to know Sheila, she confessed that she didn’t know how to swim. I taught her. Since then we have swum together at all opportunities. We worked in different offices, but used our lunch hours to swim. In fact, we were on our way to the swimming pool when she told me she would rather go to the hospital. The result was Stephen. 

Early in our marriage, a former student challenged me to take sign language, which she taught. Sheila joined me and became considerably better than I at communicating with the deaf. 

Since then Sheila and I have taken courses together in computer programming, automobile mechanics and Korean. Even when I was taking a course which did not interest Sheila, she often took a class at the same place and time so that we could travel together. (Incidentally, taking courses together was not only profitable personally; it was also much less expensive than going to night clubs or movies.)

Our non-class activities included camping together, attending business meetings together and going to church together. Not all of our “together” experiences were items of first choice to me, and probably the same was true of her, but it gave us a common ground of experiences which solidified our relationship AND our marriage.

We also spent, and spend, time in household activities together, both before and after we had children. When I was cutting wood, there was Sheila, dragging the limbs through the snow to the house where I could cut them up for firewood. My bride insists that I include our cooperation in household tasks. She mentioned washing dishes and laundry. I am more appreciative that she is always there with glasses of ice water and warnings about my over-doing things when I am digging in the garden or pushing the lawn mower.

My point to all this is that despite different primary duties, married couples can overcome the separations imposed by our economic society and enjoy activities that continue and enhance the friendship and love – and lust - that brought them together in the first place. But it requires consideration and cooperation from both. 

I hadn’t seen Dr. Smith in some time and Megaera was ill, so I paid a visit to him. He thinks I come because he is an excellent doctor and my friend, but the truth is that there is a Publix grocery near him which sells fresh fish and spiced meats which are unavailable nearer and has a sinful bakery counter. Among Sheila’s purchases was a nine dollar package of fresh cod. She cooked it that evening. We took some for our evening meal and left the majority on the stove for the boys. Later, walking into the kitchen for a second helping, I found it all gone. But Stephen and Andrew had yet to come downstairs for supper. I had a very angry wife and a very satisfied mongrel shepherd – Yukon.

Incidentally, on the way to Dr. Smith, Sheila insisted that I take a different route which she claimed was shorter and less hazardous. True, the first two miles were easy, the next fifteen were on highway 47, which has the sharpest curves and the highest accident rate in middle Tennessee. Then we were on four lane divided highways, crowded, with a legal speed of 55 and a “keep up with the flow” speed of 75. Total trip, 49 miles – I checked. Coming home I took my preferred “long” route, two lane highway, gentle curves and little traffic. Total distance, 36 miles. Ah well, it wasn’t as bad as the time she took me a hundred miles in the wrong direction while serving as my navigator in Massachusetts.

Among the welfare animals (they produce no good, wantonly destroy our garden and consume our resources) which wander our yard is a rabbit, Suzy. I keep hoping she’ll run away, but she likes free-loading. The other morning, while sitting on the porch after feeding the dogs, cats and birds I looked over at the dog food tank. Sheba was asserting her authority by being first at breakfast and Baxter was sitting about five feet away waiting his turn. Then up hopped Suzy. She looked over at Sheba and then hopped over to Baxter and sat down next to him, turning her head to look up at him before beginning to groom herself. Our animals may be useless, but they do have a camaraderie of uselessness – much like too many people. 

In the spirit of Valentine’s Day I purchased my bride a five dollar box of chocolates the other day, not realizing that I was buying a lovely four and a half dollar box and six chocolates. On the way home, we shared one. In the morning I noted that she had erred and left the box on the kitchen table. Andrew was standing by and I congratulated him, saying it was nice that he and his brother had left their mother’s present alone. He said, “Well, Stephen and I did share one.” Opening the box, I saw only three remaining. Commenting on the one Sheila and I had eaten and the one he confessed to sharing, he quickly said, “Stephen had another one.” No one confesses to another’s sins so quickly as a brother or sister.

Telling this story in the Cardiac Club, it elicited numerous stories of children and grandchildren from our members and aroused a few memories of my own. One of my favorites concerned my nephew John, then about five, and his sister, Julie, an enterprising three. My sister reported that she had to keep punishing John for pummeling his little sister, then, one day she was in the front room cleaning. She could see John and a friend sitting on the front steps talking when Julie came out of the house, swung a fist, hit John in the back and ran in the house crying, two steps ahead of an angry brother. That day it was Julie who received the spanking!

Unlike many forgetful, neglectful and otherwise despicable husbands, I always remember Valentine’s Day. As soon as I’ve finished reading the news on the Internet, made my coffee, fed our welfare livestock, walk into the bedroom to dress for the day and see the card with the heart on it lying on my pillow, I rush to my bride and say, “Happy Valentine’s Day” and give her a big hug and a kiss. What more can a girl want? After all, she is my Valentine….