While writing on this blog, I am often excited by its public nature. The internet is a miraculous thing, a forum where my thoughts can be cast out into the world, never knowing who they will stumble upon. But at the same time it is frightening, that one’s own opinions and writing can be evaluated and internalized by such an unknown audience.
Recently our blog had a very interesting comment in response to Sattie’s Post: A Good Man is Hard to Buy and given my interest in aging I thought I would reflect on its powerful nature.
Cesar Calva posted:
“The stories you provide lack the maturity of an 81 year old widow who had 43 years of happiness at the side of his elected wife. To begin with we met in a cemetery of our grandparents grave. She was 11 years old, I was 19, the tomb her family visited was one tomb from that of our grandparents. I saw her and her family sitting and looked at her with the thought, how happy this eleven year old girl will make her husband. Eleven years old, I did not know her name, but 11 years after, for my MD graduation I formally met her for the second time giving services to a Church dispensary 8 hours a day absolutely as a charitable gesture. She gave me 43 year of happiness and after widowing at age 74 my life was taken over by a four letter word 2 years after her death.
I was always warned to avoid four letter words. What is more at age 78 my nephrologist opted, for my well being to submit to hormonal castration. So I did. The power of four letter words then illuminated my life.
In the second poem I had written her appeared the ending phrase, your pleasure is my ecstasy. Remarkably I discovered the powerfulness of this particular four letter word that governed, and governs my existence, now at age 81, I discover the true meaning of the power of LOVE.”
In reading and analyzing these novels, I think all of us have tried to use our rational minds at times, at the expense of our imaginations, and irrational desires. I have personally scoffed at some of these women authors for propagating their idealist beliefs. For example, when Liz Gilbert attributed her nephew’s sudden ability to sleep to her channeling her love for him into the Gurgita, I practically gagged.
What is our problem with true love or love’s absolute power? We have come up with a million examples of why logically, it probably won’t work out. The balancing act between work, children and life seems to exist only to tell women they probably will be unsatisfied ultimately. It is like we are teaching ourselves not to believe in love because it is such a long shot, because it only exists in movies. More than anything, Cesar’s post re-instated my vanishing belief in true love and the power and wisdom that can only come with age.
His story is simple, and painful and beautiful. But if at age 81, widowed, he can find LOVE then God damn it, so can I. Times have changed, dynamics have changed, constructions of masculinity and femininity have changed but I don’t think it is so foolish to believe that the power of love can live on.
