Threesome: Grow Old With Me

Once upon a time I was twice upon a time. Pete and re-Pete.

This isn't your traditional reincarnation tale, because it doesn't follow the existential trap door of time as a linear construct. We live many lives, and to think of them as having been lived — to be lived — before or after has you falling through that philosophical floor.

Some people have lived previous lives. I don't know any myself, but I know I have lived another life. The reason I know is that it's because I I live another life now. I didn't die and then get reborn, i.e., become reincarnated. My two distinct lives overlap. Now. In real time.

And very tightly.

Sometimes I act this way. Sometimes, that way. It is the sum total of the pros and cons argued by my two coincident lives. I live via bipartisan compromise. Legislation is presented, debated, referred back to committees, and enacted. Somewhere, I am the executive branch who implements the results from my legislative branch. And if I come to regret any decisions or actions, somewhere I am also my judicial branch. I am an awkward jaloppy of checks-and-balances wobblong down the pot-holed road of life.

Do not misunderstand. I am not schizophrenic. I don't have multiple personalities. My corpus callosum, allowing both sides of my brain to think as one, is just fine. I am just two separate lifetimes in progress, simultaneously.

Marie is my wife. Marie is my life.

She says I am different. I have changed. I'm grumpy. I've become obsessive about things like the thermostat and keeping up with oil changes. Leaving the lights on or heating an empty room makes me crazy. My Ways and Means Committee is en garde, always.

"What's happened to you, Pete?" she asked me. "You've gotten, well, just a little mean lately. And it's to me." She's never been one to fawn, but she also seldom whines. Especially about me. She sees me and accepts me, warts and all.

First came love, then came marriage, and who knows? Maybe there'll be a baby carriage. But our plan doesn't end there. There an unstated promise to each other that our success will intertwine with our growng old together.

"I'm sorry, my love. I hear you. Yes, I could be a little more patient."

"A little?" she laughs. "Try a lot!"

So, it comes down to me, does it? What is a lifetime, after all? It is a life... in time. I affirm again that no rules of metaphysics mandate lifetimes be linear and sequential. If a life previously lived was in the past, why can't it be just a few minutes ago, in tandem, spoke-for-spoke? Simultaneous or, perhaps, skewed by just a moment, or a minute, hour, or day?

Am I in love with Marie in one life but not in love with her my other? She's certainly entitled to more than half of me. How do I get my other life to fall in love with her? Or at least treat her better. That may be hard, because that other person — the other me —doesn't take criticism very well. Doppelgängers are, by nature, ill-tempered. (At best!)

If it's possible to have had a previous life, and if it's possible that both can skew together to overlap, and that linear time is irrelevant, then is it possible to live a future life, now? Is that why I'm acting like an old man?

Is it cold in here, or is the thermostat turned too low? Again! Marie!"

"Oh, Pete, shove it up your ass, will ya?"

My wife, ladies and gentlement, the love of my life.

Marie and I had always wanted to grow old together. We will. I'm just, halvesies, as it were, a little ahead of schedule. But if Marie and I hang in there, stick it out, and don't get tripped up by stupid marital inanities, those timebombs that make estranged couples wonder where it all went, then I know there will be a time — one I can look forward to — when all three of us are happy together.