The most disgusting part of marriage

Before there was Duck, before there was the cruise…there was Dancing Queen.

One of Ada’s friends starred as Sophie in her high school’s production of Mamma Mia! and we were able to go the night before we left town to cruise. 

Ada’s friend was great, the lead singers were talented, and the choreography made me wish I could relive my college days wherein I may or may not have danced fervently to ABBA late at night under a miniature disco ball my roommate and I had taped to the ceiling.

Mamma Mia is a “jukebox musical,” which must be its excuse for its plot.  Because nobody watches it for profound philosophical musings, right?  Let’s be real, we’re just there for Dancing Queen.  

In the middle background:  evenly sliced potatoes.  In the far background:  the evil machine I used to evenly slice potatoes.  In front of evil machine:  the safety guard, which I was not using because it prevents you from getting that last thin potato slice, and also because “I’ll just be careful.”  The potatoes turned out quite tasty, after I had dumped tons of cheese on them and Ada had located and removed the chunk of my thumb that was also evenly sliced, while I laid on the floor trying not to bleed out and Jason googled whether we needed to go to the doctor. (We didn’t, and my thumb is growing back together.)

I saw the movie years ago and remembered being moderately grossed out by the storyline (as well as confused about what the song lyrics had to do with anything).  But I either forgot the ending or the stage version is even more unsatisfying than the movie.  Indiscriminate sex is a given; fatherhood is showing up at a key moment a couple decades after the fact; calling a marriage on or off is subject to the merest whim and signifies nothing.

Contrast that with my own bridegroom of nearly twenty years.  Conjugal love is not a sudden whimsy to be entered into for novelty’s sake, cycled through when the next stage of life presents itself.  It’s also not high unending passion or trysts set in Mediterranean island paradise.  And for heaven’s sake, it’s not throwing your internationally-gathered loved ones for a loop at the last minute because you were seized with the idea to ride a boat around the world together rather than go through with a covenant promise.

What is marriage?  It’s years of making the bed and taking out the trash and paying the mortgage and figuring out who needs the car that day.  It’s taking that car to get the oil changed, and endlessly doing dishes, and remembering to say thank you.

And worst of all, it’s being there in sickness as well as health; so that the man I attracted with the bloom and beauty of youth is the same one whose feet I still see approach through my sweaty curtain of hair when I’m bent over vomiting on the bathroom floor.  All these years later, he still comes to me with a towel and a cup of water, reassures me that he loves me, and tucks me in bed.  

I’ll take that kind of commitment over Grecian island trysts any day.