The Difficult Work of Being in Love

Whenever my daughter conjures a happy memory from my single-parent days, I stop in my tracks, caught in a freeze frame of relief.

She never notices this. She's just sharing a newly mined memory, as if it were some pretty pebble she found on the beach. But it's the lilt in her voice, and the way she smiles, that forces the air into my lungs. At such moments, I dare to believe that maybe this longtime single mother did OK.

My 11 years as a single parent ended three years ago today -- long enough for me to feel so very married, and for my daughter to have collected a new batch of memories in her reconfigured family. She has her opinions and shares them with the fervor of a young woman who was raised to speak her mind. Fortunately, she likes what she sees.

"Wow, Mom," she said last week. "It's like you two have been married forever."

I wonder how she interprets the changes in her mother's life. Does she read too little, or too much, into my happiness? She is about to turn 20 and belongs to a generation of women who may have no interest in such long-term couplings for themselves, if recent reports are true.

"Many young women believe that being in love, at least right now, is impractical, foolish, a sign of weakness or even unattainable," writes Laura Sessions Stepp, Washington Post reporter and author of "Unhooked: How Young Women Pursue Sex, Delay Love and Lose at Both."

Not a lot of optimism there.

Sessions Stepp says there are many reasons for young women's preference for temporary and detached "hook-ups." This passage, in particular, jumped out:

"Some have lived through the divorce of their parents. Or they witness disputes between Mom and Dad yet are not privy to the negotiations their parents undertake to resolve these differences. Although Mom and Dad may say they love each other, young women report that they rarely see their parents hug, hold hands, act playfully or do other things that sustain love."

Yet another reminder that our every move as parents lays the blueprint for our children's adult lives.

Sessions Stepp's observations made me consider my own parents' marriage.

Theirs was a long and often difficult union, and yet I could see the spark, too. One memory lingers: Dad chasing Mom around the dining-room table.

"No, Chuck, no!" she'd scream, racing around the table, giggling like crazy. When he finally caught her -- and he always caught her -- he'd tickle her neck until she shrieked with laughter. All four of us kids sat there, mesmerized by their playfulness. I stared at them and secretly declared: I want that.

It took plenty of stumbles before I found it. Sometimes I wonder why this marriage is so different from our first attempts, one each. The bad memories of experience account for some of it: We know how to blow it. We also learned how to carve out meaningful lives on our own. Both of us were single parents for many years before we met, and we assured each other we were happy as can be.

But we are happier together, and I celebrate this discovery. But what does it telegraph to our four grown children? So far, one is married, another is engaged, and we are thrilled with their choices. I don't want any of our kids, though, especially our two younger daughters who remain single, to think that only in coupling can they be complete. And yet I want them to try.

What a complicated message our own pasts offer the kids we love: Two feet firmly planted is better than hopscotch, but be careful where you land.

Selfishly, I want our children to see us for who we are now, in this marriage. We cannot repair the past, but maybe we can spare them some of the misery we endured, and inflicted, before we understood that a marriage can grow only as much as the two people in it.

Three years into ours, we still work at being worthy of each other. Lessons abound. I've loosened my fearful grip on the reins of independence. He's decided talking about his feelings is a good thing.

Such growth spurts in middle age.

Who knew?

Connie Schultz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Plain Dealer and author of two books from Random House, "Life Happens" and " … And His Lovely Wife." To find out more about Connie Schultz (cschultz@plaind.com), and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, please visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2007 THE PLAIN DEALER
DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.