Our Wedding Photo
During the days following our return from California, we had to postpone the celebration of our 26th wedding anniversary so the “silver” anniversary plus one – in order first to face the leaning tower of chores and summonses that awaited us at home. By this past Friday, the 7th of February, we had finally cleared an evening for the anniversary.
Such things are important. You don’t find the right partner in life every week or on every street corner. In fact, at the moment when our paths crossed, neither of us had even been looking.
Jerry, being a sensible fellow, was clearly not on the lookout for True Love, though he would have been glad to make room for compatibility. With the precision of the analytic philosopher that he is, he’d even drawn up a list of compatible traits, in case a lady whose traits matched the list were to show up. As it happened, no such compatible lady had appeared – as yet.
And I? What was I looking for? Certainly not “compatibility” since, in matters of the heart, I can’t sincerely settle for Plan B! However, just then I had put on hold the personal side of my life (which meant time reserved for meeting friends in cafes or wandering through my neighborhood’s fine museums). We had a problem at the college where I taught philosophy. The administration had announced plans to redirect the entire curriculum around … the borough of Brooklyn! This would of course sideline the college’s award-winning core curriculum.
Normally, you don’t win these fights. But that’s no excuse to walk away from them. So I, from the Philosophy Department, together with one woman professor from the History Department, were determined to fight it, win or lose.
Which was how, in the course of that fight, I met Jerry. He headed an organization in Washington D.C. which was founded to defend high academic standards. Since it was obvious that Jerry had more experience in such combats than I, ordinarily I’d just act on his advice without stalling around or asking him to clarify his underlying concepts. Apparently that made me atypical for a professor. In Jerry’s experience at that point, academics mostly thought that if they could read some rare and esoteric text, or clarify some fine abstract point, they had the smarts to win an academic combat. Whereas Jerry, though a trained philosopher and former chair of a well-regarded philosophy department, did not seem prone to making mistakes of that kind. His intelligence went easily from the practical/political to the theoretical, and I enjoyed strategizing with him during daily long-distance phone calls.
Jerry, meantime, had fallen in love.
It was not a case of “compatibility.” When eventually it hit me too, it had the character of an absolute. That doesn’t mean I had lost my moral bearings or would have followed him into some wrong action had he asked me to. (He never did.) It meant I was not weighing and calculating other kinds of advantage or disadvantage.
It meant this was not a weekend diversion where all the privileges of my life could be held constant. We lived in different cities, had different professional commitments at that point, and I did not know in advance what this summons portended for either of us. Also, I was well aware that one can lose such wagers. One can risk all, and it turn out a mistake. I’d known friends who’d taken equivalent risks and been wrong. In the politics of experience, it was impolitic.
It was like riding a unicycle
on a tightrope.
Now, 26 years later, we were celebrating an anniversary dinner and we were taking stock. The restaurant where we did that was new to us. It served ample portions of good food at low prices. The clientele looked to be working people out on a Friday night. Their kids were quiet and well behaved. The tables were decently spaced, so that diners could hear each other when they talked. Or be silent with each other. No voices were loud enough to intrude on adjoining tables. No one tried to impress anyone. No one drank too much. The only unmarried young couple we saw did not seem to be planning their “moves” for later. Instead, they simply looked happy to be together.
*. *. *
At our own table, Jerry and I were enjoying the good food and looking back over the 26 years. In that time, he had published a book, God: An Autobiography, As Told to a Philosopher that records a religious experience wholly unsought by him and quite unprecedented. Subsequently, he founded a subfield in the American Academy of Religion called Theology Without Walls. He’s now bringing out a second book, Radically Personal: God and Ourselves in the New Axial Age, as part of a five-book TWW series. It situates his earlier experience within the wider context of religious claims and counter-claims and tackles objections with philosophic care.
And I, in the 26 years? Under my professional name of Abigail L Rosenthal, I published a number of philosophical articles that had been awaiting completion for some years. Also, I reissued my first book, A Good Look at Evil, to which I added two new chapters. Just this year, I’ve published Confessions of a Young Philosopher, in the realized form I’d been trying to achieve for some time. I think a book should have illustrations if possible – and so this one does!
In some ways, our joint life retains the precariousness it had when we first set out to live it together. After all, we are older now. All kinds of things could happen. It’s as if we stand with our feet firmly planted on thin air.
But to us,
it’s holy ground.
Abigail’s Books: Confessions of a Young Philosopher; A Good Look At Evil
Jerry’s Books: God: An Autobiography; Radically Personal (forthcoming)
Related Content: Press Coverage of Victory at Brooklyn College
