A true story of karmic proportions…if you believe…
Let me state at the outset that a soul mate is not necessarily a perfect match, in fact rarely is that the case, since it is a spirit-relationship, not a pragmatic coupling, like the ones you see on reality television programs, such as The Bachelor or Bachelorette.
We met at the New Theatre in Sydney, a left-wing theatre where he was doing the music for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, not such a good omen for the beginning of our relationship.
Things got off to a good start, since he seemed like a pleasant enough young friend to have in the theatre— almost certainly gay, he was too good-looking! — but he was impressed by my academic qualifications. I was a tutor at the University of Sydney, studying on a scholarship for an MA in the French Department. I’d made a pact with myself to abandon the search for romance, and to look for trustworthy friends who didn’t run with the pack.
More than that, I was 30 and Mark seemed like a good bet for a friend, being ten years younger than me, and not wedded to Marxism or Feminism, as most of my uni friends at the time had been. Even more, he seemed wise for one so young, being, I learnt that first night, the only child of an old-fashioned, single-parent mother, newly released from a bad marriage.
I liked his looks from the start: In fact, Mark looked like someone from the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, from Morocco or Tunisia, or one of the other Middle Eastern countries — tall, olive-skinned, Jewish. He worked as a clerk by day to allow him to act in this amateur theatre on weekends.
‘I want to become an actor like you,’ I told him that first week. ‘It’ll help with my confidence, get me out of my head from all the studies.’
‘I flunked my final English paper,’ he said, ‘because I tried out for NIDA on the day I was supposed to sit for the exam.’
‘Oh, dear!’ I sympathized. ‘That’s too bad. Perhaps it’s an omen.’
‘Yes, I suppose so. I always get the soulful hero parts in plays. Some of the others get jealous.’
‘I can see why’, I gushed. ‘Would you…will you…help me get a role in one of the plays?’
‘Yes, I can do that for you. There’s a workshop play being advertised at the moment,’ he said. ‘Androcoles and the Lion. I’ll organise for you to attend the rehearsals.’ I was pleased and smiled: What a nice young man!
When I turned up for the workshop play the following week, I was chuffed to see that he was there too: enough that he had set it up for me—how kind! The only part left for me to play was that of the lion. It would be an excuse to visit our panoramic harbourside zoo and examine the lions in their habitat—watch how the beasts moved. I would become that lion.
Afterwards, Mark took me up the ladder of the bio box to show me how he worked the music for the plays. We climbed, me in heels and a short skirt that showed off my legs, up steep and narrow steps to get to the tiny room at the top.
The workshop play fell through but I’d made a good friend at the theatre. We went to the zoo anyway, and then he took me to his favourite pub near his bachelor’s flat, where we played snooker until the wee hours. He’d been playing for money, and was a bit of a shark at it, and I was beginning to see that this handsome young man could be good at anything he took on.
But I was to find out that our differences were chasms threatening to swallow our friendship. Not only the yawning gap of our ages, but the country versus city of our backgrounds, our different spiritual beliefs, and politics, too, loomed largely on the horizon. He’d been drawn to the radical theater as if by osmosis, whereas for me it was an ideological step. Or was it? Wasn’t I kicking the Marxist student and feminist chains, no less violently than I had run from my parents’ screaming matches? Wasn’t it, after all, his unfettered beliefs that had captivated me? Or was I being tricked into simple contrariness through fear and loneliness?
I know, I should have started this tale at the present time, looking back. You’ve guessed it: we’ve been together now for 46, coming up to 47 years, as friends and lovers. Both. You might even say that we are soul mates. It has not been an easy ride, though. Our differences have remained, like boulders on the recorded pathway, threatening to bounce right back down and strike us, or force a replay. Thankfully, the violent upheavals were in the early days, during the first three months of our cohabitation, that was, after he’d moved in with me.
I wanted to become an independent woman, I told him, now I’m like any other housewife sweeping dust away from the hearth. He pointed out the fact that he, too, was a feminist, and ready to take up the towel. My problem was in believing him, as his acting skills were more and more impressive… and he was so young! I’m ready to give up acting as a career, he told me. Ready to take up studies — I’ve always wanted to stretch myself mentally. He’d support me when I had a baby, he said, and even later, after I’d retired.
We might have to get married, then, I replied. Would you agree to that? I’m ready to try for a child. He said that he would be honoured to be my spouse. So old-fashioned, and yet so wise, for one so young, I thought. An older soul, perhaps… Or was it his sense of humour, which had won me over? He thought it was a good idea to tie the knot, if only for the child’s sake.
We sweated our differences out like so much salt, co-mingled with the juices from our “love-making”, as he called it. Before we exchanged vows, we had screamed and shouted at one another, engulfing disappointments in alcohol, medical pills and rowdy swill. I’d had to give up university tutoring to take on full-time work with the NSW Education Department to support us. That wasn’t too hard in exchange for a baby, and his promise to pay me back…one day.
That day we drove in my battered Volkswagon to the beach at Bondi, laughing all the way, losing my bladder at his jokes, tipped the balance. Humour had won the day, at least for me…
The next few years of my supporting him — his undergraduate studies and my giving birth to two new souls — were not always cause for laughter. There was, too, the little matter of my everlasting Peta Pan energy, and my thirst for deep therapy, which would push me towards creative solutions. Combined with therapeutic writing, and with exploring the depths of my consciousness, I began to accept the reality of my creative side. Oh what a tangled web we weave… I thought, as I arose from the depression that I no longer had to have!
Mark and I exchanged roles, as well as exchanging vows, he becoming a “doctor of philosophy” in Communications, rising quickly to the top in his field and able to, one day, leave the world in a better shape than he had found it. (His words).
He promised that he would be able to support me in my twilight years, just as I had supported him when he was starting out on his career. While I’d taken on, happily, the creative mantle that he had disavowed all those years ago, I knew with all my heart that we’d meet again one day, even after death us doth part.
Feature Photo: A lovely pile of stones, or something else, perhaps? With a gorgeous ocean backdrop. Photo from unsplash.jpg
