One of my favorite people is Steven Kalas, former priest and current therapist and journalist for the Las Vegas Review Journal. In a June 2013 blog, he wrote about the Mary Poppins tale:
“The children adore her. ‘Won’t you please stay with us forever?’ Michael pleads. ‘I’ll stay until the wind changes,’ is the magical nanny’s cryptic reply. Until the wind changes. Meaning, no, I won’t stay with you forever. Now is the time I’m with you. Nothing and no one has forever. Impermanence reigns. Look back upon your life. Most of us can count relationships with people who have walked with us from the beginning But, if you are much older than 21, then you likely also can count another kind of valuable relationship. These are people who appear in our lives, change our lives forever, and then leave and you’re never the same.”
It seems like marriage is like this in today’s world. People meet, fall in love, decide to get married, say all the vows, and then for any number of reasons decide to end the marriage. Those of us who grew up believing the fairy tale about “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” may think that being the good caretaker, providing for the family and perhaps lots of children, fending off dangerous witches and evil-doers should be enough. However, family roles are no longer the same in today’s busy world. People come together and then one or the other leaves.
Everyone has the opportunity to be involved and take part in all the activities that support a family. No longer is the stay-at-home mom and the working dad a dependable, long-term standard. The difference these days is that women have more choice and thus, so do men. There can be no automatic assumptions that one person staying home and caring for children will provide a stable lifestyle. We see this in the impact of recent changes in the economy, or examples of people who have lost their spouses as a result of war or natural disasters. Everyone must pitch in and contribute to the family finances now. Much like old European cultures where even the children had to work, today’s world is filled with need for spouses to truly communicate about roles and expectations, and provide for each other. We come and go in each other’s lives for many reasons, and each of us needs to be responsible.
I like the idea that we may never know when things might change, and that people will always come and go. It makes me conscious of just how great each person is when they are around me and how important it is to learn the lessons that each relationship brings. Sometimes, counting the value of the relationships we have had with spouses can be difficult during a divorce. However, the world has changed and continues to change. We need to appreciate our relationships for what they are, rather than for what we expect them to be.
