“I am only one, but still I am one.
I cannot do everything, but still I can do something.
And because I cannot do everything,
I will not refuse to do the something I can do.”

Edward Everett Hale

Thursday, 3 October 2013

The Many Bonds of Marriage

On the eve of a mini-break to celebrate our Pearl Wedding Anniversary, I idly start to read Anne Morrow Lindbergh's Gift from the Sea and find the following passage, which describes the middle years of marriage:


 
"Here the bonds of marriage are formed. For marriage, which is always spoken of as a bond, becomes actually, in this stage, many bonds, many strands, of different texture and strength, making up a web that is taut and firm. The web is fashioned of love. Yes, but many kinds of love: romantic love first, then a slow-growing devotion and, playing through these, a constantly rippling companionship. It is made of loyalties, and interdependencies, and shared experiences. It is woven of memories of meetings and conflicts; of triumphs and disappointments. It is a web of communication, a common language, and the acceptance of the lack of language too; a knowledge of likes and dislikes, of habits and reactions, both physical and mental. it is a web of instincts and intuitions, and known and unknown exchanges. The web of marriage is made by propinquity, in the day to day living side by side, looking outward and working outward in the same direction. It is woven in space and in time of the substance of life itself."
 
Written in the 1950s, these words hold just as true today as they did then. They describe our marriage well, and  make me realise, once more, how very blessed I am, how blessed we are.

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