Column Impatient at Gods skill at matching
By JEANNETTE BATZ
The rooms glowing with
camaraderie -- or is it the pain pills? Ive celebrated my 40th birthday
by throwing my back out, and now Im high on codeine and even the
toasters glowing. Wait -- thats toast for my moms famous
deviled ham canapés. I watch her feed one to my friends baby boy,
cuddling him close on her lap and stroking the crumbs from his fat cheeks. If
only she had a grandbaby of her own, I think ruefully.
Then I realize its a double miss -- my friends
parents, never much enamored of even their own children, have barely noticed
her firstborn. She hides her disappointment well -- right now shes
talking brightly about politics -- but she keeps glancing over at my mom and
smiling.
Two other friends have sunk deep into the sofa, their laps
burdened with shrimp. Ones a gay man whose partner, Tom, nags him
constantly to care more about their house: How can he be such a slob and travel
all the time and forget to tell the lawn care people about the underground
sprinklers? The other, Jean, has an expatriate husband who just put the
Atlantic between them, claiming he could no longer face their cozy suburban
life and its incessant home improvement projects.
Shame Toms not straight, I think idly, or he and Jean could
do the Martha Stewart thing and set the other two free. My eyes rove around the
room, falling next on an intelligent, coolly fastidious woman fresh from an
Edith Wharton novel. Her husband, standing with impeccable formal courtesy at
her side, longs for kids and a dog and a yard -- all of which represent her
idea of hell, or at least a bad sitcom. Theyre being introduced to a new
couple that, unbeknownst to them, are their mirror image, with the wife
yearning for a baby and the husband unable to even say the word without
freezing between syllables.
Impatient at Gods lousy matching skills, I shake my head
sharply, and the Vicodin wooze free falls into my stomach. Maybe the Israelis
had the right idea with the kibbutz, I think queasily. Maybe you need at least
50 people cooperating before everyones dreams can be fulfilled.
Or did we all sabotage ourselves, gravitating toward the very
people who could not complete us?
I take the baby onto my lap, wondering if I would have felt more
comfortable with this moist helpless bundle of joy if my mom, who sacrificed
huge chunks of her life to raise me, hadnt urged me in a different
direction? The babys mom, on the other hand, is determined to create the
nurturing home she never quite experienced herself. My gay friend might be
tired of being chastised about the housework, but he was drawn to Tom in the
first place because living with him meant creating a home. My friend who yearns
for a yard and kids yearned even more fiercely for a woman who understood his
old-fashioned ways.
Pascal wrote of the God-shaped vacuum in each of us, but he forgot
to mention the gaping holes left by all our unmet needs and buried dreams.
Surely this is the very stuff of tragedy, the curse of being human?
My husband is watching the baby, his eyes soft. When he glances up
I expect a twist of pain at our decision, and instead what flies between us is
more tenderness, a shared acceptance of what we have and what well miss.
The babys mom is hugging my mom goodbye with extra warmth. My friends on
the sofa are engrossed, the shrimp plates teetering as they each labor to
explain the baffling behavior of the others absent partner.
Gradually the Vicodin wears off, and my all too human body makes
its limits known. The limits might be painful, I decide, but theyre not
tragic in the least. Our unmet needs teach and shape and soften us, even more
than the dreams we manage to fulfill.
The holes might look random and hollow, but they open a way to the
God shape.
Jeannette Batz is a staff writer for The Riverfront
Times, an alternative newspaper in St. Louis. Her e-mail address is
jeannette.batz@rftstl.com
National Catholic Reporter, April 27,
2001
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