On Sunday Jon and I saw the movie Spotlight. It’s the story of how a special team of journalists, called Spotlight, from the Boston Globe broke the story about the sexual abuse by Priests in the Catholic Church.
It was just the kind of movie I love. A great story, without any explosions or car chases. No one was Hollywood gorgeous, the whole thing was very real.
At one point Mark Ruffalo, who plays the Journalist Michael Rezendes, is talking on the phone to someone he’s been trying to get information from for a while. He’s taking notes and his pen runs out of ink. Still listening he starts looks around for a pen and when he can’t find one he starts rummaging through his bag. He can’t tell the person he’s talking to to hold on while he finds a pen, or to repeat what he said. He’s lucky the guy on the other end is talking to him at all. He hangs up before he finds a pen and you know he’s going to have to rely on his memory.
Watching that scene, I finally understood why we have so many pens in the house. Why when ever we go to the Drive-thru at Glens Falls Bank Jon keeps the pen. It’s because for a good part of his life, Jon was a Reporter. He knows what it’s like to need a pen and not have one.
This scene from the movie kept coming back to me. There was something so human about it so real. But it also opened a window back in time, into Jon’s life.
I met Jon when he was in his early 60’s and I sometimes wonder what he was like all those years before I knew him. Through the few picture there are of him and the stories I’ve heard, I try to imagine if we would have loved each other or even liked each other at different points in our lives. Could we have had a life together if we met earlier and what would it have been like.
I know that Jon’s whole life is what makes him who he is now. And that it’s all there in him. And sometimes I think I’m lucky because I’m getting the best part of him. A lifetime that got him to be who he is now.
But a part of me feels like I’m missing something. The times that we didn’t get to share. The mistakes we didn’t get to make together and the good and bad times we didn’t have. I’m grateful for what we do have, but sometimes I selfishly just want more of him. I want to know what it would be like to be younger together. I understand that it might not have been good, not might have worked. That we were both different people back then. And because Jon’s 17 years older than me there are time we never could have known each other, like when he was a teenager and I wasn’t born. But I can’t help but wonder what it could have been.
I feel like that scene in the movie allowed me to live a moment in Jon’s life with him. Maybe not very important or meaningful moment. But an ordinary moment. The kind there aren’t any pictures of or stories about. A moment that until now, lived only in the collection of pens scattered throughout our house.
Maria — I met you and Jon at the first “open house” in VT, at the antique shop your friend owned — Izzy was there, and my friend, Marjorie Goodson and I so enjoyed it. I have enjoyed so much reading still Jon’s blog and books, and your blog. But this blog today has so gotten my attention….my husband, Ken and I, met a few years ago, and had become friends….but that all changed in late 2011, and long story short, we have been together since then, and married since April 2014. He is 69, I am just 71 — and I wonder so often, what would we have been had we met those many years ago, would we have liked each other, loved each other? And I am so almost jealous of the years we did not have, the love we could have had all that time for. I thought I was a crazy person for thinking that way, so seeing that you have those thoughts, too, was wonderful!! Thank you, I absolutely know what you mean…..Pam
I remember you Pam. Although that does seem like a lifetime ago. jealous is a good way to put it. Sometimes I just want it all.
I love this blog entry. Oh yes…you are an artist of words too. Excellent!
🙂 That pic perfect with the story. Thank you for the smile tonight. I have been feeling very down and this little story really brightened my night.
Ah, then I”ve done good work Marjorie. Thank you and I hope you’re feeling brighter today.
I can relate so very much to what you are saying here Maria. My husband was 15 years older than I when we met, I was 35 and he 50. He was an amazing man! We were married 26 years before he moved on to a higher plane. I often wondered what it would have been like to have known him as a youth or young man. I don’t think I would have liked him much then as he was a party guy and enjoyed a life I just wasn’t into. It seems rather sad in some ways that after we have lived, learned and mastered the major bumps in life that we finally discover who we really are, then . . . we grow old! Ha! Now I have my mother to care for and I am pretty tied down to her. Life is an interesting adventure, is it not?nThank you for sharing.
It sure is an interesting adventure JoAnne. WHo knows what will come next….
Maria, I so get this thought of having married someone later in life, a wonderful love, and yet the sense of loss because of so much missed time and experiences. I too felt this way after marrying at 45 for the second time 14 years ago. We will grow old together, we are getting there already 🙂 I do think the person I was may not have recognized the person he was as a great fit. For me, that is why each day is precious and I am grateful for all we do and will share. You and Jon have something special and from what you write you recognize it at the time. That is wisdom.
Diane, When i think that I could never have had the kind of relationship that I do with Jon it’s almost unbearable. And I so love my life now. It is almost like living two different lives in one lifetime.
Maria, I’m hoping Spotlight will come to our small town north of Toronto here…we get an awful run of hit and runs and fantasy at our local cinema that I despair of ever getting anything really suitable for me to enjoy. As to marrying later in life, my husband was my first boyfriend, when I was fourteen and he fifteen years of age and I can tell you categorically, I would not ever have been able to cope with him until I married him at the age of 49 or 50. I remember renting a cottage the summer he turned 50, on the shores of Georgian Bay where we both grew up each summer. Next door, the son of the older couple living there was a minister and was visiting after church with his parents. As I had planned a surprise 50th birthday party for himself, I asked if the minister, who still had on his clerical clothes, would come over and say a prayer before supper. Well, the look on himself’s face when this minister walked in through the door of the cottage was priceless…horror might describe it better. He said he never knew what I was up to and thought I’d planned a wedding right then and there. We’ve been married now for 29 years, neither of us can believe it. But we’ve been friends for a very long time and I believe unless you are friends with your mate, above all else, when times get tough, it’s too easy to check out of the relationship. You’ve brought to light a good thread, Maria..
SandyP in S.Ont. Canada
Great Story Sandy. We have to travel to see the good movies an hour or more. But some are just worth it. I hope you get some good ones in your theater.
Maria–we are cinema soul sisters! I, too, am not interested in explosions, car chases or anything else testosterone driven. I’m probably one of the very few who has never seen Star Wars, the original, or most of the other box office “hits” of the past 20 years. I very much look forward to seeing ‘Spotlight’ though.
And I was 43, my husband 5 years my junior, when we came together; he teases me about robbing the cradle! But I’m also fairly certain we would NOT have survived as a couple if the 20+ plus years we have now shared had happened in our 20’s. We have both mellowed with age, become people we enjoy being together. So I say, “Grow old together, the best is yet to be.” Cheers.
I think you’re right Cheryl.