Forty years ago, Bruce yelled across North Boone School Road, “Will you marry me?” “Yes,” I shouted back. A shelf cloud hung low in the distance.
You couldn’t have found people more different. He’s quiet, a genius with his hands. I’m a talker, a writer, up in her head. His mother hinted I was too intelligent. (She was blind to his smarts.) His pastor held his breath, but married us, nonetheless.
Instead of spouting clichés about a long marriage, let me tell you a bit of the Lindworm, a story Martin Shaw tells in his Courting the Wild Twin. Two boys are birthed. First a serpent, who slithers away. Next a beautiful baby boy. The serpent insists he marry before the beautiful boy. But he slaughters every bride sent to his chamber.
After a wild, old woman counsels a young woman to make twelve nightshirts, embroidering each one near her heart, she says, “I’ll marry the serpent.” When she enters his bed chamber, he bids her take off her nightshirt. “If you take off your scales,” she replies. They do this twelve times. At the end he is a pale, gelatinous mess. She scrubs him with a brush. Imagine the pain.
Shaw writes, “As dawn approached, finally there was a man in front of her, with the face of someone sent into exile long ago. Someone with an ordinary beauty, she would love her whole life.”
And that’s how it’s been for Bruce and me.
I’m Katie Andraski and that’s my perspective.
