June 20, 2007
Dear Andrea and John and Nan and Jonathan,
Mark writes:
This letter started out over a week ago as an email to Jonathan and Nan. I woke up one day and said, “I haven’t spoken with them in over a month, time to send a message”. After covering current events, I began to write a bit about what was, at the time, a forthcoming wedding anniversary. The notes about marriage grew longer and longer, then was interrupted by a weekend at Claverack with the Jane Orton visit along with Ed. Meredith, et al. Finally, I thought to ask Karen to add her comments. So that is how this happened.
We have just celebrated our 30th wedding anniversary. Exactly how we got to this juncture with such rapidity is of course a rather boring mystery.
I continue to be amazed and endlessly charmed that we still have so much interest in each other. I am sure that Karen has heard every story in my repertoire many times over. She even corrects them occasionally when my re-telling strays egregiously from her memory. I once asked how she could stand to hear some again for the umpteenth time. She said that she now enjoys seeing what new embellishments I will offer. On a more important plane, we both remain engaged in each other’s adventures and the periodic tribulations of working out the next steps. Hmmm… now that I have started down this path, I am not sure that I have much more to say. An important point may be that we have developed reliable, meaningful ways of maintaining communication – physical, emotional, and intellectual. Having said that, it seems obvious now (as I write this) that these are interrelated in sustaining where I started out – namely that being endlessly charmed that we still have so much interest in each other is in fact driven by this total communication.
We do have some ritualized communication practices. For a very long time we have spent the beginning of dinner telling the day’s stories. This means that we know what each other has done during the day and over time we come to know the personalities and shape of our external lives. This story telling is exactly just stories. It is infrequent that the story telling becomes a critique or problem solving event. I think that the real importance is the sharing of day-to-day life in the work world. Even in the last year or so with me working mostly out of the house, we can spend some time talking about what we did during the day.
Now that this final note has expanded to such length (beyond my original intentions), I will share a couple of other insights that Karen and I have spoken of over the years.
First, a significant component of sustainable love is the willingness of both parties to become so deeply intertwined that a greater capacity for independence is created. And, in a strange fashion, independence is a requirement of developing and maintaining the interdependence. This bit of relational looping has a powerful logic. I still remember the moment I was driving up River Street near the Howard St. intersection talking with Karen when this contradictory thought occurred to me. It is exactly in the comfort of the relationship, the fact of being accepted by the other just as you are and will be, that enables taking greater risks for adventure and development. It is exactly in being accessible, to being supportive, to being truthful to who you really are, that independence of action becomes more possible. On the other hand, if independent action is not developed and sustained then there might be a tendency for one or the other to feel entrapped in the relationship, captured and subordinated by it.
A second thought has been developed by Karen. One should not think that any relationship, even a very loving one, will provide for all of one’s needs. In fact, it is important to identify these and seek other venues to fill those. It seems to me that some needs are central to any sustainable relationship so there are limits on this notion. At the moment, the only example that comes to mind is that Karen likes to dance. Basically I never recovered from dance lessons at the Fay Club in Fitchburg when I was 12. Dancing fills me will fear and loathing. So, Karen used to go dancing on her own. Seems to me that one of her compatriots was Mary Lynn Cramer (boy, there is a name from the past). There must be other examples. I will think further about this.
A third thought seems to flow from the need to accommodate the differing enthusiasms and energies that emerge over the course of a life. The person you started out with at 30 is not the same person at 40 or 60. Each of us can discover or create a new person in ourselves. Most of the underlying personality shapes remain the same, they might be immutable, but they get expressed in new ways, through new projects, new careers, activities. To last for the long term, the relationship must reshape itself to encompass and support these shifting foci. Some of this takes very practical form, like forgoing a stream of income to support a new art interest or start up business venture. Other flexibility may be required as social relations change and new sources of self-validation appear. In another dimension, roles within the relationship will change.
I am not sure that I have captured this 3rd thought – the adaptation to the new – very well, but enough from me.
Karen writes:
It’s been interesting to observe how some of the passions that started out separately have become mutual. It was probably Mark who led us to our interest in architecture. This led to walking tours, explorations of cities and in depth focus on some of our favorite architects (both permanent favorites and passing.) It was definitely Mark who led me to delight in classical music. I used to ask him to explain music to me. He told me to listen – there was nothing he could add to that. I didn’t understand how that alone was going to do it but as we’ve attended series of concerts over the past several years – I’ve developed a sense of what pleases or intrigues me. While I know little of the vocabulary, I now seek it out and am very willing to give an opinion. In the same way, I think we both came to enjoy our forays into visual arts – while I probably did the initial goading.
And, while these past few years have been trying in some ways, in others, we’ve managed to buck ourselves up and also expand our horizons.
Someone once joked that we’d probably get divorced if we ever stopped house renovations. As you know, those last projects, like the mud room, are still unfinished – maybe it’s to be sure we stay together or maybe it’s just that other passions have crowded it out.
We both take enormous pleasure in you all. It’s been a wonderful treat to have developed multi-faceted relationships including friendship with our adult children and their partners. Our love for you and our grandchildren adds so much to our lives.
Well, this note that started out as a sentence or two regarding 30 years together has certainly expanded. We’ll leave it here. We need to get on with the next 30.
Love, Ma and Mark.