Farewell, My Lovely

Today I read an article in Time. It doesn't happen often, the exception being when I am at the doctor's office or, as I was at the time, running in place at the gym. It was one of two magazines available that day on the rack—the other one being Yoga Today—and I was drawn to the cover, which promised to explain to me—and other Americans too busy for in-depth analysis—the struggle in the Middle East. In bite-sized nuggets I read about the crisis, I read the sidebar definitions about the differing warring factions, I perused the cleverly highlighted maps indicating bombings and borders, I turned the page. And then I read something else entirely. Something hopeful, like the kind of fluff piece you would expect after reading a disparaging story like the never-ending conflict in the Middle East in the kind of magazine like Time.

Does it make me look shallow to admit that this story moved me more than the previous one of major global significance? That on this particular day it resonated on a more personal level, that it spoke to me of promises yet to come, that it perhaps was the exact thing I needed to hear on a morning after waking up to the alarm, an alarm with a pre-recorded voice that happened to be the voice of my now ex-love, owner of the red shirt and keeper of my heart?

Not particularly well-written and ending before it ever seemed to develop, the article was about a marriage. A marriage between two young people with Down syndrome. A marriage cleverly orchestrated by two loving families. A marriage unexpected and innocent but no less impassioned than a Shakespeare play.

The couple, after meeting at a Valentine's Day party, began speaking daily by phone. Their parents explained that they could talk about things—like what they plan to eat for lunch that day—that they'd get bored with. Normally when disabled adults marry they loose a lot of their benefits. Add to that the general societal fear that they could reproduce and you can see why marriage in such situations is so rare.

But love is out there. And it's for anyone. Everyone. And that was what—in the parking lot of my local YMCA, keys in the ignition, perspiration evaporating—for one shining moment, took my breadth away.