The early April showers poured down heavily outside the Lakeside Cafe. Through the half-open windows, the cool breeze sneaked into the café, with the audacity of an unwelcome guest.
Brian sat inside the Café as a prisoner to his self-grueling thoughts and emotions. “What soaring dreams we used to cherish, when we were in love? Didn’t we feel the magic of the imaginative light bulb turning on, and the bells ringing? After all, what happened to my two-hundred percent of certitude: “She is the woman I want to share the rest of my life with”?
Outside, the rain stopped abruptly, clearing up the foggy blanket over the lake. The sun scurried down to spruce up the lake with its light and warmth.
Seven years ago, Brian and Sandra were two unconnected individuals, working in a far-off land, chasing after a desert dream of a rich robust future. They crossed their paths daily, seldom noticing each other.
Not noticing the other is nothing despicable these days. In fact, it is considered an acceptable behavioral norm in the postmodern world, where the wheel of life is spun with a roaring speed.
Amidst climbing the covetous rungs of their respective corporate ladders, destiny brought them in a fender bender of love.
Back home, Sandra’s parents were busy making plans of an arranged marriage for her with a promising medical doctor. “With his reputable family lineage and an admirable social status, he certainly is a catch!” They lured her.
Sandra, effortlessly brushed off the ambitious streaks of their traditional logic. Being an innovative IT professional, she was used to wielding such instant shots! “Brian is my choice. He understands the stress involved in a corporate career. If you don’t agree, I will stay single, happily pursuing my career dreams!” She made a straightforward declaration of her stance.
Her homefolks, who firmly believed in the importance of marriage as a sacred design of God, unhappily gave into her stubborn logic of practicality.
Brian’s story was not any different either, except for its dramatic finale. His mother belligerently held on to her right for choosing her daughter-in-law. She substantiated her entitlement with the virtue of her bringing him up as a single mother since her husband’s death.
She surrounded him with an inexhaustible list of hurdles, why Sandra was not his match: “She is shorter, of darker complexion, and will not respect our family values and traditions.” The same cliché of a protective mother who could soon metamorphose into a self-absorbed mother-in-law!
Brian too had a well-resourced spiel for disarming his mother’s attack on Sandra. He presented an emotional account of Sandra looking after him when he fell ill in a foreign land where he missed his mother. He climaxed the story with a yours-faithfully-statement, “if it is not for Sandra, I would not be alive today”. Brian’s mum fell flat for the emotional twist in his story.
Like the fate of many marriages today, the magical light-bulb and the bells did not last long in theirs, too. They bumped into many difficult couple moments. Initially, they resolved these with understanding and patience for each other. But soon they ran short of those problem-solving skills. The well-restrained passive silence was replaced with confrontational altercations. Finding fault with each other became a routine scenario! They seldom engaged in any quality couple-time and lost their hope for a life-long togetherness. The ‘D’ word (Divorce), became quite common in their daily conversations.
This afternoon Brian was at a luncheon with a colleague who was also undergoing a difficult marriage, which could be ended anytime soon. Just like the aim of an experienced hunter that never misses the animal hiding behind the bush, the truthful confession of his friend, hit a chord in him, triggering the vulnerability and brokenness in his own marriage. Until now, he was able to stay put, tactfully avoiding them. Unexpectedly, the bubble that he created for so long, busted, instantaneously!
Pushed to the edge of his resistance by the surging truth of his marriage, he said to himself, “My pain is not about my friend’s marriage, but mine.”
In that moment of confronting his truth, he felt an inner urge, to leave the café. But he didn’t. He sat listening to himself, empathically, neither judging nor defending. With a renewed sense of self-acceptance, he befriended his thoughts and emotions, one after another. Making sense of his brokenness and vulnerability, he once more heard the words of his friend: “You know, it is easy to talk about divorce in the presence of my wife. It gives me a pleasure of settling scores with her. But the fact is, it hits me hard, when she is not present.”
Gripped by the power of self-acceptance, Brian stepped outside the Lakeside Cafeteria. As he walked towards the car, he realized that his mind was reminiscing the lines of a poem he studied in the school, a long time ago:
“I hold it true, whatever befall ;
I feel it, when I sorrow most;
‘Tis better to have loved and lost,
Than never to have loved at all”
He walked fast, hoping earnestly, that Sandra would be waiting for his homecoming!
∎
