{"id":10744,"date":"2015-08-11T15:32:27","date_gmt":"2015-08-11T19:32:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/?p=10744"},"modified":"2015-08-11T15:32:55","modified_gmt":"2015-08-11T19:32:55","slug":"love-and-marriage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/2015\/08\/love-and-marriage.html","title":{"rendered":"love and marriage"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"the<\/a>
the author’s<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Today would be my parents’ 68th wedding anniversary. I think… \ud83d\ude42 They were married after the war — mother a beautiful divorc\u00e9e, working in my father the captain’s recruiting office. Well in to a tumultuous marriage, they divorced. Then remarried each other. Not the kind of r\u00f4le models you want for marriage, really.<\/p>\n

My father was as handsome as they come, and about as clueless in terms of marriage, I suspect. His own mother once told me — on her deathbed, no less — that she never should have married my grandfather. But she was a young spinster bluestocking, and her parents were, from what I understand, \u00a0very<\/em>\u00a0‘enthusiastic’ (re: demanding?) that she marry Grandfather.\u00a0I should have gone to live with Nona [her sister] in California,\u00a0<\/em>she told me.<\/p>\n

My mother adored my father. Even when they fought — which wasn’t uncommon — she was proud of her hero of a husband, tall & gorgeous in his dress whites. And she loved traveling to the places Daddy was posted, at least at first.<\/p>\n

\"the<\/a>
the author’s<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But marriage — even the best of marriages, and I doubt theirs was — is very hard sometimes. And neither my mother (whose own mother was twice-divorced — once from my grandfather, an alcoholic, and later\u00a0from a man who was abusive) nor my father had what we would now consider ‘healthy’ marriages. What they had was love & passion. And often that was enough.<\/p>\n

What I learned, watching them, wasn’t always what they probably intended. I learned that love is fragile, and that surprises should be good ones — a baby elephant in a parking lot — not bad ones — you should talk about\u00a0moves, not simply assign them. I learned that passion isn’t enough, but it can get you through bad moments. And that children shouldn’t be the major focus in a marriage — there must be the bond between the two partners, as well.<\/p>\n

I also learned that love ages, just as the partners do. What drew you together in your 20s will not keep you together in your 60s. Perhaps that’s what my parents discovered, when they divorced, and then remarried. Even now, these decades later, I wonder about the love my parents shared. So very different from my beloved in-laws’ marriage. Love is as idiosyncratic as voice & fingerprints, DNA. Unique to each set of lovers.<\/p>\n

Today, thinking about my beautiful, damaged parents, I am grateful they loved each other enough to stay with us, their four children. I’m happy I was able to know them — as the flawed & yet wonderfully charming — couple they were for so many years.<\/p>\n

\"bowl<\/a>
bowl mended in kintsugi manner<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Japanese have an art form —\u00a0kintsugi<\/a><\/em> — in which they mend broken bowls with gold. Akin to the philosophy of\u00a0wabi-sabi<\/i><\/a>, in which imperfection is seen as having its own ephemeral beauty, in\u00a0kintsugi<\/em> ceramics, the break is mended with a mix of lacquer and powdered gold, silver, or platinum. This highlights the broken places.\u00a0Christy Bartlett, in\u00a0The Aesthetics of Mended Japanese Ceramics<\/em>, notes that:<\/p>\n

The vicissitudes of existence over time, to which all humans are susceptible, could not be clearer than in the breaks, the knocks, and the shattering to which ceramic ware too is subject.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Highlighting usage, the passage of time, and the hard edges of life with a richly beautiful seam of gold is what I think of when I reflect on\u00a0my own mended bowl of a marriage. It’s what I learned from my parents, ultimately — that love need not be perfect. It need not even be comprehensible to anyone outside its circle. And perhaps its fissures, the pieces shattered by this tragedy or that wrong, are highly visible. Certainly my parents’ were. But if you make it through — if love mends those broken places — love need only be what it is — the indefinable reaching out of one heart for another.\u00a0Then those cracks &\u00a0chips &\u00a0fragments & shards go through a kind of transformative alchemy, so that the loss of a child eventually becomes a sharing, not a breaking. And the passage of a dark & bitter year becomes seasoning, not destiny. And love? Love becomes a rare & lovely thing — gold highlighting all the breakage behind you. Its own kind of\u00a0kintsugi<\/em>, love, turning loss to gold that holds those places together.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today would be my parents’ 68th wedding anniversary. I think… \ud83d\ude42 They were married after the war — mother a beautiful divorc\u00e9e, working in my father the captain’s recruiting office. Well in to a tumultuous marriage, they divorced. Then remarried each other. Not the kind of r\u00f4le models you want for marriage, really. My father…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":398,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37,397,152],"tags":[11,1181,1089,1187,262,1195,1088,1281,1223],"class_list":["post-10744","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family","category-love","category-marriage","tag-beginners-heart","tag-britton-gildersleeve","tag-broken","tag-buddhism","tag-buddhist-blogs","tag-family","tag-kintsugi","tag-love","tag-marriage"],"yoast_head":"\nlove and marriage - Beginner's Heart<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Today would be my parents' 68th wedding anniversary. I think... :) They were married after the war -- mother a beautiful divorc\u00e9e, working in my father\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/2015\/08\/love-and-marriage.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"love and marriage - Beginner's Heart\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Today would be my parents' 68th wedding anniversary. I think... :) They were married after the war -- mother a beautiful divorc\u00e9e, working in my father\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/2015\/08\/love-and-marriage.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Beginner's Heart\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2015-08-11T19:32:27+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2015-08-11T19:32:55+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/files\/2015\/08\/mother-daddy-wedding-photo-cropped-280x300.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Britton Gildersleeve\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"love and marriage - Beginner's Heart","description":"Today would be my parents' 68th wedding anniversary. I think... :) They were married after the war -- mother a beautiful divorc\u00e9e, working in my father","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/2015\/08\/love-and-marriage.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"love and marriage - Beginner's Heart","og_description":"Today would be my parents' 68th wedding anniversary. I think... :) They were married after the war -- mother a beautiful divorc\u00e9e, working in my father","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/2015\/08\/love-and-marriage.html","og_site_name":"Beginner's Heart","article_published_time":"2015-08-11T19:32:27+00:00","article_modified_time":"2015-08-11T19:32:55+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/files\/2015\/08\/mother-daddy-wedding-photo-cropped-280x300.jpg"}],"author":"Britton Gildersleeve","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/2015\/08\/love-and-marriage.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/2015\/08\/love-and-marriage.html","name":"love and marriage - Beginner's Heart","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/2015\/08\/love-and-marriage.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/2015\/08\/love-and-marriage.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/files\/2015\/08\/mother-daddy-wedding-photo-cropped-280x300.jpg","datePublished":"2015-08-11T19:32:27+00:00","dateModified":"2015-08-11T19:32:55+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/#\/schema\/person\/b4348bfbe2223c0ec325db830aa95f52"},"description":"Today would be my parents' 68th wedding anniversary. I think... :) They were married after the war -- mother a beautiful divorc\u00e9e, working in my father","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/2015\/08\/love-and-marriage.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/2015\/08\/love-and-marriage.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/2015\/08\/love-and-marriage.html#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/files\/2015\/08\/mother-daddy-wedding-photo-cropped-280x300.jpg","contentUrl":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/files\/2015\/08\/mother-daddy-wedding-photo-cropped-280x300.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/2015\/08\/love-and-marriage.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"love and marriage"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/","name":"Beginner's Heart","description":"Beliefnet Voices - Britton Gildersleeve","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/#\/schema\/person\/b4348bfbe2223c0ec325db830aa95f52","name":"Britton Gildersleeve","description":"Britton Gildersleeve is a 'third culture kid.' Years spent living on the margins - in places with exotic names and food shortages - have left her with a visceral response to folks \u2018without,\u2019 as well as a desire to live her Buddhism in an engaged fashion. She\u2019s a writer and a teacher, the former director of a federal non-profit for teachers who write. She believes that if we talk to each other, we can learn to love each other (but she's still learning how). And she believes in tea. She is (still) working on her beginner's heart ~","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/author\/brittongildersleeve"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10744","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/398"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10744"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10744\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10752,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10744\/revisions\/10752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}