The Raging River Between Us

As I was walking around the neighborhood on my usual morning walk, I heard an essay on NPR that reminded me of many marriages. The essayist was an Indian-American who spoke of his parents' arranged marriage some fifty years ago. Evidently, no people could have been more different--he was a civil engineer and she a creative dramatist. He had been working on bridges in a remote part of India for some months and had come into the city for marriage. The first night of the "honeymoon" the bride cried for hours but was comforted by her mother-in-law and assured that all would be fine in the future. It was. The husband and wife, though quite different in interests, began to build a life together. The bride joined her husband in his remote location. They were never apart until one extremely wet season when the husband could not return home for four days due to flooding water. They stood on each side of a bridge and shouted to one another with the raging river between them. It seems to me that this image is symbolic of most marriages. There always seems to be a raging river between us.

I am thinking of the state of marriages I guess because next week my husband and I will celebrate forty-three years together as husband and wife. We knew each other very well, unlike the Indian couple described above, since we had dated three years before we married. Even so, I think most husbands and wives will report that they never truly knew their spouses until they were married. The first years for us were the most difficult as we struggled to get college degrees, begin careers, have children, and become active in the community. Finances were difficult especially during the couple of years that I chose to be a full-time mother when the children were small. A raging river always seemed to be between us, creating a wall of tension within the household.

I am happy to report, however, that as the years went along the raging river ceased to be a torrent but became a gently flowing stream. Perhaps we just matured from the twenty-five year old and twenty-year-old mindsets with which we entered into marriage. Perhaps we learned to accept each other's differences more without trying to change one another. Perhaps we learned the real secret to a strong marriage--the more one gives to the other, the more we receive in return. Whatever the reason, we both look back through the years and can honestly say we are glad that we stayed with our commitment to each other.