Latest / My Playful Wife — A Tender Literary Love Story / My Playful Wife — Season 1, Episode 57: The Long View

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My Playful Wife — Season 1, Episode 57: The Long View · My Playful Wife — A Tender Literary Love Story

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and she was quiet and then she said the thing
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that reordered it because she is less afraid
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of this than i am and always has been and i think
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it is because she has already done it once i
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lost my mother she said my playful wife episode
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57 the long view written by mia we were clearing
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the top of the steel almirah on a slow gray sunday
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The monsoon massing somewhere over the city and
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the annual war against the damp begun. When Saloni
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handed down a flat tin box I had not seen open
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in years, and we sat on the floor with it between
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us and found, under a layer of old documents,
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the photographs of when we were young. There
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were not many. We are of the generation whose
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youth was only lightly photographed before everyone
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carried a camera in their pocket, and so each
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picture had a weight the thousands on a phone
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never have. There was one of the two of us just
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married, standing stiff and formal and absurdly
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young in front of somebody's car, not touching,
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a careful inch of respectable air between us.
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There was one from a year or two after, on a
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beach somewhere, squinting into a sun that had
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set 20 years ago. And I sat on the floor of the
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flat with the rain starting against the windows
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and looked at those two young people for a long
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time and felt the whole length of a life open
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up underneath the afternoon, backward and forward
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at once, the way it is only a few times before
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it is over. There are perhaps three or four such
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afternoons in a whole life, when the ordinary
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curtain of the present lifts for an hour and
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you see the entire arc of yourself at once, where
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you came from and where you are going, and the
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smallness of the lit middle you happen to be
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standing in. They cannot be summoned. They arrive
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on their own, almost always by accident. almost
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always carried and on some small object, a photograph,
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a smell, a dead relative's handwriting, that
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punches a clean hole through time and lets the
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draft of the whole thing blow through the room.
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This was one of them. I sat on the floor in the
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rising damp and let the draft blow through me
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and did not reach to close the window of it,
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because a man should look through that particular
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window every single chance he is given. It does
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not open often, and it never stays open for long.
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The strange thing, the thing I had not expected,
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was that I felt no real nostalgia for them, those
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two young people in the tin box. I felt tenderness,
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and I felt a little sorry for them, but I did
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not for one moment want to go back and be them
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again. Because I know something about that stiff
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young couple that they did not know about themselves,
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standing there with their careful inch of air,
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that they were already half asleep, or soon would
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be, and did not have the faintest idea what was
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coming for them, the long gray middle, the years
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of not seeing, the near loss, and then, late
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and undeserved, the waking. They thought, in
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that photograph, that they were at the best of
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it. They were not. They were at the easiest of
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it, which is a different thing entirely, and
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which the young always confuse for the best.
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The best was still decades off, and would not
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arrive until after a catastrophe had broken them
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open and a great deal of careful work had been
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done in the dark. I would not trade places with
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the man in that photograph for anything on earth.
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He had the smoother face and the fuller head
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of hair and the whole undiminished body, and
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he was asleep inside all of it, and I am awake,
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and awake is better than young. That is the first
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strange thing the long view shows you, that if
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you have done the work, the best part of your
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life is not behind you with the smooth face.
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It is here, with the gray coming in, and it is
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still, unbelievably, ahead. And then, that same
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evening, as if the day had decided to teach the
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whole lesson and not merely half of it, the telephone
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rang, and it was the friend whose dinner we had
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gone to, and his father had died. The old man,
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the one from the end of the table, the one I
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had watched only weeks before, listened to his
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wife tell a hundred -time story as though he
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had never heard it once. the one I had pointed
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myself toward as the very image of what I wanted
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to become, 41 years awake and still holding her
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hand under the cloth. He had gone to sleep ordinarily
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one night and simply not woken, which is the
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death we all say we want, and his wife of 41
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years had woken beside a man who was no longer
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there. And I sat with the dead phone in my hand
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and felt the long view complete itself. Swing
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all the way around to the part one had not let
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myself look at when I was busy admiring them,
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that the lit window at the end of the table was
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always going to come to this. That the reward
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for 41 years of staying awake to a person is
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that you are the one left most fully awake in
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the empty bed. The lighthouse I had wanted to
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become had one of its two lights go out that
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night. and the other one was still burning, alone,
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which is the whole of the long view in a single
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picture, and I had somehow managed not to see
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it until the phone rang. I had admired them so
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simply, that night at the dinner, the way you
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admire a thing from across a room without ever
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doing the arithmetic on it. I had seen only the
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warmth, the held hands, the 41 years. I had not
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done the sum that any warmth like that must one
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day be subtracted from, that every long marriage
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is a loan called in, always, by one death or
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another, and that the better the marriage the
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larger the loan, and the more crushing the eventual
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repayment. The old woman was making that repayment
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now, that very night, in a house gone suddenly
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enormous around her, and she was making it precisely
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because they had done it right. The couples who
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do it wrong are spared this size of grief. That
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is the terrible arithmetic at the bottom of everything,
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and I had looked straight at the lighthouse for
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a whole evening and somehow never once seen the
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rock it was built to stand on. Because here is
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what I understood, sitting on the floor with
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the young photographs and the old news at the
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same time. That everything the awake years had
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given me so far had been gain, and everything
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they had left to give was going to be loss. The
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waking had been a recovery. Every episode of
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it had been a thing returned to me. My wife given
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back, my own life given back, the color turned
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up, the gray rolled away. It had all run in the
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direction of more. But the man at the end of
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the table had shown me the other direction. The
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one the years actually run in once the recovering
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is done. Toward less. Toward the body's small
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betrayals, which have already, quietly, begun.
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The knee, the eyes, the morning stiffness I do
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not mention. Toward decline and illness and the
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steady subtraction that age is, and then, at
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the far end of it, certainly, unavoidably, one
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of us in a chair, having watched the other go.
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And I did not know, sitting there, what the doctrine
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was worth against that. It is easy to preach
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the looking when the looking keeps handing you
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back your wife, bright and recovered. But what
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is the looking worth when what you are looking
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at is the person you love growing frightened
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and small and ill? When the awake thing to do
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is to watch, clear -eyed, undefended, the slow
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loss of the one you have trained yourself never
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to look away from. I had built my whole second
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life on attention. And attention, I saw now,
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was going to mean, at the end, attending a death.
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I was not at all sure I was strong enough for
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the thing I had spent six years making myself
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good at. It is one thing to keep your eyes open
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on a recovery when each day's looking is rewarded
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with a little more of the person swimming back
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into focus. It is another thing entirely to keep
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them open on a decline, when each day's looking
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will show you a little less, when the very discipline
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I had built to witness her flourishing would
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have to be turned, in the end, to witnessing
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her fade. I wondered, sitting there, whether
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it was even the same muscle. I wondered whether
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a man trained to look at gain could make himself
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go on looking at loss. or whether that was a
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different and far harder strength that I had
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not yet begun to build, and might not have years
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enough left to build properly before the day
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I would need it. I said some of this to Celonie
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that night, the photographs still out, the rain
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steady now against the glass. And she was quiet,
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and then she said the thing that reordered it,
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because she is less afraid of this than I am,
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and always has been, and I think it is because
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she has already done it once. I lost my mother,
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she said. You know that. I saw her all the way
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to the end, and I looked the whole time. I didn't
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look away once, and it was the worst thing I
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have ever done, and I would do it again tomorrow.
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Because here is what I learned doing it. The
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looking doesn't make the loss bigger. The loving
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makes the loss bigger, and you don't get to keep
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the loving and skip the loss. They're the same
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size always. The only way to grieve small is
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to have loved small, and people who've arranged
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their lives to grieve small have made the worst
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bargain there is they've thrown away the whole
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of the having to lower the price of the losing.
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She turned one of the young photographs in her
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fingers. The sleeping couples you pity, they
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think they're being spared something. They're
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not. They're paying the same death we all pay
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and getting nothing for it. When one of them
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dies, the other grieves years they were never
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even in weren't present for slept straight through
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that's the saddest death there is to lose someone
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you were never actually with at least when one
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of us goes the other one will have been there
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the whole time awake that's not a small thing
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that's the only thing and that was the turn the
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thing the whole gray day had been carrying toward,
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that the awake practice is not, and was never,
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a defense against loss. It offers no protection
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at all. It does the opposite. It sharpens the
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loss to its finest possible point, because the
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more completely you have seen a person, the more
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precisely there is to lose. But it is the only
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thing that makes the loss worth paying, the only
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arrangement under which the bill, when it comes,
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is for something you actually received. You cannot
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make the year safe. I had wanted, underneath
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all of it, for the looking to be a kind of insurance,
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a way of earning a future that cannot be taken,
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and there is no such future, and the man at the
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end of the table had proved it. The years take
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everything in the end. The smooth face first,
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and then the rest, slowly and then all at once.
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And no amount of attention buys a single one
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of them back. I had wanted it to. That was the
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quiet superstition underneath all my discipline.
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I understood now. The half -belief that if I
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only looked hard enough, attended faithfully
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enough, kept the notebooks scrupulously enough.
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I might somehow earn an exemption that the universe
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would notice how awake I was and quietly spare
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me the usual sentence. It does not work like
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that. There is no exemption and there is no one
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keeping score of your attention and adjusting
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the bill at the end. The awake and the sleeping
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are billed exactly the same. The only difference
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is what they are billed for. I had to give up
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the superstition entirely, sitting there on the
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floor, and it was a small death of its own. The
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death of the idea that love, done well enough,
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could be made to buy safety. It cannot. Nothing
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can. Safety was never the kind of thing love
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was for. But you do not need the future to be
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safe. That is the thing I had wrong. You need
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it only to be seen. An awake day with the rain
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coming and the knee aching and the gray arriving
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and my wife across the floor from me is worth
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more than a year of the smooth -faced sleep I
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came from, and if I get twenty more of them,
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or ten, or two, and then sit in the chair the
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old woman is sitting in now, I will at least
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have been here for all of it, spent all of it,
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banked none of it, looked the whole way through.
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I reached across the photographs and took Celonie's
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hand. the one that is not quite the hand in the
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wedding picture anymore, the knuckles a little
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larger, the skin a little looser, and more dear
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to me by an order of magnitude than the smooth
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young hand had ever been, and I held it, and
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we listened to the rain. Neither of us said anything
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for a long while. There was nothing that needed
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saying. The holding of the older hand was the
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whole of the argument and the whole of the answer
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at once. I have come to distressed words a little
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on the nights that matter most. I, who fill notebooks,
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who had just talked for an hour at a frightened
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girl about this very thing, because the largest
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truths between two people who have been awake
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to each other for years do not travel by speech
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at all. They travel by a hand held a particular
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way on a gray evening, by the exact quality of
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a shared silence. by two people sitting on a
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floor among the photographs of their younger
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selves and choosing, without one word, the entire
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remaining length of the road. We chose it that
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night, in the quiet, with the rain coming down.
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We did not need to say so out loud. I wrote it
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that night, late, the tin box still open, the
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fifth notebook nearly at its end. That I had
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seen the long view at last, both directions of
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it on the same gray day, the young asleep behind
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us and the awake loss ahead, and that I was choosing
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it, all of it, the whole length of the road,
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including the dark end I cannot see past. The
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awake years were never going to be only the good
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ones. The deal was always the whole deal. That
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to see her completely is to one day lose her
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completely or be lost to her, and that there
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is no version of the looking that comes without
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that bill at the end. I used to think the goal
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was a long marriage. It is not. Sleeping couples
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manage long marriages all the time. Length is
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nothing. Length is just sleep with a high number
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on it. The goal is an awake one, however long
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it is given, because the awake years are the
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only ones you are actually present for, the only
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ones that will have happened to you rather than
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merely passed you by. And when one of our two
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lights goes out, his or mine, there is no third
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option. The one left burning will at least be
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burning over something real, grieving a person
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it actually knew, paying full price for a thing
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it actually had. That is the long view. It is
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not a comfort. Exactly. It is better than a comfort.
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It is the truth, and I find I would rather have
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it than be comforted. I have noticed that this
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is the one preference, in the end, that separates
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the awake from everyone else. Not that they feel
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more or love better, but that they would genuinely
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rather know the truth than be soothed by a softer
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untruth. Even about the worst things. Even about
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the end. Almost the whole machinery of ordinary
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life is built to comfort, to look away, to keep
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the long view safely out of sight so that the
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days can be got through unbothered. The awake
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decline the comfort. They insist on the long
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view even when it frightens them because they
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have learned, somewhere along the road, that
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a life looked at clearly all the way to its dark
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end is worth more than a life made bearable only
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by the steady refusal to look. I would rather
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see the rock than be soothed about the sea. Then
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the working line. Below it, Saloni asleep, the
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rain easing, the young faces back in their box.
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Take the long view, and do not flinch from the
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far end of it. The looking does not make you
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safe. Nothing makes you safe. The years take
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it all, and hand none of it back. What the looking
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does is make the years yours. Make them a thing
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that happened to you and not past you. A thing
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you were present for and not asleep through.
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You cannot keep her. You were never going to
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keep her or she you. That was never on offer
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to anyone ever. All that was ever on offer was
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to be awake for the time you were given, however
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long that is, and to pay in full at the end for
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the privilege of having actually been there.
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Pay it. It is the best bargain a human being
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is ever offered. Everything in exchange for everything
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with nothing held back on either side. Keep looking,
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especially as it gets harder to look. The hard
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looking at the end is the truest of all. I capped
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the pen and looked a while at the box of our
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young selves, those two asleep in front of the
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borrowed car with their careful inch of air,
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who did not know they would one day be glad to
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be old, and I went and lay down beside the woman
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that stiff young girl had become, the one I had
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nearly slept through and woken just in time to
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love, and I put my hand on her aging back in
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the dark and felt it rise and fall, and was grateful,
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past any saying. For every year still in the
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box, and every one, already spent, and for the
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rain, and for the long road, and for the dark
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end of it, I would not trade away the having
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of her to avoid. To be continued in episode 58,
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episode 57 of My Playful Wife. If this story
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is staying with you, the next episode is already
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waiting. Subscribe so you don't miss it. The
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plus bonus chapters are on my Patreon. Links
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are in the description. Thank you for listening.