People who I meet for the first time around our fine county often look at this face and ask, “How many times have you been married?”
I guess it’s obvious from the hangdog look that I’ve been around the nuptial block more than once or twice. My stock answer is, “I’m on my second marriage for the third time,” which gets some good, quizzical looks from people.
At my age, roughly 74.17260274 years, I have earned my hangdog wrinkles and those tilted-head looks from new acquaintances. The younger ones look at me and think, “Ah, here’s a man of depth, experience, maturity, maybe even wisdom. He can help me sort sh** out.”
Sorry, kids. As I mentioned to a throng of 14 cherished family members last June at my third and final wedding, “By now, I should have keen insights into the nature of personal relationships. I do not. I know less now, in fact, than I have ever known. But I am curious about how relationships work, and I will remain curious. That is my pledge. Take that, cherished family members.”
As a kid, our household was about as safe as any mental or correctional institution you would care to name, maybe less so. What all that did was make me a student, a learner, a seeker of truth in the area of human interaction, from a practical, not an academic, point of view. I unconsciously sought to figure out how people might better work with each other, and with other resources, to achieve common ends.
A marriage is all about teamwork. Good teams, and I’ve been on some in school and at work, are much harder to assemble and sustain than most people are willing to admit. While good parenting is about creating an environment of unconditional love and unconditional limits, good marriage is about constantly shifting conditions, uncertainty, forbearance, forgiveness and recovery from error, lots of error. If one is not out there making mistakes, they won’t get much done. Take that, cherished family members.
Craig Corsini lives and writes in Marin County.
