EPISODE 333: FIFTY IS THE WE MADE THE KESSEL RUN IN LESS THAN TWELVE PARSECS OF MARRIAGE

POP CULTURE SPIRIT WOW

So Elizabeth Banks and Patrick Stewart are both playing Bosley on the new new Charlie's Angels, and also instead of investing in three new ideas Hollywood is going to do another Charlie’s Angels, but at least I can content myself with the fact that when I first heard all this I thought of Tom Bosley, and that is never not a good thing.

Hey Mr. C.

Also Hawkeye is back (finally) (don’t you dare tease us like that again Marvel) (we’re serious, we have other interests) (you killed almost everyone anyway), and the Captain Marvel trailer dropped (finally) (don’t you dare, ah who am I kidding it looks SO GOOD). And apparently Loki and the Scarlet Witch are each getting their own television shows, you know, like we’ve been clamoring for...?

(Once again, how do they think we’re going to pay for all these streaming services, it’s like they filled their purse with diamonds and then left it on a bench, mama, I’m sorry, but we are definitely going to take some of those.)

Meanwhile man Gwendolyn Christie does good interview and Disney chief Bob Iger thinks he maybe took the whole Star Wars take over thing a little too fast (what was your first clue, Bob, when no one wanted to watch Solo even though it was great because they were still exhausted from fighting over whether Luke is an actual human being with the capacity to go bad for a half second?), and God does Kristin Bell love her marshmellows (thank God), and NBC had two men to host the first Emmys since the #MeToo movement began, but never mind because that was like, eight months ago and guys have really come around and learned all kinds of important stuff and the hosts did really well. Really, really well.

It’s late 2018. Do you know where your sanity is? Because I’m pretty sure I saw mine walking down Sunset Boulevard in a poncho hollering the pie is falling, poor thing, and I might need it back some day. (Also, we’ve really had enough pie.)

Hey, so crazy thing: today, September 21st, 2018, in addition to being the first day of fall, 2018 (if you’re in the States), and one of those equinoxes or solstices is my parents’ 50th wedding anniversary.

That’s right, I am old enough to have parents who have been married for fifty years. It’s a hard moment, but I am really trying to bear up and I thank you for your thoughts and prayers at this difficult time.

September 21, 2018 in Chicago was a nice day, I am told. It was less than a month after Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley had brought the Democratic party to a screeching halt with his televised performance piece, “Unnecessary Force: Why You Should Hate Us”, and although think pieces were not things yet, even weeks later people were still writing “Um, what was that that just happened?”

Oliver! was a very popular movie at the time, which is weird because eventually my mother and father’s oldest son (pictured with his grandma, handsome gassy devil) would be cast in that play, and it would be one of the pivotal moments in his life, one that led him to becoming a priest and going into filmmaking and writing a newsletter about Tom Bosley and Hawkeye (not kidding Marvel) and sanity that has left the building hungry and the differences between equinoxes and solstices. (I’ll take ouroboros for 500, Alex.)

The day of my parents’ wedding (above; love the emerald!), Soviet Satellite Zond 5 was recovered in the Indian Ocean. Zond 5 (I’m told Zod was taken, Zor-El was considered arch and Xander was still like, 30 years from being a thing) was the first object to circumnavigate the moon and return, which you would think should have invited a name like Boom or Rang or Eddie Comes Back, but no, sure, Zond 5, that will definitely test well.

Also the White Sox lost to the Baltimore Orioles 8-5, but that was okay, they were already 36 games back, and the Bears were about to lose 42-0 to the Detroit Lions, and this is a bad trend let’s change the topic.

The two of my dad’s sisters closest to him in age remember the reception much more clearly than the wedding itself. “It was a very typical Irish celebration,” my Aunt Eileen explains. “Your aunts were out there during the Irish jib and then all the drunks got out and were doing it with them.” “We had a lot of fun,” my Aunt Kathleen says, laughing in that way that says I’m not going to tell you any more than that.

In some ways the unexpected star of the show was my dad’s father (just left of the bride and groom with my grandma), who was named Jim after me. I’d always understood my grandfather to be kind of a quiet man, an immigrant from Scotland who came to the States to play professional soccer, met my grandmother in New York, where she lived about ten blocks from where I would go on to spend four years of my life, then eventually they moved to Chicago, opened a corner store, did window washing on skyscrapers, and occasionally took in people from home who needed a little help.

At the wedding reception, in a nice place either on or near the campus of Northwestern University, Grandpa Jim got up and started dancing, a sword dance (which sounds really dangerous, but apparently is more about jumping about and shouting like a rooster, oh wait, if you get far enough there really is a sword, why would my grandfather have a sword, and also if you had a sword why wouldn’t you ever pick it up?). Apparently, it’s a form of Highland dancing, and also none of his family had ever seen him do it. “Who even knew he knew how to dance,” says my Aunt Eileen. “it was way weird.”

He was also memorable because it was only a couple months later that he quite suddenly died. My parent had announced the coming of their own little infant Jesus on Christmas, and three days later my grandfather was gone. “ We were all together,” my Aunt Kathleen remembers of my parents’ wedding. “It was vey special.” “It was really something for us, that he did that,” says my Aunt Eileen.

But obviously the real centers of attention were my parents. “Your mom was a beautiful bride,” my aunt Kathleen says. “Your dad was eh. They were very young!” And she’s right, they were!

SO YOUNG

When questions about the actual ceremony found my Aunt Kathleen saying again and again how much she enjoyed the reception, she noted that I had things all wrong anyway. The wedding is not what you should be focusing on, she told me. “Your mom and dad’s marriage is the story. Fifty years with the same person, that’s quite an accomplishment. Grandma Marion, when we all started hitting 25 years, she told us how proud she was that we made it to 25 years. And she would have been ecstatic at 50.

You know, it’s tougher. Life is not easy. They were really young when they first started dating, and still are very much in love. That’s the story, more than the wedding.”

Point taken.

The Longly-Weds Know

That it isn't about the Golden Anniversary at all,
But about all the unremarkable years
that Hallmark doesn't even make a card for.

It's about the 2nd anniversary when they were surprised
to find they cared for each other more than last year

And the 4th when both kids had chickenpox
and she threw her shoe at him for no real reason

And the 6th when he accidentally got drunk on the way
home from work because being a husband and father
was so damn hard

It's about the 11th and 12th and 13th years when
they discovered they could survive crisis

And the 22nd anniversary when they looked
at each other across the empty nest, and found it good.

It's about the 37th year when she finally
decided she could never change him

And the 38th when he decided
a little change wasn't that bad

It's about the 46th anniversary when they both
bought cards, and forgot to give them to each other

But most of all it's about the end of the 49th year
when they discovered you don't have to be old

to have your 50th anniversary!!!!

-- Leah Furnas

Here’s to the unremarkable years and the shoes thrown and the crises survived. Mom and Dad, we love you very much. May the coming years be filled with happiness, laughter and love.

++

Ridiculous, embarrassing self-promotion: The article I mentioned last week on priesthood and the Hulk just came out, you can get it here, the magazine costs $2.50 and it’s just chock full of really great serious writing about comics and life. Hope you check it out. It was a really great experience working with them.

Also, I had three interviews published this week on how to fix the Church. It turns out, it's super easy.

Okay, maybe it's not. But I was really lucky to get to talk to three experts who really know about this stuff. And who also don't seem to beholden too much to the system as it is.

Catholic Thought of the Day: I'm starting to think one of the dangers of the moment we're in is people's sympathy for priests. I certainly appreciate the concern, this is a pretty terrible moment (and getting worse by the day). But it's also of our own corporate making, and those structures were built-in so long ago and so completely that I am less and less convinced we clergy can fully apprehend the problems ourselves. We see the symptoms, for sure, but the fundamental issues? We're too close, and almost certainly compromised. Culture sinks in.

I wonder if the situation of the clergy and bishops right now is not like an addict bottoming out. In this difficult moment we can seem pretty sympathetic, or different than the "bad priests/bishops". And we believe it, too. But that's what an addict instinctively does when they're hitting bottom. If you really want to help them, you have to not help them. Make them face their own dark truths.

I'm not looking for people to hop in their 4x4s and drive through our front doors Mad Max-style. I just hope people will focus their attention on becoming an implacable pressure for change that over time cannot be resisted. Sympathy feels more like the gym-class rope we will knee-climb to escape from the truth of this moment. This isn't a situation of a few bad apples, it seems to me, but of rot in the wood.

On that happy note!... ++ LINKS ++ This supercut of every time the Emmys mentioned recently fired head of CBS Les Moonves is...striking.

Supposedly the key to great TV right now is making it sad enough, which is not exactly um, hopeful. But sometimes it looks way cool.

​Just three more weeks!

But Emma Thompson did an interview, so it’s okay, we’re all better now. Please make Love Actually II, Emma Thompson. Or Remains of the Day II. We are not picky.

Lastly, you know how you thought Star Wars was about Luke Skywalker and Han Solo and Rey and Finn? It turns out, the secret hero is C-3P0. (Believe it or not this starts stupid and then becomes so scary possible I couldn’t sleep after watching it. It really makes so much sense.)

There are good days and there are bad days. But it's hard to look at fifty years of marriage and not think even some very bad days are survivable. Maybe some of the pain even causes the growth we need for it all to keep making sense, becoming somehow more rather than just being more of the same.

There's lots to worry about. But there is also the angel of happiness Jeff Goldblum. And we can stop to take breaks when we need them. Even really long and self-indulgent ones. With bubbles.

What do you think--ready? Here we go.