Unbreakable

 Spring fell upon us with more independence than ever before. It was all new and the people we lived with were all different.  I am still trying to figure out how that happened. For the first time, I was called to the kitchen table where all of the world's problems found solutions and we consulted over the morning coffee. Somehow, my sitting on the door armrest had translated into acknowledgment and validation. I fought for that!

My quadraphonic programming carved my perception of what my course should look like. Although that is spun into the fabric of who I became, thank God it failed to deliver fully! I have seen what that looks like, and I will tell you, brother, it is not pretty.

It was amazing to see the many facets of their relationship. I saw them as best friends at the height of marriage, and also as best friends when they were alone. It was such a true friendship and one that showed how right it felt between them. It was all of the other things happening outside that wrecked everything worthwhile. It would not have been so bad, except deep cracks in the foundations allowed the storm that was sweeping across time and space to get in. Who could possibly endure?

The antagonists appeared to be forces from the outside while inside each one owned their own specific torment. In those days, we never dealt with things like that. I recall the arguments; they, like the relationship, were charged and powerful. It was an age in which we just did not know what we did not know...what we needed to know. If we did, they could have had a chance.

It was here that she finally did it. Someone had to do something. The times did not allow for things to just continue as they had in the generation before and the one before that. She broke all the dishes in the pantry, leaving nothing of what had seemed like a sweet rescue. 

Now she was free of it, but free of what? She shared what had happened with the boy on the phone. Sitting at a telephone stand in the hall an hour away, he supported her for what she had done, and her bravery, not revealing how much it hurt him. He knew they both owned this, he did this too. He knew enough that he could have prevented it. Even though he knew what, he did not know how. 

It was the year when couples could act with a great alliance, but upon closer inspection, only dissolve the things they had. It was accepted as a normal byproduct of the pain. He knew he had played a part in all of the mess and now it was just ashes as he smoked one cigarette after another, consoling her and commending her for moving on. Nothing felt right, but there was no other way.

No one knew how to fix it. The old standard cast the mold and the world was changing. It is in the hearts of my parents that the frontier was taken, leaving them in the wake of families floating on the surface of the ocean after the ship they were on went down. They paid a higher price than anyone else did, and for time unforeseen more would fall as soon as they stood.

As evening descended, they each stood looking out their windows, him east and her west. After all of the villages that burned, it was a return to innocence. There was still something so incredible like that which can only be felt in the first love. It was evident, no matter what happened on that day in 1976, here was something that the air of the times, laws both legal nor physical, time itself nor any outside influence could ever break their connection.

I was fortunate. While yes, I heard more sad things than I would have liked to, their love and friendship is what I remember the most. I was old enough to remember hours and hours. Sitting in the backseat of that 63 Plymouth, 68 Pontiac, their ease at being able to talk to each other was such a beautiful thing. If I could have a wish come true for the span of my life it would be that they could have seen it the way that I could. I know it took me so many years to understand it, but having done so I do know, some people never get to have the closeness that my parents had. 

They got married in a time in which they were on the threshold of social storms, those that had never before been seen. They were swept away in it. I do however find peace in the fact that they knew in their hearts, that the love they had was real and it was without end.