Find Your Special Place

Find Your Special Place

  My mom’s oldest sister was married to a man named Moody Davis. They were married for a very long time. Uncle Moody and my aunt Onnie Mae, lived in a very rural part of East Texas.  We went to visit them when I was about nineteen years old and had just started dating the girl whom I would eventually marry.  On hearing that I had finally started dating, (there had been much trepidation in my family about my late start in this rite of passage), Uncle Moody took me out behind the house to a little shed that covered the pump for the water well. Behind the shed he asked me to look around and tell him what I noticed. I looked all around but didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. There was the watermelon field that extended from here to the north and the edge of the woods. He used to let my brothers and I take a wheelbarrow out there and pick each of us a melon. We would bust them open and eat just the hearts out of them and have seed fights with the seeds. To the northeast was the fishing pond where I had spent many a summer day catching catfish and bass with my aunt Onnie Mae. To the west were woods where we had often played Cowboys and Indians when we were little.  I can still hear the echoes of their dog, Red, a big Irish Setter, who would run through those woods barking and chasing wild hogs, and then come home and enjoy a saucer of coffee milk my aunt set out for him as a reward. My uncle and I stood there for a long time looking around and not saying anything. I was beginning to get a little uncomfortable because I didn’t know why we were back here in the first place. Finally, he asked me, “Do you love her?” I was embarrassed and just looked down at the ground for a minute without saying anything. “Do you think you might marry this girl someday?” he persisted. The dog and I had a lot in common about then – we both could be accurately called red. I was a very shy kid growing up. But after a little thought, I looked at him and told my uncle what I already knew, even though I had only been on a couple of dates so far. “Yes, I love her. And yes I will ask her to marry me someday,” I admitted quietly. Uncle Moody just smiled and said, “I thought as much.” I don’t know how he picked up on this when no one else in the family had. My younger brothers had already dated many girls and never seemed to be very serious about any of them. He smiled nodding his head and said, “Look down and tell me what you see.” I had been looking down a lot in the last few minutes and had not really noticed anything. But this time, I noticed we were standing on a patch of ground that was bare with no grass at all. The grass was pretty thick all around this four foot square patch of dirt. He said, “See this bare spot?” When I nodded he continued, “This is my special place. When your aunt goes on one of her tears, I come out here and pace back and forth until it blows over.”  Staring at the bare spot, I remember thinking that I had never seen my aunt angry about anything. The evidence to the contrary before me, quickly dispelled that childhood illusion. “Every marriage has its ups and downs,” he told me. “You have to find your special place and go there from time to time if you want your marriage to last a long time like your aunt’s and mine has.” We sat there for a little while longer watching old Red chase some pesky hogs out of the watermelon field letting what he had told me sink in. I learned pretty quickly after I got married that my uncle was right. I did need to find a special place to weather the storms that came more frequently than I had ever imagined. Often, however, my special place is not a physical one. My special places have always been found in a book on some far away planet or dangerous adventure. I went there often anyway, so it was comfortable and always welcoming. I know many would say you should always confront your issues and resolve them up front. But like my uncle before me, it has been my experience that sometimes women just want to argue or fight for no reason that makes any sense to us men at all. It’s times like those when you do need to find that special place and remove yourself from the equation if you want to live to tell about it. If you truly love each other, the storm eventually passes without any input on your part anyway (except for maybe a quick apology - whether you know for what or not – upon your return). So, if you want your marriage to last a long time, find your special place right from the get go and wear the grass down to the dirt if you have to. It worked for Uncle Moody, and it’s often worked for me as well.