Sunday, June 20, 2010

I'm Having Another Episode

   If I were to pick what TV sitcom my life most resembled, I would have to say it is "I Love Lucy". There are too many similarities and parallels that easily make me the blond version of Lucy Ricardo. For instance, my spontaneity. Which has gotten me into trouble at least once a week for the 35 years that I've been married to my Cuban husband (actually 1/2 Cuban, his mother is Cuban, his dad American). He does not speak a lick of Spanish, even though his mother tried to teach him. He says that he doesn't have English down good yet. One thing that I have discovered about being married to a Cuban man is that they are kings of their domain. Mine is king, with a La-z-boy throne and a remote scepter, but not in a demanding, domineering kind of way. And he likes order, but my spontaneous has combusted too many times for his liking which has put a big burn mark right in the middle of his kingdom of normalcy. (I must tell you at some point in time, about when I accidentally took him mattress gliding.)

   Which takes us to the next similarity...being in showbiz. Ricky was an entertainer, my Ricky is not, but all the rest is the same. This Lucy wanted to perform and choreograph big productions and have performance teams and create scenery and design costumes, and write scripts and lyrics. I wanted to be in on everything that pertained to being on a stage. My eagerness to do all that my brain has conceived has, at times, shaken the maracas of our stable marriage. I have talked that man into so many hair-brained ideas that his common sense and reasoning had to stare into the balcony section while my brilliancy tap danced across the stage where I usually ended up in the orchestra pit. At the end of each episode, my Ricky would remember how much he loved me and we would kiss and makeup while I was coming up with ideas for a new venture.

   The only real problem with any of my schemes is that I believe that they really will work, add smoothly and cheaply to that, too. When did Lucy ever plot out a scenario that it did not turn out to be a fiasco? That was the premise behind the entire show. It would not have been funny to just have her think about doing this crazy stuff...she DID the crazy stuff...with her sometimes willing, sometimes not, enabler friend, Ethel Mertz. My Ethel was my office manager and friend June Sasser and of course her husband Henry, was Fred. They have maintained their friend status with Dane and I through years of friendship tolerance testing of the most trying kind.

   You know Lucy could be very persuasive, manipulative, and conniving. She would resort to crying and pouting in order to get her way. I would like to believe that that is NOT the reason my life most mimics hers. But for reasons like, she was fun-loving, willing to be adventurous, and wanted to include others in her world of zany-ness. That's the part of her that I most want to be remembered for. Everybody's invited to be a part of my whirlwind tour of life, if you can keep up. I've often wondered, watching each episode of "I Love Lucy", were we watching her life in succession or just random days of her rubber ball thought patterns and actions bouncing down her non-boring street?

   Another thing I always was amazed at was how Ricky repeatedly trusted her, episode after episode, even after some of the most untrusting situations had taken place. How does that happen? It goes back to the vows. The marriage vows. When I took my vows, even though I was young, I meant to make them happen. On purpose. There was no back up plan just in case things didn't work out. Staying married was it. So my antics have always been toward making marriage work, not mapping out where the escape hatch was in case of an evacuation. So when my man was not conforming to the image I wanted him to be...I conformed. When he saw no need to change anything about himself...I changed. When he required his needs to be met and was oblivious to my needs...I met his. When my love language was not being spoken...I spoke his. When I was not getting...I gave. Instead of a nutty character...I am a wife of noble character. Proverbs 31:11-12, "The heart of her husband does safely trust in her, she will do him good and not evil all the days of her life".

    My marriage vows were like a script, rehearsed for the real taping of the show. When I spoke them, I was convinced that what I was saying was what I was gonna be doing 35 years later. I don't have a disposable mentality anyways. I'll keep something until it is seemingly absolutely worthless to someone else. Trading-in for a better model, is not appealing to me. It's my devotion that keeps my heart in motion. Work with what you got.

   The script set the storyline that my marriage was to follow. No rewrites. And no dress rehearsals. That was it. I've always said to women I was praying with or counseling, "I don't have to have been through a divorce to tell you how to stay married". Would you go to a financial failure to get wisdom on how to manage your finances? So why would you sit around a table of busted relationships and receive their insights on marriage? You go to the ones that endured the testing of time and strength of the vows. Like the Lucy Show that has lasted since 1951, it still airs somewhere around the world at any given moment. It's all there, the comedy, the tragedy, the seriousness, the insanity, just like marriages. A great script, originality, laugh out loud humor, and 2 people willing to stick it out, week after week, episode after episode, year after year, for others to watch and learn about making it last.

   After Lucy majorly flubs up, Ricky may rant in unintelligible Spanish as she weaves and bobs to dodge his spewing words. We'll all laugh because we all know that at the end of 30 minutes, he will be tenderly hugging her and she will proceed to do it again on another day. They'll keep to the script and before you know it, 60 years will have passed and they're still at it. Messing up and trusting, blowing it and forgiving, giving when not given to, and not keeping a chart for wrongs done, are all just a part you play in your own TV sitcom.

   What TV sitcom best parallels with your life? Why is it your favorite? Who are the characters? And the most important question, how long has it been running and is it still running? Longevity, going for the long haul. Making the script work. Make the vows work. That's how a long-running sitcom life of marriage is made...one episode at a time.

1 comment:

  1. Thanks for being such a great example for all of us Mrs. Jeanna! Love you!

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