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June 26, 2005
Don't we all want happy endings?
Here we are at the beginning of my summer vacations and I'm cleaning, watching old movies and bawling like a baby. I've been on a mission, now that school is really over, to clean this filthy house so that I can relax. Funny how working full time and taking care of 2 kids and going back to grad school and trying to have a life can make you rearrange your priorities. I've never been a neatnik but it was beaten into me when I was younger that to live in disarray is an embarassment, just in case someone were to drop in unexpectedly. Now, if someone is so rude as to drop by without calling (*cough* Mom!*cough*), I meet them on the porch and tell them my house is a pigsty and that I would hate for them to get lost in it.
While I was married, I was expected to keep the house just so. Cleaning took place every Sunday morning starting at 6 and had to be done by the time football/basketball/any-sport-with-a-ball started. If I wasn't up and ready to clean at 6, he would be, vacuuming next to the bed *hint* and piling laundry on the bed *hint hint*. It wasn't so bad when I worked at the newspaper but, let me tell you, when I was waitressed and bartended until 2am the night before, it really sucked.
On top of that, I'm not a morning person, as evidenced by most of my late night cleaning sessions, like last night. I began the cleaning frenzy in my room, rearranging and emptying out drawers ... the closet will have to wait until my allergy medicine kicks in. I'm suffering big time from the dust. Yes *gasp* my house is dusty. So are most of my clothes. I only wear about 10% of what I have. Most of my clothes sit in the closets or drawers for ages, gathering dust ... the rest are in all different sizes and I just can't bring myself to throw them out. I think this summer, though, I will have to go through and put everything that I absolutely will not wear, even if I can fit into it, into bags and donate it all. I do't know why I hang onto the past. Yesterday is just that ... I need to look toward tomorrow.
I went through my dresser and tossed old pajamas (who needs 'em?), slips (like I'll ever wear a dress again??), mismatched socks and ugly, paint-stained, oversized t-shirts. I couldn't quite bring myself to throw out the shorts and capris, though I don't suspect I'll be wearing them this summer. I won't be showing my legs until I can get rid of this edema. The medicine isn't working and I'm at a loss. I may be doomed to a life of long pants. *sigh*
As I sat there this morning purging my dresser, I watched "An Affair to Remember". No not the hideous 1994 Warren Beatty/Annette Bening remake ... please, I'd rather watch , well, nothing. This was the 1957 version, with the very yummy Cary Grant and the very stiff Deborah Kerr in the starring roles. Here, maybe this will jog your memory.
Nothing like taking my heart and squishing it flat, then rolling it up
and smoking it and grinding the butt out under your heel. I SWORE I
wouldn't cry like a baby, like I do every time I see Love Affair. This
movie is more melodramatic, more in the ilk of Sleepless in Seattle, the
movie that brought it back into the spotlight when they used it as a
very integral plot point. Still, I found myself reaching for the
tissues, swept up in the swell of music and emotion that is the end of
this movie. I think Sleepless was very wrong. Guys do get it. God forbid
they admit it, though.
Which brings me around to happy endings, which was where I originally started with this post. Why is it that we are all so hooked on happy endings? Life isn't like that. Life doesn't wrap its problems up in a neat little package in under 90 minutes. Sometimes people that meet and fall in love will lose each other, no matter how much they try not to. Sometimes, people do forget the promises they make and leave each other stranded on the top of the Empire State Building, wondering where they went wrong and how they could be so stupid as to let themselves believe that they had found something different.
And that's where I find myself this morning. Yes, I cried, but only because I know the impossibility of that story. I don't know if love like that exists. I know I've loved like that but I know my heart. I, like Cary Grant, would be the one waiting and waiting, driven to distraction until I could find out whatever happened to my lost love. I just don't know if there is a possiblity that love can endure in the hearts of two people in the face of insurmountable odds. I don't see why it isn't possible. I just don't think we try hard enough to make things work now a days.
If this scenario had played out today, in our disposable, self-centered society, I'm thinking that after he was jilted that one time, he would be told by everyone to get over it, move on, and he would. I'm betting that he would not even give a backward glance as he went on, blithely moving on to the next empty relationship. He would probably not be willing to waste any more time and effort on the person that he was so convinced that he loved that he gave up a very comfortable, status quo life to risk it all to create something special. People are like that now a days. Why waste time wondering if you have just lost your 'one true love'. Many more fish in the sea, and all that. Who even believes in soul mates anymore?
I'll tell you who. I do. Which is why I found myself weeping at the movie this morning, hoping that my Cary Grant is willing to accept me with all my flaws and foibles, my corny lines, my stubborn refusal to accept defeat through tear filled eyes. Let's just hope that emotional paralysis is easier to recover from than physical paralysis. Pushing this wheelchair around gets old.
