Our club is called Mrs McLean’s Waltzing Party instead of Saint Teresa’s Terpsichoreans or Saint Michael’s Merrymakers because of a chance remark made by a small boy years ago when he was even smaller.
It is the custom of wise parents to instil Respect for Elders into their children, and thus one parish couple have trained their own–including the aforementioned small boy–to call me “Mrs McLean” instead of “Dorothy.” At the age of four or so, this young fellow seems to have had only a hazy grasp of social ties but knew affection when he saw it. It did not escape his notice that one of the gentlemen queuing for coffee in the parish hall had a particularly sunny smile for the Head Tea Lady. And thus, one day after spotting my husband, the child loudly announced to his parents,”That’s the man who likes Mrs McLean!”
This amusing anecdote was relayed to me by the boy’s father, and I cherished it in my bosom. When I hit upon the idea of organising dance lessons for The Youth and prophetically decided to ensure no blame could ever stick to our chaplains, I stamped the endeavour with the name my husband gave me.
The irony is that Mr McLean was never much interested in dancing, although like other Scotsmen he learned it and school and used it to court women, e.g. me. The tragedy is that he can no longer dance at all because of the pesky tumours that attached themselves to his spine. However, my husband remains Mrs McLean’s Waltzing Party’s keenest supporter and says, after every workshop or dance, “You are doing a Very Good Thing, darling.”
And I mention all this because it is St Valentine’s Day, an occasion on which many people think about marriage, particularly if they are not married but want to be.
When I wrote the “Seraphic Singles” blog, I had a lot of advice for Singles about getting through Valentine’s Day with good cheer: my best ideas involved going good deeds for other Singles, especially spending time with elderly widowed relations. But today I am pondering the attraction of marriage, once you get beyond the giddy fallen-in-love, sharing-favourite-poems, getting-tipsy-every-night stage. (Maybe getting tipsy every night is not a thing for everyone, but that’s how we rolled.) What is so attractive about marriage (especially a childless one) once you realise that, far from being a bulwark against suffering, the institution has suffering baked right in?
The answer is MEANING.
I see now that I will have to define the meaning of meaning off the top of my head. Well, I will do my best. Meaning, in this instance, is the spiritual underpinning, the spine-stiffening import, of challenges that are part-and-parcel of your own particular marriage (or other state in life). It is the realisation that you and other people are not just worthy of life, you and they are good.
Take the meaning of living with cancer, for example. My husband derives no little amount of meaning from going to work, despite the difficulties, not only because it is in keeping with his dignity, but also because it helps buy financial security for his future widow. And I derive an enormous amount of meaning from everything I do to help my husband live as normal a life as possible because he really does need it. I’m officially registered as a “carer”; the word we traditionalists are more likely to use is “helpmeet.”
The meaningfulness spreads outwards to neighbours, family and friends. Our next-doors and downstairs neighbours are kindness personified, as we might never have discovered had Mr McL not lost the ability to walk. Both our rubbish and recycling always manage to get to the kerb, for example. And when for whatever reason I am not at home, neighbours hold our spare keys, help my husband to his outdoor wheelchair (and put it away), and lay down the ramp (and pick it up again). Family members have spent vast sums on overseas travel to see us, knowing full well it may be some time before we can reciprocate. Friends have given lifts, fixed the boiler, helped tidy the garden, advised on legal issues, carried luggage, and even (when I recently fell ill abroad) served as a de facto next-of-kin. (Long story.) And this is all fantastic. It is wonderful! My day job is in online news, so all these physical-space examples of human goodness leave me in awe.
And what do we give back? After all, we’re not exactly Posh and Becks, or whichever power couple inspires the world. What do we return in exchange for all this goodwill?
Apart from the dances and parties, I like to think we give hope—hope that married love can and does—through the mercy of God—survive such disappointments as childlessness and such catastrophes as carcinomatosis. We don’t have a car, so we have many public opportunities to do this: kissing good-bye on the pavement on workdays, strolling and rolling to the bakery-café on Saturdays, and taking the bus together to or from Mass on Sundays. It is a different witness to Christian marriage from that of parents, but it’s still a witness. It still holds meaning.
And, meanwhile, we are merry.
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