Monday, October 24, 2011

I Do.


Marriage.

Such a word. Must check it in the dictionary.

My very talented, good man of a brother who has international renown for his garden designs speaks to of a plan he will create for his next show. His theme will be marriage. He will use the Beatles song, Come Together for his musical inspiration. Irises are the symbolic flower to represent the union. He explains to me at some length how this flower has two parts but comes together to make a whole. That is his vision of marriage and what he hopes to articulate in his garden design.

It is an idea that charming, hopeful, inspired.

As he describes this dream garden I am not a good sister.

I get cranky inside. I do want to say the right things. I do want to tell him how proud I am of him. I want to uphold him in this. But oh those screaming monkeys of my mind. A bunch of toxic thoughts rush through. He is young. His marriage has not been stressed by economy or the ramming violations of assaults to trust. I am hearing of his garden, not through the eyes of beauty but through my own broken marriage. Through my own broken hopes.

Or the match girl kindling’s of hope, with loves whose kisses of promise end. I am left, again, chanting stupidly the line from the classic film Miracle on 34th Street. “Faith is believing when common sense tells you not to.”

I want to uncage my cynic on him. I want to taint his garden with those toxic imprints of my own hurt and loss.

I restrain myself. He redeems things for me when he speaks of the concept of joining together. I am thinking fifties sitcom marriage. He is thinking of how in life we partner with souls that are life giving to us and stir us to better to our best.

Now my hurt settles and I can hear him somewhat.

I think on my friend who lost her husband in the same time window my marriage went missing. I think of how we chat for hours. She a witness to my story and I to hers. This is a life giving friendship.

I was only able to leave my marriage when I was urged by very traditional Catholic women to ask the question, “ Is this relationship life giving? “

No. No, it was not. I was depleted.

In those dark post marriage days, it was only those vital alliances of love that stirred me on. It was shared purpose and mergers of heart with many carried me.

So my brother’s garden blooms in my head. I can see it. All Irises. All coming together.

This conversation took place just before I was to leave to live internationally and teach. His dreamscape garden just saplings. More so having left my homeland full heart mates I long for the verdant love of friendship.

I came to a farm village in the hills of Georgia, Europe. Filled with cows, chickens, (many shitting chickens) feral screeching cats, a pig. It smells of the cows. Shoes are mandatory to avoid animal droppings. Food matches seasons, not taste. If cooked we eat it till it is gone. We gather hazelnuts. I think for fun but come to realize it is one of the many micro economies engaged by the family for sustenance.

Children, many of them scurry about. Nieces, nephews. Their toys are what tools are not in use.

I spend an hour with the 7 year old. Her task is to use the hammer to open the hazelnuts for dinner that night. I hammer the shells. She picks them clean. These are our days. What the earth gives us we tend to.

I look at Maia’s flowers. I do not see beauty. I see neglect. I want to pull the weeds from the roses. I look at her irises. They are all yellow. They are at least four feet high. They thrive amidst the weeds, perhaps inspired by the ever-present scent of fertilizer.

I have been lonely for long. I had many motivations for coming to this far away land, but had I not felt so singular so often perhaps I would not have been so bold. Had that lover cemented me to him with more kisses, greater want I would perhaps have

Battened down the hatches of my predictable life and tended to my own struggling flowerbeds.

It is quiet here. Still I am lonely. Now these irises bemuse me as they do my brother.

This woman who host’s me, Maia, these fields and gardens are not hers. She tends to the farm of her mother in-law who at 62 years old is in Turkey as a housekeeper. She comes back every three months to renew her visa and bring gifts to the grandkids. She brings soft toilet paper all the way from Turkey.

As summer fades, all leave. The wee folks with their parents back to the city. The grandma to Turkey for the only bed that allows her sleep. She is an insomniac while in this village. Since her son’s death she cannot sleep in her own bed. Her son, Maia’s husband died in a car accident seven years ago. Mais sleeps well. I hear her snore through the walls. She is tired I think. She carries fifty pounds of hazelnuts up hills, finds the cow on her walkabout, sits in the church, and sells the candles trying to mend the heart that was stunned when her marriage mate went missing to death.

She feeds their children. I think she brings me to this her already stressed world so that I might help the son speak English. I think she wants her son to have rose gardens or work in Turkey. All hope is in his hands.

This village is like the Mythical Greek Island of women. I see few men. Only bent woman, and their parched faces and gardens.

Often I hear a sweet call through the starry night, “Maia”. Then they come, Nona or Margoli to sit and have a coffee. They slump on the table, head resting in hand. Weary, battle bruised. Each day one or more women come to Maia’s. chat. They come to her the same way they go to her at the church where she sells candles (She explains she sits there to heal her heart). They come to her the way they go to church to buy candles so their pray becomes hope and reaches to the heavens.

I think they are married. They are married to this life, this land, their church, and their narrative. And blessedly, ever so blessed in sipped cups of coffee, and the way they are in daily communion with each other.

I am not a good gardener, and I wonder often that perhaps I was not a good wife. I had those itchy feet, restless nature, and dreams bigger than a village.

But here, in this village, I understand irises and marriage.

I see these women a life giving force, to their families and to each other’s.

I have never really seen more lovely irises.

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