Marriages

Just finished the great book, “Olive Kitteridge” by Elizabeth Strout.

A great book about the heart and hope and love and pain of a really bitchy, grumpy woman. The book opens the veins I think.

In the interview with the author at the end Strout says, “A marriage is always a source of great drama for a fiction writer. It is in our most intimate relationships that we are truly revealed; that is why I write about a variety of married relationships.”

“We are revealed”, she says. Yes, that is why I like being married. Friends say to me, “You don’t have to marry him.” and others closer still say, “He has cancer; you don’t have to take that on.” They mean, “You don’t have to be a martyr.” But I am not a martyr. Strout nails it. “We are revealed.” Being married and maybe even being a caregiver is selfish. It is a lens, a way of seeing oneself.

A mirror from Wal-Mart or a self-help weekend might be the cheaper, easier way to be revealed and to see oneself. But marriage works. Even when it doesn’t.