History
by Matt Worley

I picked up a couple Powerball tickets this week. The jackpot is around $58 million for the weekend, and by the time you read this, I will have found out I lost. Once again. I know I'm going to lose, but the exchange of my $2 of hope for a possibility of winning a gadload (pronounced Gahhd) of money is something I can't pass up. The payoff (usually a conversation with someone about what I'd do with the money) is much better than, say, spending $2.59 or so on a collect call for a chance at $10,000. There are a lot of chancy things in this life--if life itself isn't a gamble--and I've got to draw the line somewhere.

About thirty years ago, a couple of people took a bigger chance than my billion to one shot of winning a gadload of money. They bet their lives on something intangible called love. I've been trying to understand the whole gamble ever since (well, for at least 25 years). On December 21, 1967, my parents got married. They were seniors in college with one semester to go. They'd met less than a year earlier. I'm assuming they were touched by a bit of dementia.

Marriage was something I took for granted for quite a long time. It was a logical step in a series of logical steps that would eventually turn into a real life. Everything seems very logical when you're five. Sure, things weren't always happy and shining and amazing while we were growing up, but I never worried too much about my parents getting divorced. Parents weren't supposed to get divorced. Marriage was forever, and Mom and Dad were stuck together.

As I've grown older and been through a couple loves and a couple hates, I have come to realize how improbable my parents' life actually is. In junior high, I started to get a little scared. A lot of my friend's parents were divorced. Some of them had step parents, and others lived with only one (usually the mother). I started to analyze my parent's tiffs, trying to figure out when and where and why my parents might get divorced. The moment never came.

In high school, I didn't worry about my parents as much. I had all those social things to do: band, school, soccer, friends, work, girls. I didn't care if my parents had problems--I had things to deal with. I had to figure out the best way to talk to girls. I had to worry about memorizing my drum parts for marching band. And there was the continuing pressure of college. I couldn't think about my parent's marriage, I had a life. As far as I was concerned, my life was pretty much the same as my parents. They had to go to all the football games (to watch us march), the soccer games, and parent teacher conferences.

And maybe for a while, our lives (mine and my brothers) were intrinsically intertwined with our parents. We lived with them for quite some time (at least eighteen years), and I'm sure they got used to our strangeness--at least some of it. It couldn't have been all bad. We got good grades, we only got pissy every once in a while. I'm betting, though, that they were really glad when we finally left the house for good. There is only so long parents can try to guide and hope for the best--and see the results first hand.

My parents have defied the odds and are now happier than I really ever remember them being on a constant basis. Of course, I only get the e-mail version of life at Mom and Dad's, with the occasional phone call thrown in. I'm sure they still have to 'discuss' problems (and maybe even us kids), but they're finally doing a large amount of what they've wanted to do with their lives, instead of trying to raise us.

And this is the paradox I live in. While I am eternally grateful my parents got together and stuck together, I can't imagine going through what they went through with us. Every time I think of marriage, I'm reminded of a snatch of a phrase from Four Weddings & A Funeral: "I'm am, as ever, in bewildering awe..." At the time it came out, I was kinda seeing a girl who totally loved the movie. She soon decided it might be better to go out with someone who didn't insert the word 'kinda' before the word 'girlfriend.' Maybe I got the wrong impression from the movie--or her.

So here I am, trying to explain the unexplainable: why my parents stuck together for thirty years. All I can say is they did. And maybe that's the secret. Don't think about the seemingly endless amount of time left, just take everything one step at a time. Eventually I'll end up on a staircase, and I won't even know how I got there. And it won't matter where the staircase leads to, as long as I keep stepping along.

Matt Worley believes in love, but he only understands lust.

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