There is this delightful young couple I see at the gym two or three times a week. They are seemingly always in a positive mood, say good morning and seem to really like each other. My assumption is that they are married/partners/a couple!. Yesterday I was asking her if they deliberately choose complimentary or matching gym outfits in terms of colors. Yesterday his shirt and her gym shorts were nearly the same color. She insisted that they did not. I do know that with many couples wh have spent lots of time together this often seems “to just happen”. This happen with my close friend Vilja and I. Often I will show up wearing a tie or a shirt which matches what she is wearing. We often laugh about this.
At any rate, this got me to thinking about couples that I admire; about how well they compliment each other emotionally, intellectually and spiritually. They also seem to work well together on practical issues. This is certainly true of my good friend Vilja and I. We have worked together in the home and professionally. We both appreciate each other’s skills and talents. The only time we did not do well together was when we were sharing a home and had to decide what kitchen tools to keep in the relatively small kitchen. We both like to cook a lot and have our favorite tools as well as our favorite pots and pans.
My earliest recollection of a couple which I admired was my Uncle Happy(Harold) and Aunt Pleasie. Even as a small child I knew that I loved spending time with them individually and as a couple. They seemed to be interested in what the other was saying, easily shared chores without keeping score or fussing about how the other was doing a particular task. They said thank you a lot – with words, their eyes or a touch.
Much later I could to know my Becky and Bob. Again, they seemed to be a couple who appreciated the talents and energy which each brings to the relationship. They do not always agree but they always speak of the opinion of the other with respect. When hard decisions that need to be made, such as the decision to focus their money, time and energy on raising their nephew following the death of his parents (dad died when he was about five and mother when he was 12) they are able to do this with good humor and not as a burden. They seem to easily accept the fact that Becky is able to do emotional care taking in a very direct and hands one way. Bob, on the other hand, is better at playing the supporting role – doing other tasks which makes it possible for Becky to do part she does well.
Then there is John and Pinky who are both deceased. I have several reminders of them in my home including a cross stitches couch pillow with a image of my old Victorian house. John and Pink were married for nearly 70 years before she died. In the last few years of their lives I regularly had lunch with them. They always seemed delighted to be with each other and interested in what the others was doing and thinking. Every day they “met” for cocktail hour (she had a thimble full of sherry) to share their day. Sometime others would join them. Sometimes it was just the two of them. If I am recalling accurate she was 97 when she died and he was 99 or 100. He moved into a retirement home and lived for about a year following her death. He seemed to make the transition easily to this last stage of his life although the fact that he died within year might have been related to the grief. When Pinky died she had just accepted a new job of redecorating a restaurant in Pittsburgh. They both had active minds and lives thus giving them much to bring back to the relationship.
I recall Virginia saying when my friend Rudy died. “Weren’t we lucky. We had six whole weeks together after we married.” She was perfectly serious. Rudy was husband number two to die before she did. She later married George and, they do, had a delightful relationship. After his death one day when I was visiting with my friend Vilja, she proudly showed us her new pool stick which was in its own leather case. A young man whose grandfather was a resident in the same retirement home was teaching her to play pool. It was not surprising that men and women liked spending time with Virginia or that Virginia in a retirement complex which had very few “eligible” men in their eighties and nineties would find two husbands!
I can think of many other couples I know who I really enjoy being with: Barbara and Lanny; Julia and Fred; Patti and Bob; Terry and Don; Kurt and Marv; Frank and Dee (prior to his death); George and Candace; Jess and George; Bonnie and Carl; Cheryl and Carl. Mercy! I am blessed to have many such couples.
I am sure that we have all been in the company of those couples who we could not wait to get away from. Even if they were not arguing or being unkind to each other they seemed, as a couple, to be energy vampires. They clearly did not enjoy each other. The couples about who I am talking give off energy and are a joy to be around. One can sense that they are together because they know that they want to be together and not because of some shared commitment or because they believe that they are “stuck” in this relationship.
It is not only couples, but occasionally families or teams of people who give off the same positive energy.
Although I am now living in Florida and have yet to experience a serious storm, often I have been in a neighborhood following a heavy snowfall, a house fire or some other neighborhood situation in which all the neighbors come together to respond with whatever talents and abilities that they have. Although there may be hard physical work involved one comes away from such an event emotionally full of energy.
We humans do best when we are treating ourselves and each other as sacred co-travelers in this very brief life journey. We are salt and pepper; the rain and the sunshine; tops and bottoms; truly parts of a whole.
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