A Happy Ending???

Most of the literature we have read so far this semester has left a negative impact on me. Most of this literature has made me wonder, why do people get married? And why in the world do they have kids? Overall, negative feelings seem to surround marriage and kids. The Bitch in the House was no exception. Women whined about their husbands, their kids, their dual roles of mother and wife. Yet, within the negativity, frustration, and anxiety that filled these short stories, I was able to find a positive link to the popular film, The Notebook, which helped restore my faith in the decision to get married and have kids.

The Notebook, which is one of my favorite movies of all times, is a love story between Noah and Allie Calhoun. The story of their actual marriage and of raising kids is never shown, but what is shown is their life as an old couple, one with heart problems and the other with Alzheimer’s. Their bodies have grown weak, but their love has only grown stronger. Even when Allie, with Alzheimer’s cannot always remember her husband and must live in a supported living environment, Noah comments, “That's my sweetheart in there. Wherever she is, that's where my home is.” Their love after all their years ago is inspiring, intimidating, and exceptionally moving.

Although the story “My Mother’s Ring” was about the balancing act between wife, mother, and daughter, the same kind of Notebook story was shown briefly in the mother’s parents. The mother’s parents both suffered from old age issues. The mother highlights this scenario of her parents at the hospital:
“My father couldn’t lift himself out of the wheelchair and stand, and my mother couldn’t bend forward in her hospital bed to meet him because of the pain and all those tubes and wires hooked up to all those machines, but still by some miracle of determination my parents managed to kiss each other” (157).
Allie was Noah’s world. The mother’s father (in referencing her mother) noted, “She was his entire world” (155). Could it be that the rough years of early marriage and the torment of kids is worth it in the end? Could the hard times only make love stronger so that when a couple has reached old age they are everything to each other?

It seems to me that beneath all of the hell of kids and “wonderful” husbands in the early years of marriage, there is still the love. Either the couple will remember that love and push through the frustration that seems to plague all the women we have read about so far or they will fall apart. It seems to me t hat marriage is rough and kids are equated with absolute chaos. Maybe marriage is hard? Maybe raising kids really is hell? Maybe everything is as frustrating and difficult as these mothers describe, but if in the end you can still by some miracle kiss each other despite the pain and hospital equipment, then maybe, just maybe it is all worth it.