You Never Asked That of Me

Dearest Rachel –

The other morning, as I was waking up to the stillness of the empty bedroom (which, after over a week of sharing hotel rooms and a ship’s stateroom with Daniel’s, ought to be a bit of a relief, but there you go), an earworm burrowed itself into my mind. You know the feeling. But what was weird about it was that a certain line got me to wondering about you and me… and Megumi.

Can you figure out the line that caught my ear? It’s the one about how “He’d give up all his comforts / And sleep out in the rain / If she said that’s the way / It ought to be.” It got me to wondering, would I be willing to do something like that, if I were asked to?

At the moment, I can think of maybe one person who, if she were to make such a suggestion, I would consider it long and hard. I won’t go into details, as I suspect she may read these letters over your shoulder and might recognize herself if I were to elaborate much further, but I’d say the possibility exists – although the odds of her making such a proposal would range somewhere between slim and none. Mind you, the fact that she might be reading this would also make me wary if, in the next couple of days, she were to make such a suggestion out of the blue; I’d have alarm bells going off in my head about whether she was trying to put this assertion to the test.

Then again, she’d be smart enough not to use Sledge’s lines verbatim; she’d probably put it in more subtle ways. Maybe suggest a camping trip, involving lying out in tents or something like that. If I wasn’t going into such details here and now, thereby preempting the possibility, I’d probably fall for it. Then again, if it was presented as if it was her idea, I might yet walk into it with my eyes wide open all the same.

Or perhaps not; the man Percy describes is a young man, infatuated with his beloved, willing to do anything she asks of him. At my age, there comes either wisdom or cynicism to spot the Catch-22 in the insistence that he change so completely for her sake. The way I understand it, love is supposed to be a unconditional thing between two people; when what is called ‘love’ is based on an if/then situation (“if you change to the person I want you to be, then I’ll consider loving you”), is it really love? Or is it something else, something less worthy of holding onto?

It leaves me wondering if I would really cave in to such a request, even from the person I’m describing. For the moment, I’d like to be presented with the opportunity to test the question, but I doubt it will ever happen.

***

The thing is, it’s not like this is a hypothetical that you and I bothered to test between each other. You never asked anything like this of me, in all of our years together. On the contrary, you let me be myself (sometimes even when it might have been to my advantage to change my habits) – and I’d like to think I returned the favor, for good or ill. Now, this mutual indulgence may explain the why – you never insisted I suffer for you, because it would require suffering with you (I’m assuming that the fellow is being asked to sleep out in the rain with the object of his affections – what would be the point, otherwise?), and as long as you weren’t suffering yourself, why push the matter?

Then again… maybe my nostalgia filter is kicking in here. Sure, you never asked me explicitly to change myself, but there are a few things I gave up willingly for your sake.

The first thing that comes to mind is the fact that I pretty much gave up watching sports, at least to the extent that I used to.  To be sure cover you indulged me at certain times (the Rose Bowl that Northwestern went to comes to mind, as well as the World Series in which the Cubs finally broke the curse – and thereafter, you suggested putting a “W” flag at my grandmother’s grave, which precipitated so much of what I understood you wanted done with yourself posthumously, even without a will), but for the most part, it wasn’t nearly so much fun to do so. It’s one thing to sit among family and discuss the ins and outs of a game, like at Thanksgiving; but on any given Sunday, but you didn’t understand that much of what was going on and weren’t interested in the intricacies of it all. Explaining what was going on (when you weren’t particularly interested, but would listen politely if I would get started) wasn’t as fun as watching it with fellow enthusiasts. Rather than seeking out a group of ‘the boys’ to watch this stuff (which I didn’t really have to begin with), I simply gave it up, for the most part. You never asked me to do it; it just went by the boards.

Then there’s the fact that you might have noticed while watching the videos I’ve been making of our recent trip. I look… different, don’t you think?  I’m not about to start touting the virtues of Dos Equis beer, but I have grown a beard that makes me look a little bit like him, I would fancy.  This is something that would never have happened during our marriage – while you were okay with me growing a soul patch for a few years, you mentioned at one point that you would not kiss a face with a mustache, and so I never grew one.  Understand, I’m not committed to this look; if ‘Megumi’ or ‘camping girl’ were to tell me they prefer me clean-shaven, it would come off straightaway, without a moment’s hesitation.

Finally, and most significantly, there’s the fact that we used to live in a bit of a mess, to put it mildly. At this point, I’ve gotten so used to a much more orderly house that I’d be hard-pressed to let it get as cluttered as it used to be.  I want to give you the benefit of the doubt, and say that you wished you could live in a more orderly place, but you just couldn’t bring yourself to get rid of your unnecessary possessions any more than I could (which would have made following Percy Sledge’s song to the letter difficult for either of us), and as a result it built up to the point where we had to make passages in various rooms to get around. I often would say that, if you were to come back, I would be willing to put up with that mess once again in a heartbeat, but that was something that I had to put up with for your sake.

So maybe you did, tacitly, ask me to live in a way that I wouldn’t have otherwise, and for you, I did it. And you know what? Given the right circumstances, I might just do it again.

I’d like to hope that the opportunity presents itself, and I can test myself as to whether I would – or even should – resist such insistences, but until they’re brought to my attention, I’d like for you to keep your eye on me, and wish me luck. Either way, I’m going to need it.