The going gets rough when opposites attract

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October 23, 2009

By Karen Middleton The News Courier Fri Oct 23, 2009, 04:50 PM CDT

ATHENS — On the cruise ship to Alaska, the woman stood out from the other travelers. A large, florid woman with frizzy gray hair, she was dressed in a sleeveless moo-moo type dress with splashes of lime green and lemon yellow flowers.

She looked more like someone you’d see sitting on a front porch swing shelling peas or passing out Popsicles to a passel of grandbabies than on the breezy deck of a cruise ship off the coast of Canada. She turned away from the hot tub area and hollered insistently to “Jake” to come out on deck.

Jake came out under duress from a side salon in baggy blue jeans and clunky brown shoes, hands jammed deeply in his jacket pockets.

“What?” he demanded grumpily.

“Look,” she said, pointing to snow-capped mountains in the distance. “It’s snow! Snow on the mountain!”

“Ooooo-aaaaah, snow on the mountain. Will ya look at that? Snow on the mountain! Ooooo-aaaaah,” he mocked his wife repeatedly.

I’m a people watcher. I suppose that’s why I chose journalism as a career. But somewhere inside I must also be a fiction writer because I take scraps of overheard conversation, fleeting glimpses of human behavior or quicksilver changes in facial expression and compose stories from my impressions.

In this story I saw the 70-ish couple as taking the first big trip of their lives. From their attire, I did not see them as seasoned travelers.

Maybe in photos from decades past this couple had appeared passably handsome, but now neither was—at least on the outside. However, the cheap cotton housedress and bad hair could not conceal the woman’s beautiful soul.

I could imagine her futile attempts over the years to try to inject a sense of wonder into the consciousness of this disagreeable man. But she never gave up.

So, one more time on the deck of the cruise ship she invited him to see glory through her eyes and once again he rebuffed her.

I was struck for possibly the thousandth time in my life about how two people so vastly different become attracted to each other and what holds them together year after year.

Maybe it’s habit, maybe it’s necessity or maybe it’s love.

This time, it must be love. What else could explain her tolerance?

What else could explain her continuing to mine what to others must seem to be a dried up vein?

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Karen Middleton

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