Two-Part Invention

We made a trip out to Henderson’s Books yesterday and I traveled home with this fourth part of Madeleine L’Engle’s Crosswicks Journal series.  Two-Part Invention: The Story of a Marriage was especially intriguing to me, as I am new to marriage, and so I found this account of their early courtship through forty years of marriage hard to put down when we arrived home to our apartment later in the afternoon.  They had a kind of easy comraderie that I like to think Justin and I have, and it was a joy to read about it enduring through the decades.

We have both, throughout the forty years of our marriage, continued to respond with excitement to the same beauty–for instance, to certain pieces of music.  I remember driving up to Crosswicks one early spring day when we heard, over the car radio, the beautiful flute solo from Gluck’s Orfeo, and our response of delight was such that it has always been special music for us.  On a cold and dank day we walked along a beach in southern Portugal, arm in arm, gazing in awe at the great eyes painted on the prows of the fishermen’s boats.  One night we stood by the railing of a freighter and were dazzled by the glory of the Southern Cross against the blackness of an unpolluted sky.  If this kind of simultaneous recognition of wonder diminishes, it is a sign of trouble.  Thank God it has been a constant for us.

Love of music, of sunsets and sea; a liking for the same kind of people; political opinions that are not radically divergent; a similar stance as we look at the stars and think of the marvelous strangeness of this universe–these are what build a marriage.  And it is never to be taken for granted.

Periodically during my life I have needed times of assessment, of stepping back from my life, our life, and contemplating.  When I was twenty-nine I wrote in my journal that I did not expect to die soon, but if I did, at least I would know that I had lived.

That was at twenty-nine, when I had been married for two years.  It is far more true today when thirty-eight more years of marriage have been added.  This is a summer for reviewing and reassessing.  My husband is ill and I do not know how it is all going to end.

Of course we never do. 

When I had trouble sleeping last night, I read through the second half of the book, traveling through her husband Hugh’s battle with cancer, through her grief and loss.  I tearfully turned the last page around 12:35 am, rolled over and hugged my sleeping husband as hard as I could.  I can’t even imagine.  

Although Hugh passed away in 1986, Madeleine continued writing and lecturing up until her death this past year in September.  She was a beautiful writer, and I’m grateful for her words.

the poem which inspired the name…

Just in case you were curious.  I think the poem is brilliant. 

From T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets

Trying to learn to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it.  And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion.  And what there is to conquer
By strength and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope
To emulate–but there is no competition–
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious.  But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying.  The rest is not our business.

–T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets, East Coker, V