CEO of the Universe

(Dedicated to a dear friend who is currently struggling with haters who aren’t worth the ground she walks on:  “Keep on rollin’ Baby and do what you do, ‘cause haters gonna hate, no matter what you
pursue!”)

Do you know what I’ve discovered?  Mean people really do suck!  You can find them everywhere where two or three humanoids are gathered:  in your family, in your schools, in the workplace, in your place of worship, driving on the highways, or serving in public office (“cough—Michele Bachmann”).  There’s always that one person who thinks God died and made them the reigning deity or CEO of the Universe, who gets to decide whether you’re “following the rules” to their satisfaction, or if you’re a “real American” (“COUGH-COUGH—Sarah Palin”), or if you’re going to Heaven or Hell (“A-CHOO!—Pat Robertson”) .  If you’re strong enough you’ll spend half your time keeping these haters from trying to take over your life, but if you’re weak, sometimes through no fault of your own, they will walk all over your heart with cleats and serve you up to the vultures (the haters that roll with them) for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

“Haters”|Image from motifake.com

You have to learn early how to “get over” on the haters or they will beat the shit out of you if you’re vulnerable.  And if you are pint-sized and vertically challenged as I was as a child, then your mouth has to become your first weapon of choice, and your first volley needs to punch them in the gut with the power of a sledge hammer so that they can’t easily get back up and retaliate.  As a child, “Your Mama” jokes served as the best salvos to attack the person’s nearest and dearest on every front from their mama’s size to her intelligence.  The quicker you were as a kid with the mama taunts, the faster you could demoralize your opponent—no matter what their size—because what little kid doesn’t love their mother?

“Yo mama so fat when her beeper goes off, people think she is backing up.”

“Yo mama so stupid she put paper on the television and called it ‘paper view.’”

“Yo mama so poor when I saw her kicking a can down the street, I asked her what she was doing? She said, ‘Movin’.”

When you grow up as part of a ghetto trash heap as I did in The Cleve, you learn that you’re always going to have haters either trying to keep you beneath them on that heap (“Yo mama’s got two gold teeth, one says 24k and the other says ‘Believe that shit if you want to’”), or trying to keep you from getting out and leaving them behind (“You ain’t never gettin’ outta this dump, asshole—you need money to do that!  Yo Mama so poor I walked into your house and three roaches tripped me and tried to take my wallet!”).  I’ve had hardcore haters from various races and both sexes all my life, but it breaks my heart to say that most of my haters have been women.   Why do women do this to other women?

“Bitchy Women”|Image from imikimi.com

I don’t get it!  I’ve been in church choirs, I’ve led Bible study groups, I’ve lived in a Christian commune, I’ve been a secretary and a school teacher, I’ve toured with an opera company, and I’ve been in too many professional theater productions to count, but almost without exception, it was the women—my sisters (be they black or white)—that got on my every last nerve.  Some bitch always tries to set herself up as the “Alpha” biotch, and then she surrounds herself with her hand-picked court (think Rizzo, Frenchy, and the Pink Ladies from the musical Grease) and tries to run rough-shod over everybody else.

The Pink Ladies from “Grease” (Didi Conn, Stockard Channing, and Dinah Manoff)||Paramount Pictures

Usually Ms. Alpha Biotch misjudges me because I’ve been saved, sanctified, and filled with the Holy Ghost, so she assumes that I’m nicer than Jesus and that that niceness is a sign of weakness.   But girlfriend doesn’t know from whence I’ve come and therein lies her surprise ass-whopping—always!  I’ll work with the chil’, go the extra mile, and turn the other cheek for as long as my God gives me strength, but then there comes a time when “homie don’t play that,” and enough is enough.  And then Miss Thang has to have her come-to-Jesus-meeting with me.  (IMP. NOTE:  There have been a few male haters who have tried to take me down in my lifetime as well, and let’s just say, I agree with Elton:  “I’m still standing better than I’ve ever been” and they are not.  My husband (WW)—the love of my life—says that he was the only man with cojones large enough to ask me out on a date, and I say, I married him because he’s the only man I ever met who had balls big enough to treat me with the respect I deserved.)

But being able to put low-lifes in their place when they try and treat you like shit is a very small aspect of “getting over” in life.  The major problem is not letting the altercation affect you—not letting it steal your joy or damage your self-esteem.

Image from jayefrost.tumblr.com

Once I became an adult I had to put away childish things—I could no longer think like a child.  So out went the “Yo Mama” salvos and in came the mental gymnastics that keep my heart and soul intact.  But in the process of compiling my new arsenal, I learned and am still learning that it’s all about possessing my spirit.  It’s discovering that the meaning of life is that I am the only CEO of my attitude about life and no one—absolutely no one—can steal my joy.  I have to give it to them and that ain’t ever gonna happen.

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” –Viktor E. Frankl

*****

So I have formulated a short list on how to survive—no, triumph!—over the haters.  Below is “ET’S HEART AND SOUL PROTECTORS—REPLACING ‘YO MAMA’ SALVOS”

“What they call you is one thing; what you answer to is something else.”—Lucille Clifton

• No one but God gets to define me—no hater, no player, no betrayer.  If your definition of me doesn’t fit who I really am, then yours gets flushed down the toilet without so much as a “by your leave.”

 “Hanging onto resentment is letting someone you despise live rent-free in your head.”― Ann Landers

“Once people show you who they are, believe them the first time—there’s no need to wait until the ninth time.”—Maya Angelou

• Meaning: The mean girl will usually verbally spit on you within the first ten minutes of meeting you like a petulant hissy snake, so why wait for the 9^th spitting to realize she’s full of shit.  Give her a wide berth.

“Don’t pander:  don’t try and win over the haters; you are not the jerk whisperer.” —Anonymous

Here’s the thing:  We only go around once—only have one life to live, so “do you” and fuck the haters.  They are everywhere, in every nation and every tribe, so you might as well “strut” the stuff that God gave you and roll
with joy!   Yeah, Baby!

“Haters Gon’ Hate”|image from urlesque.com

******

(ONE “YO MAMA” JOKE FOR THE ROAD)

“Yo Mama so poor that when she asked me over to dinner I took a paper plate from the kitchen and she growled—‘Don’t use the good china’”!

******

I am discovering that sometimes haters really cross way over the line and take the lives of our
innocents, but even in our grief, we pray for the ability—the courage—to choose how to walk in peace, sow
with love, and come together in unity so that one white-supremacist hater doesn’t rob us of the true meaning of life as he tried to do in Oak Creek, Wisconsin last week, because we all bleed red.

Sikh Memorial in Oak Creek, Wisconsin||Image of nation.time.com/AP

Our thoughts and prayers are with the Sikh community in Oak Creek and throughout the world as they mourn the loss of their family and friends.

****

“We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”—Viktor E. Frankl

“I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.” – Nelson Mandela

“If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude. Don’t complain.”― Maya Angelou

“You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.”― Maya Angelou, Letter to My Daughter

Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Eleanor Tomczyk and “How the Hell Did I End Up Here?” with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

 

A Love Story/Redo

(Formerly:  “Once Upon A Time. . .”)

This week’s blog (#50) is an updated entry of an early posting that I’m reblogging by popular demand.  Even if you’ve read it before, the pictures have changed and I’ve added to the story.  I am still on hiatus, rewriting my memoirs, but I will return next week with a brand new story.  Hope you enjoy this quirky love story (it’s one of my favorites, and I think it’s one of the funniest ones I’ve written).  Thank you for being such faithful readers.  Because of you, I’m now blowing through 31,000 views at approximately 200 hits a day.  Gracias!

******

Do you know what I’ve discovered?    Years ago I realized that I was a star in my own reality show.  My husband is my handsome co-star. We have grown children, but they have their own reality shows, and they don’t live with us anymore.  This week’s episode (“You So Crazy”) features my husband and crocodiles, and the storyline outstrips anything those “biotches” from Atlanta can throw down on any given skanky day.

The Real Housewives of Atlanta||Hulu Pomo Photo

In the interest of full disclosure, my husband is a white man (I affectionately refer to him as “White and Wonderful” or “WW”).  I don’t mean that he’s just any ol’ white man; I mean he’s a direct descendent of Governor Bradford of the Mayflower type of white man.  (His grandmother – a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution – gave me papers to make sure I understood just what type of white man I was getting when I stole him away from all those white girls from his neighborhood.)  He looks like a Republican and a Presbyterian minister, but he has a wicked Monty Python sense of humor and his woman is obviously black.  I have known him for 38 years and have been married to him for 33 of those years.  He loves me like no one else on this Earth has ever loved me, and he had my heart within 24 hours the first time we went to get a cup of coffee:

Barista:  “How do you like your coffee, Sir?”

WW’s answer:  “Hot and black, like my women!”

The major difference between WW and me is that I grew up as a ragamuffin of the Ward of the State in The Cleve, and he was raised by two parents in New England who made him think he would someday be president of the United States at the very most or a successful lawyer at the very least.  He wasn’t born rich, by any means, but he was raised feeling a sense of what I call “white-man-entitlement syndrome.”  There has never been any question in my husband’s mind that the world wasn’t his oyster — until recently that is.  Our reality show has basically been a comfortable romantic comedy, but a few years ago, the storyline took a drastic turn for the insane when said white man lost his job for years and couldn’t get another one to save his life.  On top of that stress, our older daughter, whom we love very dearly, decided to do a nose dive into her own reality show entitled:  “The Lost Years.”  At that point in our odyssey, we had no idea that our child would eventually come to her senses or that good jobs would appear on the horizon for both of us.  No one ever tells you when you first fall in love and get married that “shit really does happen” to families that will end up rocking your world.

Interracial Marriage Shines||Yahoo.com

One morning a very depressed WW came into the kitchen and summarily announced:  “I’ve had enough of this shit!   The movie Men at Work was right:  ‘This is a waste of a perfectly good white boy.’”

(As a black woman, I consider myself morally superior to my husband in all things involving suffering, so I responded in my best Wanda Sykes voice:  “Weeeell, now you know how the black man feels.”)

WW shot me one of those looks that said:  “Now is not the time, Woman,” and continued trying to articulate how he had attempted to solve his current dilemma.  “I’m going to the mountaintop to pray.  I’m going to demand of God just what the hell was he thinking when he allowed this mess to fall upon us.  What did I ever do to piss him off?  If I don’t get struck by lightning, I’ll be back in time enough for lunch.  I could sure use some shrimp wiggle to cheer me up when I get back.”

“Shrimp wiggle—a white man’s canned shrimp delight.  Sure, baby—whatever floats your boat!  I’ll see you when you’re done communing with the Almighty.  Make sure you take notes.  In the meantime, I’ll make myself a gin and tonic and see if getting drunk might solve anything.”

Charlton Heston as Moses returning with “Tablets from God”||Google Image

When WW returned, he had the serene look of one who had taken the route of Moses and gone up to the top of Mount Sinai and had seen the face of God.   He’d come back down to tell his peeps (namely me) what God had spoken:

“I have been to the mountaintop and I’ve heard God!”

“Oh, do tell.” I said in my slightly intoxicated gin and tonic haze.   “And just what did God say to his ‘perfectly good white boy?’” I asked trying not to laugh.

“God said I’m to become an international adventurer and you are to be my sidekick.”

“Oh, Lord Jesus, this man done lost his mind,” I said as I banged my head against the kitchen table and let out a rather loud guffaw.

“Stop laughing—I’m dead serious!” said WW, trying to keep himself from cracking up at how ludicrous he sounded.  “Our troubles are causing our life-story to get off track here.  Our lives are being completely defined by loss—loss of employment, loss of our savings, and loss of a child.   We need to hit the spiritual refresh button before we lose each other.  We’re under enough stress to kill an elephant, let alone a marriage.  I propose we start small.  I suggest we take the rest of our savings and…wait for it…wait-for-it—get back in touch with nature and who we’re created to be by exploring a rain forest!”

There are times in a marriage when you just have to say:  Yes!  “Yes, I’ll follow you; yes, I’ll take your hand and jump into something crazy if it will help you (us) survive.  Yes, I’ll trust you in this no matter how crazy it all sounds to anybody else because if we fuck up at least we’ll fuck up together.” 

Because I love my man, I packed my bags, some mosquito spray, and said my prayers that this trip wouldn’t be the time I’d die—not just yet!

 Author and WW entering rainforest

In the beginning, the adventure wasn’t so bad.  As a black woman who believes that if God wanted people to camp he would have made us bugs, I set in place some ground rules as the “sidekick” regarding how I wished to “roll” during this adventure.

• Absolutely no camping!  We could hike and explore until the cows came home, but come night fall I wanted clean sheets, a vodka gimlet, and a spa.
• Absolutely no danger!  We could explore the rain forest and see “lizards and shit galore” but come night fall, I wanted mosquito netting, Egyptian cotton sheets, and a flat screen TV.
• Absolutely no water sports!  I’ve always engaged in the time-honored tradition that black women just don’t “do water” because it gets our hair wet, and we spend a fortune grooming our hair.  Throwing all that money down the drain just to frolic in water was a real deal breaker for me, not to mention the tiny fact that I can’t swim.  (I eventually had to compromise on this particular demand because WW loves water and swims like a fish—so we slightly adjusted our itinerary.  WW would snorkel and frolic with giant sea turtles if a way could be found for me to carry on my diva role while cheering him on.)

At first the trip was amazing and so romantic.  We were greeted by a host in a lobby with no walls, while a gentle breeze whispered softly through our hair—“Welcome to Shangri-La, Mr. and Mrs. Tomczyk.”  Our concierge gave us fresh squeezed, nectar-of-the-gods fruit juice to drink and moist towels to wipe the grime of the day from our hands.  Our man, Jeeves, assured us that my spa appointments had been confirmed with their best masseuse, and that he had taken the liberty to set up our snorkeling trip, our river cruise, and our trek through the rain forest with his best tour guides.

The next morning, we toured the coastline of our host country in a catamaran—something I’d never seen before, and it wasn’t that bad.  WW got to play hide-and-go-seek with giant sea turtles in a hidden cove while I sipped Planter’s Punches on the deck, ate fresh guacamole, salsa, and tortilla chips, read a wonderful book, and cheered my husband on in his “Tarzan’s frolic-in-the-deep fantasy” while maintaining my totally-dry-diva-self on the boat.  Maybe WW had heard God, I thought to myself.  This wasn’t half bad.  We wouldn’t have any money in our bank account when we returned, but “what the hell”—live and let live, I thought, if one could have a stress-free week or two and forget our troubles.

Diva does snorkeling

But on the second day (Isn’t there always a “crazy” second day?) things turned ominous when we took the river cruise.  Now, when someone uses the words river and cruising in the same sentence, I automatically think Aristotle Onassis’ yacht, the Christina, which is why I wore my gold hoops.  What I don’t envision is what I eventually acquiesced to:  a rubber raft that had been patched in several places with duct tape, for crying out loud!  I also don’t expect there to be rapids, and I certainly don’t expect crocodiles.  For years afterwards, WW would swear that he had offered me the chance to take the “river cruise” on a rather large river boat that held scores of tourists, but I had opted for the more intimate tour for two, because I said “I wasn’t a child or an old woman – I was the International Adventurer’s sidekick.”  Yeah, right!

Author floating down river in rainforest in a rubber tube

The moderate rapids didn’t scare me at all because long before I encountered them, I made the mistake of asking my rubber-raft captain why one of his guys was in a kayak a few yards ahead of us and kept making figure eights in the water.

“To distract the crocodiles if they decide to charge the raft.  But don’t worry, Señorita, it’s too hot for them to venture out — they’re probably sleeping.”

At just that moment, a prickly log of about two feet long appeared on the surface of the water just off to my left, and two dark eyes fixated on my blow-up toy of a boat as it rose up out of the water and yawned.  When I slowly realized that what I was seeing was just the head of a crocodile, I cautiously whispered to our guide, “So, what is the ratio of a croc’s head to the full length of its body?”

“Oh, about one ninth,” he replied, having just seen the same shady-eyed log.

“So that would make that particular ‘log’ 15 – 20 feet long — correct?”

“Si, Señorita,” he said as he began to frantically signal to his co-worker in the kayak, and they both began to stroke a lot faster.  “But not to worry—we haven’t seen a croc bigger than 15 feet in Costa Rica in years because the larger ones have been hunted down and killed.  Oh, look up at the trees, Señorita, there’s a Howler monkey.  Isn’t he cute?” asked the guide, obviously trying to distract me.

Costa Rican Monkeys||adventuresofdiscovery.com photo

As I hysterically looked to the right to get WW’s attention, we both saw the shoreline riddled with baby crocs who were sunning themselves, and I instinctively knew three things:  1) where there are babies, a mother is not far off, 2) that kayak man frantically doing the figure eights was going to be snack food at any moment, and 3) the International Adventurer and his Sidekick were going to enter heaven at the behest of a momma or a papa crocodile right after the kayak man got eaten.  Before I could utter the first syllable of the fox-hole prayer screamed by many a dying man (“Help me, Jesus, help, help me Jesus!”), the rapids were upon us and we slipped away into a safer waterway while trying to keep my bowels intact.  (I would later learn that crocs don’t like rushing water which is one reason we got out of there alive; the other reason is that there really is an appointed time to die and I guess that wasn’t it, thank you God.)  My diary that night had only one entry:  WTF—I’m going to kill WW!

Costa Rican Crocodile||National Geographic

The third day our concierge had booked us on a walking tour through a section of the rain forest with a naturalist who would help us identify plant life and the age of trees.  (“Now this is my speed —this is what I’m talkin’ about!”  I said to my International Adventurer.)   What we hadn’t noticed was that part of the rain forest journey included a zip-line tour.  We’d never done zip-lining before, and at first I refused to go near any of this shit.  But I could see that my husband was chomping at the bit to give it a try.  The concierge boasted that all his clients came back raving about the experience.  He hadn’t done it himself, but how hard could it be?  “You simply hang onto a steel cable line, slide down an incline from hilltop to hilltop, and see a great view of the rain forest going down.  Now please sign here, here, and here, absolving the resort of all responsibility.”

The first clue that things might go horribly wrong was when it took 15 minutes to strap the harness over my Dolly Parton boobs (DPs).  Then my diva hairdo was flattened in a hairnet and a helmet was placed on top of the hairnet, which caused me not a little consternation.  The final item of the attire was a stiff, weather-worn glove two sizes too big that I was told I needed in order to squeeze the brake to slow down my descent before I hit the landing platform.  But the brake was two feet above my head, and the glove was frozen into a jazz-hand pose due to years of encrusted dirt — making it impossible to bend around the brake.

Now here’s the thing:  when the makers of the zip-line (a.k.a “the death slide”) invented this demonic entertainment, they didn’t take into account what would happen to a person’s body that front-loads 38 GG boobs on their little pathetic hanger.  The one skinny rope that is supposed to hold up the rider’s body is no match for that force of nature, and instead of me being able to hold myself perpendicular to the zip-line, the force of gravity from my DPs pushed me down horizontally and I couldn’t reach the brake.  As I began hurtling down the line over the rain forest at 90 miles an hour, I envisioned myself whizzing right past the startled faces of WW and the rest of the tourists on the first platform and then barreling on down through the next 10 platforms of the zip-line as the operators screamed in horror:  “RUN-AWAY ZIP-LINER CAREENING TO HER DEATH – GET OFF THE LINE, GET OFF THE LINE!”

Author on zip line death slide (blood pressure 220/110 and rising)

I immediately initiated the only calming things I could think of to control my bubbling hysteria:  I closed my eyes and prayed while I started doing pregnancy breathing exercises (“pant-pant-blow/hee-hee-hoo”).   But before I could do much else, my body came to a screeching halt in the middle of the line approximately two hundred feet above the tallest tree in the rain forest.  I couldn’t go backwards and I couldn’t go forwards.  At that point, as I began to swing in the breeze — neither here nor there — my tour guide who was a teenage boy and weighed all of 90 pounds soaking wet began to shout in a sing-songy voice:

“LA-A-TY, JU-U-U STU-U-U-CK!   WOW, JES LUKE AT JU, SWINGING IN DE BREEZE!   OKAY — GAME TIME IS OVER, NOW.  UNSTICK JU SELF!  REACH UP AN GRAB DA LINE AN PULL JU SELF FUWARD TO SAFETY.”

“I CAN’T,” I screamed back to the guide as I arduously tried to reach for the line and pull myself upward.  Without something solid to brace my feet against, I couldn’t overcome the gravity weighing down my upper torso from my 38GGs.  I needed to sit up in a perpendicular position, hugging the cable, so that I could glide down the incline instead of causing the line to dip into a sharp “V”.  But it was hopeless.  Plus the more I tried, the more I began to swirl around like an upside down propeller. “PLEASE COME AND GET ME, PLEASE – I CAN’T DO THIS BY MYSELF!”

“SURE JU CAN, LA-TY,” said my boy tour guide, as if he were speaking to a five year old.   “JES TRY HARDER.  I CAN SEE DAT JU JES NOT DOING JU BEST – DATS WHAT I TINK.”

As my body languidly twirled around and around, and my death seemed imminently near, I am not proud of what I said next to that child, but desperate times call for desperate measures:   “LISTEN. . . YOU LITTLE SON-OF-A-BITCH; CAN’T YOU SEE I’VE FLAT LINED, HERE!   NOW GET YOUR SKINNY LITTLE ASS OUT HERE AND PULL ME BACK TO THAT PLATFORM BEFORE I GO CRASHING DOWN TO THE RAIN FOREST FLOOR AND BREAK INTO A MILLION PIECES!  SO HELP ME GOD, IF I FALL AND DIE, I PLAN TO COME BACK FROM THE DEAD, HUNT YOU DOWN, AND OPEN UP A CAN OF WHUP ASS ON YOU THAT WILL NEVER END!  YOUR OWN MOMMA WON’T RECOGNIZE YOU WHEN I’M FINISHED WITH YOU!”  And on that note, I began to wail like a frightened child lost in the middle of a dark forest, as my body twirled round-and-round out of control high above the forest floor.

******

I am discovering that our lives are a compilation of stories that sometimes we have little or no control over.  But we do have choices.  We can choose to hang tough with and for each other until we’re rescued from the middle of a zip-line or become a crocodile’s lunch, or we can give up and let someone else write our story.

WW had discovered a universal truth during his “mountaintop experience” that I didn’t know at the time, but would soon learn:  our lives are stories that connect to each other and to a universal story.  It is up to us to make sure that our storylines don’t get hijacked or become lopsided, and that we keep an authentic mix of love, adventure, sorrow, struggle, comedy, community, and worship if we want to remain vibrant and connected to each other and God.  We can’t always control what others do to us, but we can control how we respond to any given tragedy, mayhem, or offense.  We can’t know what the future will throw at us, but we can try to be as wise as possible about our choices – given that there are no insignificant ones.   It turns out our personal reality shows need to be carefully cultivated into lives that are well-lived and brimming with love.

It has been many years since the rain forest adventure.  Some type of employment returned (as it always does) and our errant child grew up and got a saner reality show entitled “What the Hell was I Thinking!”  When my husband awoke the other day, he had such a contented smile on his face that I asked him what he was thinking.  He replied, “I’m thinking how I could have never done this journey without you, and what a very, very lucky man I am.”  And then he got a mischievous twinkle in his eye and said:   “I’m also thinking of doing a Google search on African safaris.”

To which I replied in my best, Wanda Sykes imitation as I passionately kissed him good morning:  “You so crazy!”

Author and “International Adventurer”

If I have a hope, it’s that God sat over the dark nothing and wrote you and me, specifically, into the story, and put us in with the sunset and rainstorm as though to say, “Enjoy your place in my story. . . .”

A Million Miles in a Thousand Years   by Donald Miller

Photos by “WW” Tomczyk except where otherwise noted

Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Eleanor Tomczyk and “How the Hell Did I End Up Here?” with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

 

COUPmance Tango

Do you know what I’ve discovered?  Trying to find couple friends as an established married couple, who aren’t insane, full of crap, religious fanatics, nasty-ass swingers, or Amway sales people are like trying to find a virgin in the Playboy mansion.  You know, like the couples in the movie “Couples Retreat” who irritated the hell out of one another at times, but would go to the ends of the Earth to be with each other and help each other over the hurdles of life.

“Couples Retreat” Movie Trailer|| Vince Vaughn, Kristen Bell, Malin Akerman, Jason Batemen, Faizon Love, Kali Hawk, Jon Favreau and Kristin Davis

No one ever tells you if you can manage to make friends in high school and college that that is as good as it is going to get.  But once you move (which statistics show Americans do every three years or so), or your roommate from your “Friends” days marries an asshole, or you marry late in life, or you’re shy, it is damn near impossible to establish a Lucy and Ricky Ricardo relationship with a Fred and Ethel Mertz—best buds forever who stick with you through thick and thin.

“I Love Lucy”||Ricardos and Mertzs||Google Image

I thought the only ones having trouble making couple friends at this stage in our lives were my husband WW (White and Wonderful) and me until I read an article from 2007 and discovered that couples of all ages were facing the same hurdles:  “Doubling the tension:  Being a couple is hard enough, but socializing with other couples can be tough” by Rita Pyrillis from Crain’s Detroit.com.  WW and I could have written that article.   In our quest to find “normal” friends who live in the same town, we have met some of the weirdest, oddest, rudest, sorry-ass couples known to man, and we were beginning to think the problem was us.  We had begun to ruminate maybe we had bad breath or horrible body odor until we started asking other couples if they had suffered similar nightmarish couple ventures.  Come to find out, compared to most, we were doing all right—most of the others were completely traumatized and had decided to give up the ghost and become hermits.

As soon as I realized that couples from all age groups and all nationalities were suffering the same dearth of relationships and nobody knew why, I decided to take up this subject at my “moonlighting” job on Curious Talk-Radio as my alter-ego, Big Mama.  What I learned from that show blew me away.  I was stunned by the things I heard and I’m still not sure how to process it all.

******

TRANSCRIPT OF “BIG MAMA SPEAKS”

CURIOUS XM RADIO, CHANNEL 127||airing 12:01a.m. – 12:59 a.m. Mon – Fri

“Big Mama Speaks” radio show opens with the theme song from the 1980’s TV sitcom “Cheers”: “Where Everybody Knows Your Name”—written by Gary Portnoy and Judy Hart Angelo.

“Making your way in the world today takes everything you’ve got.

Taking a break from all your worries, sure would help a lot.

Wouldn’t you like to get away?

Sometimes you want to go

Where everybody knows your name,

and they’re always glad you came.

You wanna be where you can see,

our troubles are all the same

You wanna be where everybody knows

Your name. . . .”

BIG MAMA:  Well, good evenin’, Babies.  How’s life out there in the twilight zone tonight?  If you’re hearing my voice then you’re workin’ the midnight shift, comin’ home from the four to midnight shift, or you’re Cinderella and you’re just plain doing things you shouldn’t be doing after the clock has struck midnight.  You know Big Mama’s motto:  nothin’ good happens after midnight except moi, Babies, so you might as well go home, stay out of trouble, and hang with me tonight!

Tonight’s show is dedicated to all those lonely couples out there, looking for “coupmance.”   You know, couple romance, just like two straight guys can have a “bromance”—I mean good friendships, no swingers shit—(get your mind out of the gutter, Bruno).    So many married people are looking for compatible married couples to be friends with in all the wrong places and coming up with . . . bupkis!   Let’s call it what it is.  There is no other way to express it.  But why is it so hard to find couples to just “hang” with, Babies?  We don’t need a rocket scientist to solve our dilemma; you know what I’m sayin’?   We just need people to do the right thing by each other.

After a lot of thought and discussion with my man, WW, I’ve decided that in order for couples to meet other quality couples in life, we have to have what WW calls our “Nyeculturnik-dar” operating at all times.   Nyeculturnik is Russian (from the adjective “Некультурный” ) and basically means a “really crude person.”   WW says most of the crap that happens in life is because people are being “Nyeculturniks” (Did I tell you that I’m married to one smart white man and he speaks several languages—Russian being one of them?).  Anyway, WW says one has to have a fine-tuned radar to ferret out the really crude people (stingy, humorless, rude, and disrespectful), and you do that by immediately discerning who people really are underneath (and I paraphrase Maya Angelou):  “People will always show you who they are; when people show you who they are, believe them—the first time, not the ninth time!”

So, Babies, I’m interested in hearing from my audience.  What are some of the worst “coupmance” dates you’ve experienced in your search to belong and build community?  Call in and tell Mama your stories and we’ll do a little “coupmance” commiseratin’ together.

GENEROSITY

Walrus overwhelmed by the generosity of a birthday “fish gift”|| pinned by Tan WeiJie on Pinterest

CALLER #1:  Hi, Big Mama, I’ve got a real “Nyeculturnik” story for you.   I’m from Atlanta, Georgia and my husband and I moved here after graduate school, and we’re having the dickens of a time meeting other couples.  After not meeting anyone in over two years, we recently met a couple that we thought we’d have a lot in common with and invited them over for dinner.   I just graduated culinary school and made a dinner that I had hoped would be a real gift to jump-start our friendship.  I made spinach salad with goat cheese and walnuts with a homemade raspberry dressing, herb roasted chicken with roasted tomatoes and English summer peas, garlic mashed potatoes, and a lovely grilled peaches and cream dessert.  The meal was bookended by fresh lime margaritas and a lovely pinot grigio.  The couple stayed for hours.  We all seemed to have such a good time and the other couple volunteered that we should get together and have dinner at their house the next time.  Well, the next time came and my husband and I were so excited, but when we went to our “coupmance’s” house, we were informed that they were just too tired to cook and would we mind going to Chuck E. Cheese with them and their three children because it was one of the kid’s birthdays.  (I’m from another country and I had never heard of Chuck E. Cheese or I must admit, I would have fled and gone screaming into the night.)  To add insult to injury, when we got to the restaurant, the couple raced ahead and paid for their families’ meals with a coupon and left us standing there at the counter to pay for our own meal “sans coupon,” in a sea of colorful balls and screaming kids, to eat the worst food I’ve ever had in my life.  Two hours later I had a splitting headache from the cacophony of little kid screeches and this couple had the nerve to suggest that “y’all, we’ll have to get together and do this again real soon—wasn’t that fun!”   Did I mention that their kids were the worst brats this side of the Atlantic Ocean and the “birthday girl” kept peppering us with one annoying question that was on a continuous loop all evening:  “Where’s my birthday present—didn’t you bring me a present—everybody else gives me presents?”  Did I also mention that I’d never been in a Chuck E. Cheese restaurant before and never plan to go again?  In fact, my husband is getting a vasectomy after that experience into multi-color-ball hell.

BIG MAMA:  Lord, have mercy, child!  You mean to tell me that you put all that effort into cooking a fabulous meal for this Atlanta couple and they pulled the cheap-ass stunt of making you pay for dinner at a cheap-ass restaurant with their nasty-ass kids and never told you beforehand?

CALLER #1:  Yep, and my meal for them was delicious, if I do say so myself, Big Mama.  We don’t have kids and our home is nicely appointed and given to hospitality, relaxation, and peace.  In other words, their experience with us was not a goddamn noisy Chuck E. Cheese, house of horrors which still causes me to break out in hives when I think about it!

BIG MAMA:  Um, um, um, um, um!  I hear you, Baby!  Change your cell phone numbers and move to the other side of town so that you’ll never even have the potential of accidentally running into these cheap-ass mofos.  Generosity is one of the key components of any relationship.  If people aren’t generous in the beginning of a relationship, it will only get worse with time.  Hang in there, you’ll find a good “coupmance.”  Don’t get discouraged.

Caller number two.  My producer says you hail from Boise, Idaho.  What’s your “Nyeculturnik” story?

RUDENESS||Google Image

CALLER #2:  Blessings to you and yours, Big Mama.  I am a Christian and I try to build my friendships within the Church because that’s where I feel God is “calling” me to invest my time and energy.   The Bible says that “light should not fellowship with darkness,” and I truly feel that “birds of a feather should flock together so as not to fall into sin.”  Well, I have developed a friendship with another mother in my Bible study group and we hit it off real well becaise she seemed like the “perfect” Christian woman.  I had planned to invite her and her husband to play golf in the near future to try and build a relationship as couples.  Recently I dropped by my new friend’s house to drop of a gift for her birthday and her husband was there with her.  I hadn’t been in their home more than 10 minutes when I heard him mutter, “You said you were going to stay for just a minute, so why aren’t you leaving”?   At first I thought I had misunderstood him and said:  “Beg pardon—what did you say”?  He repeated it— just loud enough for me to hear— but not enough for his wife to hear.   (She had walked into the other room to get me a cup of coffee.) “You said you were going, so why don’t you GO,” he said.  I was stunned, Big Mama, and I couldn’t move fast enough to get out of there.  I sit beside this man and his wife in the same pew every Sunday and he treated me like I was a Communist or something.  Wouldn’t you call him a “Nyeculturnik”?  Wait a minute . . . is “Nyeculturnik” one of those Communist words?  Oh, dear. . .

BIG MAMA:  Girlfriend, I hate to break it to you this way, but you’re fucked.  I think there might be two “Nyeculturniks” in your story”:  the husband and you!  (Lord, Jesus, where do I begin?)  First of all, what is this “light should not fellowship with darkness” thing?  Who you callin’ darkness, Miss Thang (according to the Bible you read, we “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God”)?  Do you know that not too long ago in Christian history, the Scofield Reference Bible defined the scripture you quote as God not wanting whites and blacks to date or intermarry?   Well, history has proven that Mr. Scofield was full of shit and way off base.  So who died and made you God so that you get to determine whose heart is “dark” unless they reveal that to you?  Don’t misunderstand me, I get what you’re saying about people showing their true colors and revealing their “Nyeculturnik” ways, but how can you predetermine someone is a “Nyeculturnik” just because they don’t attend your church?

Some of the biggest assholes Big Mama ever met belonged to churches I’ve attended.  Not that long ago, WW and I joined an adult Sunday school class (our last foray in trying to make the modern church thing work) that was called, “Building Relationships.”  This class was in one of the richest, whitest, most prominent churches in our area.  The leader encouraged us to sign up to eat dinner together in small groups once a month in order to get to know each other in our overstressed and overworked congregation of lawyers, doctors, politicians, and CEOs who all lived in million-dollar mansions (except for WW and me).  When I went to sign up for a group with the coordinator on behalf of WW and myself, the woman looked me straight in the eyes and said there were no more spaces available (“sorry”) because most people in the Sunday School class only owned six place settings, not eight.  Really, SERIOUSLY?!  I grew up in the ghetto and even I had more than six place settings.  The plates may have been cracked and mismatched but you could eat off of them.  And if that didn’t work, there were always paper plates from the corner store.  WW and I left that church as soon as the Sunday service was over and knocked the dirt off our feet, so to speak, never to return.

Now as to your friend’s husband, a newborn baby would sense your “church-going” man was the epitome of rudeness and he wasn’t going to get any better.  My advice to you is that you’d better flee that “couple relationship” because honey, “when a person shows you who they are, believe them the first time . . .” In the meantime, darlin’, if you really want to experience the best that God has to offer from his great community on this planet, try widening your circle beyond your church and go out and meet people with an open mind.  You just might be pleasantly surprised at the quality couples you find.

Caller number three:  My producer says you’re calling from Morgantown, West Virginia and you’re having an Aretha Franklin “Nyeculturnik” issue.  What’s the problem, Baby?

“Respect for Others”||copy of a Jeffrey Michael Green painting from Fine Art of America Gallery

CALLER #3:  RESPECT, goddamn it, Big Mama—I need respect!  I can’t get respect from my best friend’s new husband.  She married a Neanderthal and now she expects us to have this cozy couple relationship and I just can’t do it, Big Mama.  She says that if I loved her I would ignore her new husband’s jabs because she knows him and deep down inside he doesn’t mean the racist things he says.  What I’m trying to determine is if my friend’s new husband is a “Nyeculturnik” or not?

BIG MAMA:  Hum . . . give Big Mama and our listening audience a couple of examples.

CALLER #3:  It started the night before their wedding.  We flew all the way to Bermuda for a destination wedding with my friend and this hillbilly and when he met me and my husband (we are an interracial couple, they are white), the first thing he said was:  “Cindy told me you were a salt and pepper couple; I got no problem with the race-mixin’ for the most part, but I do think people should stick to their own kind in general ‘cause Coloreds and Whites approach life differently.  If God had wanted us to mix and match the races, he would have made us all zebras, if you know what I mean—yuck, yuck!”

BIG MAMA:  Oh, no he didn’!

CALLER #3:  Oh, yes he did, Big Mama.  Now he’s joined the Tea Party and dragged my friend with him and what he says about our first black president, I can’t even begin to repeat or I will really explode and you will lose your listening audience.  My friend says if I knew his mother than I’d understand.  Bullshit, the hell with his mother—that hillbilly is responsible for his own thoughts and words.

BIG MAMA:  Calm down, Baby. No need to call people names.  Some of my best friends are “hillbillies,” and they saved by life at a time when it needed saving which is another story for another show.  As far as this dude is concerned, Flee, Baby, flee!  No respect means the inability to build a decent “coupmance,” and with lack of respect there can be no true bond.   Your friend’s husband is a “Nyeculturnik” from way back, and your ex-roommate has become a “Nyeculturnik” by not standing up for her friendship and defending you against her new husband’s ignorance.  Big Mama’s so sorry you’re losing a friend, but your personhood can’t afford her or her husband.

(SOUND OF THE CHEER’S THEME SONG STARTS TO PLAY)

BIG MAMA:  Well, that’s all we have time for, Babies.  Big Mama’s gonna have to call it a night.  But until we meet again, keep working on your “coupmances,” and to rip off a phrase from the playbook of the late, great Soul Train’s Don Cornelius, “I’m Big Mama and as always in parting, I wish you Peace, Love, and Happiness”!

******

I am discovering that this “couple romance” thing is a huge deal because it is one of many aspects of “community.”  If you have it, you feel as if you belong—if you don’t, you feel isolated, lonely, and lost at sea.  This is so because humans were not built to live outside of community, and having friends to socialize with, no matter what your social configuration (single, married, or married with children) is a necessity for strong mental health.  It doesn’t just take a village to raise a kid, it takes a village to provide community in order to survive our life and times on Earth.  In case you haven’t noticed, it is pretty rough living on this rock.

In fact I’m feeling a little weary myself, and I’ll probably take a rest next week because WW and I are going to the wineries and hot-air ballooning with a couple we met a couple years ago.  They are the salt of the Earth and just knowing them has made our lives so much richer and fuller.  From the moment we met them, we knew they were a gift from God.  We can talk about any and everything and never run out of interesting conversations.  I’ve never known an evening to drag with them, yet we are so different.  They are younger and I am old enough to be their mother, we are religious and they are not, we are an interracial couple and they are white, the husband is a Republican and I am a recommitted Democrat, they like sports and WW and I would rather drink poison than attend a sports game, we are singers and actors and they can’t carry a tune, WW and I knew each other 6 years before marrying and they met on an online dating site, we’ve been married for thirty-four years and they’ve been married for two years.  They inspire us to “keep it real” with their new, freshly-minted love, and they say we inspire them with the longevity of our romance—we all have the ability to laugh at ourselves and to “pee our pants” from laughing at the humor that flows continually from each other.   Our “coupmance” husband and wife also excel in Big Mama’s litmus test:  they are generous to a fault, funny as all get out, deeply kind, and passionately respectful to everyone.  It doesn’t get better than these two when you’re building a “coupmance.”

A note of interest:  All the stories used on the Big Mama Talk Radio show actually happened to WW and me in our quest to find community and belong at various points in our lives.  The names and the towns have been changed to protect the “Nyeculturniks” they represent.

******

“Community is a sign that love is possible in a materialistic world where people so often either ignore or fight each other. It is a sign that we don’t need a lot of money to be happy–in fact, the opposite.”― Jean Vanier, Community and Growth

“Ever console or scold people hurt in human relationships that satisfaction comes from God alone? Stop. Adam’s fellowship with God was perfect, and God Himself declared Adam needed other humans.”  John Ortberg Jr., Everybody’s Normal Till You Get to Know Them

“Our lack of community is intensely painful. A TV talk show is not community. A couple of hours in a church pew each Sabbath is not community. A multinational corporation is neither a human nor a community, and in the sweatshops, defiled agribusiness fields, genetic mutation labs, ecological dead zones, the inhumanity is showing. Without genuine spiritual community, life becomes a struggle so lonely and grim that even Hillary Clinton has admitted “it takes a village”.”― David James Duncan

Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Eleanor Tomczyk and “How the Hell Did I End Up Here?” with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

 

So What Was That All About?

Do you know what I’ve discovered?  Before we heterosexuals try and pull the speck out of the eye of our gay brothers and sisters regarding the “sanctity of marriage,” we need to work on pulling the logs out of our own eyes when it comes to the mockery of marriage that so many of us have so cynically engaged in.  I attended Kim and Kris’ wedding a few months ago (I’m just like “this” [two fingers crossed] with the Kardashians), and I am so upset over Kim’s announcement that she is breaking up her marriage with Kris Humphries after only 72 days — I just don’t feel like celebrating another wedding ever again.  I mean I used to love these expensive, over-the-top weddings, but I’m stunned at the revelation of the demise of Kim and Kris’ marriage after such a huge shindig.  They were cast so perfectly for the reality show, and they had such a perfect fairy tale wedding.  Ask any of my friends:  I can’t shake off my grief.  I’ve become such a mess over the demise of their union that I had to write Kim a letter and get some of my disappointment and frustration off my chest.  I mean she’s like a daughter to me, so I have the right to get all up in her business if I want to, if you’re wondering – if you really want to know.

Google Image/Kim Kardashian

Hello Pookey:  I hear you’re an absolute wreck these days.  I’m so sorry.  I tossed a coin to see whether I should write to you or Kris, and I chose you because I really don’t think that child has the sense he was born with (we’ll tackle that boy’s maturity level another day).  Now you know how long your mother and I have been friends.  We go way back to the O.J. and Nicole Simpson days when they claimed to have a happy marriage, and you know what happened to them.  And as your favorite aunt who has been happily married for over 32 years, I felt that I had the gravitas to be able to write you this note. You remember how much I loved, loved, and triple loved your wedding that happened JUST A FEW MONTHS AGO?  Everything was perfect!  The entire affair was just to die for!   But now I hear you are divorcing Kris’ ass after only 72 days.  I also hear you’re not planning on giving Kris back the two million dollar engagement ring he gave you.

I’m sure you don’t want to hear this, Baby-girl, but give that child back his little 20.5 carat piece of shiny carbon, ‘cause nobody can claim to have been married when they call it quits after only 72 days.  That wasn’t a marriage, Sugah — that was an extended sleep-over with benefits.  One of your anonymous peeps said to Jennifer Garcia of People Online that “Everything she (Kim) dreamed of in her mind was right there in front of her but what she realized is that her heart wasn’t there.”  Were you in love with “being in love” and then reality hit?  Real reality (not staged reality) is a bitch, isn’t it?  You see Kim, baby, — fantasy is one thing, real life is another — and all marriages (if they are to survive) have to grow up in the reality of immature actions, screaming babies, sickness, unemployment, bad breath, laundry, disappointment, occasional smelly farts, and annoying habits.  You can’t cry “cut” like you do on your reality show when you’ve had enough.  Real love can conquer all that.  Just ask your Uncle WW and me.  BUT, GIRLFRIEND, YOU NEED MORE THAN 72 FUCKING HOURS!  Am I getting through to you here?  Also, I don’t mean to be cruel or anything, but times are hard and if you’re really serious about calling it quits with Kris, then Uncle WW and I would like our twin Dalmatian puppies back.  I don’t know what the hell we’re going to do with them, but we’ll think of something, ‘cause those suckers cost us a pretty penny.

One final note, Baby-girl:  If you really knew that you were making a mistake when you walked down the aisle, but you were too scared to call it off because of all the money and the pomp and circumstance involved — as a woman, I get it; I really do.  It takes a lot of courage to say, “I can’t go through with this; I’ve made a huge mistake.”  If you’ve discovered he’s a serial killer or a pedophile or worse, then by all means get your ass out of Dodge, and I’ll be the first in line to hide you in my attic.  But if you’ve done this for a publicity stunt as your former publicist, Jonathan Jaxson, has eluded to, or because you’ve just discovered Kris isn’t your fantasy Prince Charming, but just a dumb ol’ jock — girl, what credibility you had with me has just been shot to Hell.

 

Google Image/buzzle.com

After I sent that pissy note to Kim Kardashian, I realized there were a bunch of other people who needed to give me back the wedding presents I’d sent them because when I sent those items, it was in good faith, and they were supposed to stay married “until death did them part.”  I decided to send out a bunch of “re-po” notes repossessing my wedding gifts from the most egregious marital felons.  I didn’t give two-hoots about the gifts (they were already used or re-gifted on their part, anyway) but I wanted to make a point about how they had pissed me off.

Google Image/J. Lo, Marc Anthony, and children

Dear Jenny from the block and my main man M-A:  Really?  Seven years?  Is that the best you can do here? Did you not learn from your other marriages?  You both said you did when we chatted at your engagement party.  Now, Jenny, you know I love you, baby.  But I read online that you said, after leaving Marc Antony, in order for marriage to work, “You’ve got to love yourself first.  And until you value yourself enough and love yourself enough to know that, you can’t really have a healthy relationship.”  What kind of Scientology bullshit is that? You have to value each other enough that you choose each other over everything else – you have to both put each other first.  Couldn’t you two have figured out how to cherish each other before the twins were born?  Our children would like us to halfway have our shit together before we birth them so that we don’t mess up their lives, because contrary to popular belief, “the children will not be all right”— at least not without a bit of a struggle.  Anyway, please send me back the ant farm WW and I gave you for a wedding present (the ants are probably dead, anyway).

Google Image/Al and Tipper Gore

Dear Al and Tipper:  40 years!  F-O-R-T-Y Y-E-A-R-S!  After forty years, unless you two were into some kinky shit you hadn’t told me about, or Al had turned into a wife beater, could you not have figured how to work this out?  You’re saying that you just “drifted apart.”  People don’t just drift apart after forty years.  Al: Do you remember what you said on the Larry King show in 2002?   “Well, we fell in love, and we’ve stayed in love, and we’ve worked very hard when there were hard times to work it out, and not that we ever thought about divorcing or anything like that. I don’t mean to imply that. I mean that I think people need to work it out.”  So, “liar, liar, pants on fire,” what in the hell happened here?  Good grief!  I not only want my Ginsu knives back, but I want you to purchase me a new set ‘cause I know after forty years even Ginsu knives won’t be able to cut butter.

Google Image/Arnold Schwarzenegger

Arnold, Arnold, Arnold:  What the fuck?!   You are such a mangy dog — just downright nasty, dude!  What kind of sorry-ass governor campaigns on a family values platform, “schtups” his maid in his house, and fathers a child with her, all the while keeping the baby a secret from his wife for thirteen years while the baby’s mother continues to scrub your floors and clean your nasty-ass toilets?  And weren’t you the one who called out ‘single mothers’ as one of our biggest social problems when you were running for governor?  Sheesh Louise, Arnold — you flushed twenty-five years of marriage down the proverbial toilet!  Give me back my gold-plated “his and her” ThighMasters, today!  On second thought, my girl, Maria, can keep hers, but I want yours back so that I can burn it.  Eeuuw! “Hasta la vista, baby!”

******

 IMP. NOTE:  This is a satirical essay on marriage.  I do not know the people listed above; I have no desire to know these people no matter how talented and intelligent some of them might be.  The kind of people I wish I knew, keep eluding me – like Norma and Gordon Yeager.

Google Image/Norma and Gordon Yeager’s hands

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Yeager:   May I call you by your first names:  Norma and Gordon?  I would have given just about anything to have known you.  I read that you died the other day and I am so very sorry that I missed you.  The Iowa paper said you had been married for 72 years when you got into that horrific car accident.  You must be turning over in your graves when you hear that Kim and Kris are getting a divorce after only 72 days and you had been married for 72 years!

You were 94 years old, Gordon, and you were 90 years old, Norma, when you both died.  Your children said that you both would tell anyone who would listen that you had to stay around for each other, because, as Mr. Yeager was fond of saying:  “I can’t go until she does because I’ve got to stay here for her.” I’m so grateful that the hospital administration had the good sense to put you two together in the same room in adjacent beds in the intensive care unit.  Had the staff not done that, your children would have missed something magnificent when you reached for each other’s hands in your semi-conscious states and held onto each other for dear life.  Had you not been together at that crucial time, we all would have missed something gloriously spiritual when you died, Gordon, at 3:38 on October 19^th, but your heart monitor still continued to produce a strong, consistent heartbeat.  Then the nurses and doctors wouldn’t have seen something they’ve never encountered in their lives:  your wife’s heartbeat pumping through your clasped hands, and her heartbeat pulsing through your body which caused your heart monitor to continue to register a steady beat even though you were dead.  When you died, Mrs. Yeager, at 4:38 — exactly one hour after Mr. Yeager — the world lost a marriage that should have been celebrated on the front page of every magazine and newspaper, and should have headlined the evening news across the country.  When one of your sons (Dennis) was interviewed about you, he said:

“I don’t believe there was a big
secret to their marriage. Sometimes one or the other would get mad but they
worked everything out. 

 In the end, they chose each other and that was it. They were committed.”

******

Norma and Gordon:  When your children had you placed in the same coffin, holding hands, and then had you cremated and your ashes mixed together, I realized that I had encountered a marriage that was holy, and I wished WW and I had been a part of your lives.

******

I am discovering that there are other Yeagers out there (few and far between, but they are out there).  I accidentally ran into a “Norma” the other day and her name is Tina from Interior Elements .  She writes in her blog post “Married. . .” (married for 28 years): “Being married for a long time is a lot of work and eventually, when the expectations dwindle out of sheer mental exhaustion, you get to know the person you did not invent.  Or tried to re-invent.”  Yep, there is hope for us yet!

Google Image/Prince William and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge

Dear Prince William and Your Royal Highness the Duchess of Cambridge:  If you guys don’t go the distance, I’m giving up the ghost, and I’m demanding my velvet painting of Elvis back.  Forewarned is forearmed!

Tomczyks: Keepin’ it real after 32 years

More marriages might survive if the partners realized that sometimes the better comes after the worse.  ~Doug Larson

******

 Love seems the swiftest but it is the slowest of all growths.  No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century.  ~Mark Twain

 ******

I figure that the degree of difficulty in combining two lives ranks somewhere between rerouting a hurricane and finding a parking place in downtown Manhattan.  ~Claire Cloninger, “When the Glass Slipper Doesn’t Fit and the Silver Spoon is in Someone Else’s Mouth”

******

People do not marry people, not real ones anyway; they marry what they think the person is; they marry illusions and images.  The exciting adventure of marriage is finding out who the partner really is.  ~James L. Framo, “Explorations in Marital & Family Therapy”

All text and photos by Eleanor and John Tomczyk © 2011 except where otherwise noted

Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Eleanor Tomczyk and “How the Hell Did I End Up Here?” with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.