JAMES, WHY NO BOOKS ON MARRIAGE?

WHY NO BOOKS ON MARRIAGE?

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© April 22, 2009

“One of the good things that come of a true marriage is, that there is one face on which changes come without your seeing them; or rather there is one face which you can still see the same, through all the shadows which years have gathered upon it.”

George MacDonald (1884 – 1905), Scottish novelist

* * *


It is after four in the morning, and I am wide-awake and here at my computer writing of another wondrous dream.

In sleep earlier in the night I dreamed of a favorite cousin, the son of my favorite uncle whom I’ve written about in these pages, who died in 2005. In the dream he came to visit BB and me and we talked about things of our youth that BB knew nothing about, first because she wasn’t in my life, and secondly, because she was not yet born.

We talked about our summer trips to Higgins Lake in north central Michigan, where we played football in the lake, and argued baseball at lunch, and what Scarlet O’Hara looked like in “Gone With The Wind” with my Uncle Leonard as arbiter, who was a professor at the University of Detroit. He would intercede and quiet us down. Then one day he decided instead to discuss with us the great religions and philosophies of the world. It bored my cousin Robert to death, but it made an indelible impression on me that has lasted a lifetime.

We talked about playing baseball in Detroit with an organized team in the summer league for teenagers.

We talked about going to the State Fair, and crashing the gate, and then crashing the main show by crawling under the stage and taking front row seats in the Louis Armstrong and Eddie Fisher concert on stage.

We talked about going to Brigg Stadium and watching the Detroit Tigers play the New York Yankees seeing Joe DiMaggio and Yogi Berra.

We talked about the time a big Tiger-Yankee series was promising a sell out crowd. We saw a vacant lot near the stadium and ushered cars into the lot and collected a dollar a car and then spent it at the game.

We talked about walking the streets at night and throwing rocks at streetlights with my cousin and his buddies missing, and I hitting a light out on the first try, and then running like scared rabbits.

We talked about hanging out at a drive-in before there were drive-ins and having a triple decker sesame seed hot bun hamburger with a malted milk. This was before McDonald’s was on the scene.

We talked about my cousin telling a bunch of girls I was quarterback for the University of Detroit’s League Championship Team when I was only a sophomore in high school. My cousin a senior got the girl’s to believe him.

We talked about how he used me thereafter as bait to get girls and going to places where even he was under aged.

We talked about reading books and discussing them such as “Growth of a Man” by the Canadian author Mazo de la Roche. Thereafter, I read most of her Jalna series books at the Clinton County Library, Clinton, Iowa.

We talked about my cousin one time having to take Latin over in summer school at the University of Detroit Jesuit High, and my studying it with him, a subject that I loved, and he hated.

We talked about how much we loved each other like brothers instead of cousins.

In my dream, he remembered all these things and more, and I am saddened because he was gone. To soften my sadness, I said, “But at least you lived to be eighty." He looked at me suspiciously, and said, "I died barely 74." Timidly, I said, “I’m sorry.” He said, “It’s okay. You were never too great with chronology.” Then he said he had to be off, as I wondered how long before I would join him.

* * *

Then before I could turn around another person I loved came through the door. He said, “Am I too early?”

It is my former mentor, boss and friend, Dr. Francis Xavier Pesuth, who died a few years before my cousin, but made it into the twenty-first century.

I am in my normal uniform of the day, sweat pants and sweats shirt, and tennis shoes, and BB is dressed about the same. She is reading a book, and I’m thinking about my cousin and his visit, forgetting that we were scheduled to have Francis stop by.

Like my cousin, he looked well. The curious thing is they both died early because of tumors in the brain. They both were highly successful men, both were first engineers and then went back to graduate school to earn terminal degrees, my cousin in economics – like his father, and Francis in education.

Robert had been in US Naval Intelligence when he was in the service and Francis had not been in the military. Francis went to the University of Iowa as did I but before me, and was from Illinois. Robert was from Michigan but took his electrical engineering degree from LSU in Louisiana. So, both were Midwesterners and both Roman Catholics, but Robert was indifferent to his Irish Catholicism while Francis was a Croatian Roman Catholic, and quietly devout.

Francis was not, however, in the same reminiscent mood. He wondered about the house, which is virtually wall-to-wall books in every room, picking out a book here and there, examining it and commenting on it.

“I see you have read Thomas Kempis.”

“Not as you’ve read him Francis, I'm sure.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Well, I read books. You live them. I know no man who lives – forgetting he is dead – who lived as Kempis espoused better than you.”

“I don’t know about that.”

He moved on pulling books out and flipping through the pages. “I’m curious. Some books are marked up and some show the pages turned over, why?”

I smiled sheepishly, “If I don’t have a marker, Francis, I’m too lazy to search for one.”

He doesn’t react to this but moves on. By this time he has been through my study, the living room, the dining room, the bedrooms, all laced with alphabetized books, even seeing them in the bathrooms.

“There is something missing here, don’t you think?”

“You mean a particular book?”

“No, I mean a particular subject, marriage, why no books on marriage?”

I am silent.

“Have you ever written on marriage?”

“No.”

“You should be something of an expert. It took you quite a vetting process to land happily in the state. How do you explain that?”

“I found love. I found someone that was more important to me than I was to myself.”

“Ah! That’s what Thomas Kempis says in his book, do you recall that?”

“No, not exactly?”

“I thought you had a reputation for remembering everything you read.”

Silence again.

“You explain your marriage, then, in terms of love, is that it?”

“Yes.”

“What about duty? Kempis has a lot to say about duty, too, you know?”

“I’m sure he does,” I answered but I cannot recall the specifics much less the general nuance of his question.

“Do you remember the title of the Kempis book?”

“Of course, I do, The Imitation of Christ!”

“Well, for a moment putting Christ aside and think about imitation. What did Kempis mean by it? Now, don't retreat into how we use it. Do you remember?”

“No, I can't recall.”

“Well, his idea of imitation was that you become the object of your affection and the object of your affection becomes you. It is a melting of the you into the greater you where the spiritual and the physical side no longer are in competition but are one. You should read the book again, James, I think you’ve gotten a little rusty. Your intellectual acumen is not waning is it?”

“I’m afraid so, Francis.”

“Sorry to hear that. Sorry to hear, too, that you have no books on marriage in your library. Do you think it is because you know all there is to know about marriage?”

“No. Hardly.”

“Do you think it is because you take your marriage for granted?”

“Absolutely not. I thank God every day for bringing Beautiful Betty into my life.”

“And why is that?”

“Why is that? Because I feel whole, I feel complete. I am happy. I don’t go through a moment of the day without realizing that she is a gift and the most precious one of my life.”

He smiled. Meanwhile, BB is just watching all of this embarrassed that she wasn’t prepared for his visit although we had been expected him. Seemingly reading her anguish, he turns to her.

"Do you see what you have done, my dear. You and millions of women like you have made marriage the most precious bond on earth, a bit of heaven if you will, and Thomas Kempis recognized this when he was posing a more spiritual bonding with the Christ.

"But I can tell you after more than sixty years of marriage myself, and after a demanding career, my wife Shirley was my heaven on earth, and I’m glad to see that you have been that for James.”

BB doesn't say anything, just listened.

“Does it make you two uncomfortable for me to emphasize the spirituality of marriage when so much emphasis today is on its physical dimensions?”

BB and I looked at each other and shook our heads.

“Good.” He looked at the many books and articles I had authored. Picked one up, and said again, “Alas, none here on marriage, but none either on your spiritual side, James, yet I see an extensive library on that topic on your shelves, why is that?”

“With all due respect, Francis, I think all of my works are spiritual. They just are not religious.”

He smiled knowingly again. “You refute me. I seem to recall you were good at that when I was alive.”

“But Francis, I have always respected your perspective only I’m not religious in the same sense as you are, were. I look at things differently, but as you explain Thomas Kempis to me now I think I have unconsciously used some of his devices.”

“No doubt, but your writing would serve you better if you were more religious. People like the security of religion like they like the security of marriage. It is why I’ve made the connection with Kempis and marriage. Kempis put his ideas in the context of religion while saying some of the same things you have said,” as he took one of my books off the shelf.

“I can’t recall that.”

“I'm surprised. For example, here you write you have never been too trusting of worldly people, neither was Kempis." He turned the page. "Here you write of your contempt for vain secular learning and so did he. It is evident throughout your books. I could show you if I had the time, but I must go. Have no doubt though you have a Kempis like approach in your writing." He studied me then smiled broadly.

"Surely you realized I was baiting you to see how you would react to the charge of being materially inclined.

"Religion, James, is not very spiritual in the operational sense and the reason why it is so writhe with conflict. Likewise, marriage is very spiritual in the operational sense when it works, and that is why I made this visit today. Read Kempis again. You will be surprised how much you owe him.”

With that, and without saying goodbye, I woke up, rushed to my study at 4 a.m. in the morning and wrote this.

* * *