What a Wonderful World

I caught the long light a block before my office the other morning. The movement behind got my attention in the rearview mirror. In the big Mercury stopped behind me, a lady got out the passenger door, walked around, opened the rear door, and got in to sit behind the driver. My take was that they were an embittered old couple in their seventies. A mime act unfolded as he waved his hands in the air and his head gyrated as he spewed expletives within their domain. I laughed to myself – ‘good girl’ - at the moment where this apparent spouse was not going to be a companion to his seeming verbal abuse. He then pulled around me into the right turn lane, my thought was their plans had just changed and he would return home. To my amazement and disgust, he blasted straight ahead of me running the red light. If he would do that, what other abuses would his wife have endured over the years?
My thoughts centered on what brings people to such a point. These are the couples seen at the local family restaurant having breakfast special. Together but alone; sitting stoically and never speaking; after fifty years together, there was nothing new. In their generation, the children were the center of the universe for the mother and the provider was focused on security for the future. Their children could have moved out of state. His retirement goals were met yet the sacrifice of those childhood dreams and hobbies never pursued was no longer attainable in his besieged body. This is a living hell. Two victims of their own making who have nothing better to do that impugn one another for their failings.

In sharp contrast is my witness to love expressed. My parents never parted without a loving kiss. This gave security to our family. Conflicts were rare but challenges were many in our low-income family. My small-in-stature mom was always lifted to her tiptoes with a goodbye kiss. To never let go of a love that brought them together allowed them sixty years of bliss. A kiss is a breathtaking way to bring us together and overcome the troubles of humanity that try to defeat us.

Ironically my XM radio station was playing Louis Armstrong’s What a Wonderful World. Oh yeah, with popcorn clouds in a blue sky on the last day of July it is a wonderful world for those of us that can make it so.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnRqYMTpXHc