The Fall Will Probably Kill You*

On September 7, 1968, a gathering of unsuspecting folks filed into a Unitarian church in Westport, Connecticut, and found the lyrics to the Richard Farina song posted above sitting on their chairs. The wedding they had come to attend would begin with a group reading of the lyrics. Grandmas, golfers, executives, little cousins, old aunts, moms and dads would all--for the love of the young couple making their vows that day--utter the words, however reluctantly, "And where was the will of my father when he raised his sword on high. And where was my mother's wailing when our flags were justified? And where will we take our pleasures when our bodies have been denied." 
Not exactly "We've Only Just Begun." But then it was 1968, the year of multiple assassinations, riots, and another war America's extravagant and evangelistic self-regard couldn't resist fighting. Would anyone in their right minds want to sing we've only just begun to all that? Still, "Children of Darkness" was a heavy load to drop on people who had just stepped out for the day to toss some rice, drink some bubbly, and wish you well. It was a lot for a couple of 20-year olds to impose on all the adults in their lives who were important enough to invite to their wedding. Twenty-somethings in the swirl of marriage plans often make very bad choices--including the choice of who to marry. Sometimes it takes years for the soundness of such choices to play out. As I sit here on the threshold of the 45th anniversary of my long-ago choices, two things are clear.
The first is that making "Children of Darkness" part of our wedding ceremony was a good thing for grounding everybody in the reality of the world Lorna and I were marrying ourselves into. I'm proud we made that choice and stood by it despite skepticism from concerned others. My only regret is that if we were getting married this weekend, we could still choose to feature that song and it would still be appropriate. 
The other choice--the more important choice of course--was in marrying Lorna. Marriage partners for as long as we've been makes us rare specimens and subject to immense curiosity and much speculation. How do you do it? We've been answering that question regularly--since the beginning actually when our choices of one another raised eyebrows among friends who only saw us through the prism of their lives. The answers we consistently give are not unlike what you'd find in a typical Huffpost feature on, say, "The Five Signs of a Healthy Marriage"--communication; humor; luck; allowing each other space; and when the inevitable disagreement crops up, making sure to stick to the subject of the disagreement and not let it become a proxy for litigating the entire relationship.
There's a story from one of our earliest "dates" that reveals that much of that was in play before we were married. Lorna was from the south end of Connecticut where they sailed and skied. I was from the north end of the state where we played baseball and football. "Ski" to me was the last syllable in most of the names at St. Adalbert's church which served our town's Polish Catholics. When Lorna suggested we go skiing, she may as well have been suggesting we go boar hunting. But I wanted her badly enough to say, "Yeah! Let's go skiing." 
1968 was not only the year of hideous political doings, but hideous ski technology. When I went in to be fitted for my rentals, I was told to raise my arm over my head. The ideal ski, I learned at that moment, would reach to the tip of my fingers. So I headed out into the wintry wonderland with two SIX-AND-A-HALF foot long, narrow wooden wedges strapped to my feet by metal contraptions that resembled nothing so much as small animal traps. Lorna led me to the "bunny slope" where I would learn to ski while she took the lift to the expert slope. The skis, which could've carried Vikings to Greenland, and the bindings which bound nothing, least of all my ski boots, would've been bad enough. But the fact that the humiliation was unfolding on something called the bunny slope made the whole exercise intolerable, so I retired early to the lodge. After an hour, Lorna found me, and she was bursting with the enthusiasm that I would come to know over years as her default position. She was perfectly sympathetic for my plight, but she had just the remedy. I would come up to the expert slope with her. "Really, you'll love it!" she exclaimed, with the gusto which would eventually lead her into a lucrative career in sales. "No one can ski on those bunny slopes. They're all dug up by novices falling all over themselves. The expert slope is smooth, and the scenery is beautiful. Come with me. Come with me."
As I said, I wanted her, so I went with her. The ride up was exhilarating, but when the lift reached the top and I caught my first glimpse over the horizon, my butt cheeks autonomously tried to suction my body to the lift chair. But the chair rudely dumped me out, and I tumbled to the snow. Lorna skied up alongside me smiling joyously, "Isn't it breathtaking?"  
Breathtaking. Yes, that would be a word. Heart stopping, too. And gut wrenching.  "I can't do this," I told her. 
"How will you get down?" she asked.
"I'll walk," I answered. And I did. With those Bunyanesque skis over my shoulders and with my cold ears ringing with insults from wisenheimers in the lift overhead--"Pussy!" "Wimp!" "Cherry!"--I made my way back down to the lodge. 
When Lorna joined me later for a hot chocolate, she was as effervescent as ever. Her run had been exceptional, she proclaimed. The next time, she promised, we'd get better skis and bindings for me. She knew it had been a rough day for me, she said, but she was so glad I'd come with her and given it a try. Better days were ahead, she predicted. 
And on that, she was right. With her in my life, how could the days be otherwise? 

* Loyal and attentive readers of this blog will know that the title of this one refers to this.