the conspiracy of marriage
Marc Chagall, The Birthday, 1915
The Conspiracy of marriage
My professor was in the middle of his life, and his face had a sad cast, even when he smiled. He seemed cheered by the news that I was getting married and nodded his approval. Then he said, with some urgency, “Marriage is a conspiracy, you know. Just the two of you against the world.”
Something in his voice told me that this had been true in his life, and he wanted it to be true in mine.
That’s all he said, but over and over his words have proven themselves in my life. Marriage lends itself to the creation of a mini-universe, inhabited first by you and the love of your life, then shared with your children.
In a good marriage, this secret world is a haven, a place where you can flee and be restored. You can be yourself and not worry about what the rest of the world thinks, or be disheartened by the thought that perhaps the rest of the world doesn’t really care much.
No marriage or conspiracy or family is perfect, or really even close. But it is possible to have a place that is your own, where you are loved not just because of, but also in spite of who you are.
In its weird way, The Simpsons got this. In one episode, Homer and Marge are wrongly judged as unfit parents, and their children are placed in foster care with their next-door neighbors, the Flanders.
At the end of the show, the Simpsons are reunited, and Homer wants to know if his son Bart has dug up any dirt on the squeaky-clean Flanders family. “Well,” says Bart, “Ned keeps some old paint cans in his garage.”
This is enough for Homer, and in the last scene, the Simpsons walk into a glowing sunset, giggling to themselves about “old painty-can Ned Flanders.”
The easy part of these conspiracies is obvious. Not so easy to grasp is what to do with the pain that comes with such love and its possible loss. People who conspire to love each other forever can find it hard to imagine life on their own.
I saw something years ago that is a picture of this pain. We were driving through Florida on a highway bordered by high, marshy grass, when suddenly I saw something white bounce off the car ahead of us and land by the side of the road.
It was an egret, and it was hurt. It sat in the grass, dazed and holding up a broken wing like a flag.
Down from the sky came another blur of white, and for one instant, I saw these two birds connect, beak to beak. One was beaten down to the ground; the other, still able to fly, had swooped down to this one’s side.
Together, they were so beautiful. Two white birds, their necks curved like question marks, and if they had been people, this would have been the question: how will I live without you?