Re: OT-CHAT: Wedding
- To: i*@onelist.com
- Subject: Re: OT-CHAT: Wedding
- From: c* s*
- Date: Mon, 21 Dec 1998 09:37:44 -0600
From: celia storey <storey@aristotle.net>
>they were married.
>
Every marriage is a mistake, of course, but we can learn great things from
our mistakes. The best mistakes will make us stronger, kinder, more
confident and less prone to self-indulgence.
The best mistake I ever made was marrying Michael Storey. I hope for you
two the same sort of modified happiness we have enjoyed -- and endured --
these 18 years. He is my best friend, my harshest critic, my meanest
playmate, my kindest refuge, my sternest competitor, my favorite charity,
my weakness and my strength.
By coincidence, Saturday night as I crawled into our bed, prepared to
snuggle into the down pillow his grandmother gave me for a wedding present
18 years ago (and no, it has not been refurbished in all that time, and
yes, it is probably world headquarters for Dust Mites International), I
happened to notice something hard and straight poking under the ticking.
Being suitably sleepy, I didn't much feel like investigating, but I tried,
just long enough to realize this was a nail -- a flathead nail -- packed in
among the matted down.
Such an obvious metaphor, you will imagine I must be inventing, but I'm
not. Eighteen years I have curled up to sleep every night with a nail in my
pillow, and never noticed.
I tried briefly, halfheartedly, to work it out through a little hole from
which a bit of white down feathered out; but I soon quit trying. What was
one more night after so very many? So it has come to this, I thought,
drifting off to sleep: I find an actual nail in my marriage pillow, but I'm
too comfortable to care.
Really, there's nothing more hopeful I could wish you two. "All the best"
is not good enough, because "the best" does not improve us. It isn't odd
enough to suggest the progress of a happy marriage, not odd enough by half.
Celia Storey
Little Rock
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