Monday
Today Julia and I celebrate our 53rd wedding anniversary. When I asked her if I could share something she wrote about bringing up our sons, she suggested the poem below instead. “If I Go First” was penned a little over a year ago, shortly after Julia. experienced a stroke that put her in the hospital for three days. Although she emerged relatively unscathed, her brush with mortality led her to pen this love note. She imagined me finding it on her computer if she suddenly passed away.
While there are other reasons to survey and reflect on one’s marriage, the rattle of bones gives a special urgency to the exercise. The poem begins with our meeting at Carleton College (our senior year I edited the Carletonian while Julia was the arts editor); journeys on to graduate school in Atlanta; mentions a trip to France (Julia’s first venture abroad); and then takes us to our jobs, first at Morehouse College (for me) and a Decatur middle school (for her) before ending up in southern Maryland, where I and then eventually she taught for St. Mary’s College of Maryland. In both Atlanta and Maryland we lived in Black communities, and one of the caregivers with the voice of an angel was William Boyd, a music major from inner city Baltimore who lived with us for four years. He then journeyed with us to Yugoslavia, where he sang gospel in major concert halls in Zagreb and Sarajevo.
Of course, losing our eldest son is mentioned. (The secret society is parents who have lost a child.) The poem ends with the two of us paired one-on-one, as we were in the beginning, our other sons having departed to form families of their own.
To borrow a Philip Larkin image but using it very differently than he does, a good marriage deepens like a continental shelf. The passage of years has worn away various sharp edges and there comes a time when (now I’m stealing from Ezra Pound) “I desired my dust to be mingled with yours/ Forever and forever, and forever.” Not that we’re in the dust state yet (I hope). Just very good friends and essential supporters as well as lovers.
If I Go First
By Julia Bates
If I go first
Then here in some small way
I want to tell you about
All you have given me
We began our relationship
As a team on a weekly college paper
You as editor
Me following the arts|
We learned to listen
To guide
To create a small community
Of creatives, the first of many
We followed family
As we always would
Even those times when
Our neglected parents
Sent fill in the blank
Post cards to establish
That we still lived
We studied
We taught
We played scrabble
And held weekly
Supper clubs
Another community of
Twenty somethings who
Were grimly unsure that
We could save the world
But would not give up trying
You took me across oceans and into
The thicket of a language
I thought I knew from
School. HAH!
But we garnered
Chocolates and cheese
And I finally knew what
Abroad meant.
And then children
As a choice
Though my father groaned
He would never see his grandchildren
And died to prove his point
I had played him the sound
Of the heartbeat of my first son
A month before he died.
Big graduations
And first jobs
In places
Where white skin
Stood out
And finally a place that
Anchored us firmly in the south
In a neighborhood that taught us how to
Raise children in diversity
With caregivers who had voices of angels
Children grow up
They grow away
With varying degrees of
Anger, resistance, and distaste
And at a river’s edge
The oldest died
In cold sunshine
And in the following weeks
The four of us stood alone
Together
And we haunted poems
For warmth and
Assurance that whether
We wanted to or not
We would live
Part of a secret society
No one wants to join
Healing has come
As guilt has weathered away.
What we did or did not do
Is beside the point
We turned to love
And the sons who
Stood beside us
Through it all.
And you continued to shower
Us with words in that
Magic way you have of finding
A thought here, an event there,
Connected to a past writer
All loops threaded in that sweet mind
Of yours.
In joy our sons have
Formed families
Of their own
And we are back to
Two table settings
Two suitcases for travel
Not twelve Navy duffels
Two for walks
Two for the pew in church
And if you are reading this
At some point
You will be sitting alone
But surrounded by all who
We have touched
By the web of love
That still holds
And I send you my deepest
Love from whatever new
Place I occupy
To keep you warm
To let you know you were
Always the greatest gift
You could have given me.
I’m very glad that I didn’t have to wait for Julia to die to read this. It has led us to reminisce together, perhaps the best thing one can do to celebrate an anniversary.
