This afternoon an icy wind squeezed through our windows and since I stayed up too late last night, I made an early dinner then crawled into bed to watch half of It's a Wonderful Life.
I got to the part where George is told to go to 320 Sycamore and there he finds his sweet new wife, Mary, waiting for him. The old record player is roasting the chicken and the dining room, the bedroom, the checkered curtains at the windows--all are makeshift. But makeshift is what makes it all dreamy.
And Mary makes a confession to George. On the night of her graduation party when they broke windows in that same old house--and George wished for trips to exotic places and a future full of big, complicated dreams--she wished, simply, for George to be hers.
She wanted only to love and live with him in that dilapidated old house.
Let other people have complication. Let them turn marriage into a meeting of the minds--and then ridicule the whole institution when it doesn't work. And let them have their arguments about the Bible and make it appear like Jesus can only be understood within the confines of brain waves and a few college degrees. Let them use their ten dollar words and garbled essays which are designed to make the heart-led ones feel left out.
But I don't have time for all that.
No, I'm with Mary on this one. Because you see, Tom is on his way home from work and even after 26 years, we have what Mary and George had on their honeymoon in an old, old house. A simple, uncomplicated love here in our old house, a love which still prefers one another.
I recognized it on the tv screen and gasped, got teary-eyed, because it's still here, all of it, in our own old, broken-down house on this rainy night.
And it's still a wonderful life.
******
No comments:
Post a Comment