A FEW DAYS LATER, TRACA AND I HAD AN ARGUMENT. WE’D JUST GOTTEN back from a trip to a local mountain with Por and Aud, and apparently the way I’d been goofing around with Logan and Jackson did not sit well with her. “In fact I found you rather rude, if you want to know the truth,” she told me. This triggered the defensive kid in me, which escalated the whole disagreement and ended with our spending some time apart.
It was an old pattern for us, our most common source of conflict back home. Traca wanted me to be more considerate of her feelings. I wanted her to be less judgmental of my behavior. Whenever we engaged each other from these two positions, it never ended well, leaving us in a loveless stalemate that was hard to get out of. Luckily, we rarely played this pattern out on the road, and in Nong Kha, I knew our spat was only temporary.
The next day, the school held another assembly. With our postargument funk still lingering, I went to the hall without Traca and listened to three monks make a presentation. The monks were bald and dressed in traditional saffron robes, but they were also sporting all the latest technology. Two of the monks sat at a table onstage, one talking into a microphone, the other controlling a video projector on his laptop. The third monk roamed through the crowd snapping pictures on his digital camera. I sat in the back of the hall, behind all the students, just taking it in. The microphone monk spoke in rapid Thai, so his message was mostly wasted on me, but the projector monk’s video message was crystal clear: Don’t sell drugs in Thailand. To get this point across, he played a short film that dramatized the following scene: A drug dealer gets busted by the police in the middle of the night and is dragged from his home. The cops are not kidding around. They haul the man like trash into an open courtyard and tie him to a post. The villain is not defiant. He is screaming, begging for his life, but it’s no use. There is a zero-tolerance policy for this kind of criminal, and as the Nong Kha students all watched, the policemen raise their guns, take aim, and blow the drug dealer away.
Don’t sell drugs in Thailand. I certainly got the message.
After that, there was more monk talking and I zoned out, focusing instead on four ants that I spotted on the low cement half wall beside me. The ants were trying to carry a long insect wing, one of the discarded millions left behind by the dinner-crashing swarm that had invaded the entire village. The wing was awkward for the ants to maneuver; they were barely moving, nearly falling off the edge of the wall at times, but they soldiered on, step by step. It was an epic struggle and I was into it, following their progress for a few grueling inches, when suddenly, two of the ants dropped the wing and simply walked off. Left behind, the two remaining ants continued the mission as best they could, dragging their dry, lifeless prize behind them.
I felt a little like God looking down at this tiny drama, marveling at the futility of it all. The wing was a husk. Why did they even want it? And why were they up so high on the wall? Where were they going? What was the point?
Then I laughed to myself. It didn’t take a poet to see the symbolism here, and the longer I watched the two ants working way too hard, the more I wondered whether Traca and I looked like that sometimes. What was God thinking, looking down on us? And after Logan and Jackson—our two baby ants—left … what then? If it got to the point where Traca and I were dragging around our own lifeless husk of a marriage, would we know when to let it go? Would I?
As I watched the ants and the wing, I could relate to their tenacity. I knew that the idea of quitting, of walking away, was just not in my makeup. In spite of our ups and downs and our momentary friction, I was committed to carrying my end of the wing, so to speak. Traca had her own view of commitment that had evolved through the years. It was no longer the strict “Till death do us part” kind of vow we’d made to each other on our wedding day. Now she was more committed to growth, to joy, to making the most of the short lives we had to live. “I want passion,” she was quick to say during our least passionate times, but that’s really not what we needed. Passion is like spice, and no one eats a bowl of spice, even in Thailand. Commitment is the meal. Passion, like an argument, is only temporary, after all. Only commitment can carry the wing from one side of the wall to the other—a fact that was driven home to me every day back at our homestay house.
Our housemother, Fang, was married; her wedding pictures were proudly displayed all over her home. In the photos, Fang and her husband look to be in their early twenties, the groom handsome and strong in a crisp military uniform, the bride dressed in white and stone-faced, more solemn than celebratory. If they were happy on their big day, it doesn’t show in their portraits. But as dour as they appear, I’m sure neither of them had any idea of the cruel fate that love had in store for them.
I hate to admit it, but I never learned Fang’s husband’s name. I never even spoke to him. I’ll call him Saa-me, which means “husband” in Thai.
However it happened, Saa-me had a stroke many years ago, leaving him bedridden and virtually helpless. He could not speak or move much. He lay on a bed to the side of the living room, usually dressed in a white sleeveless T-shirt and covered with a thin sheet. In the heat, he sometimes moaned softly, his frail legs bent, his adult diaper visible. Once, I saw him looking at me, and when I met his eyes, I smiled, but he did not smile back. He just stared out at the world from his blank limbo, while the strong military man he used to be kept watch over his wasting body from the many photographs around the room. And though the rest of the household came and went as if Saa-me wasn’t there, Fang stayed with him. She fed, changed, bathed, dressed, and carried her husband, all without fanfare or complaint.
Divorce rates in Thailand are low; there is still a stigma attached to separating, though that is changing in the big cities. The most recent numbers I can find show six out of every hundred Thai marriages legally end in divorce, compared with the fifty-fifty split found in the United States. Yet even these figures don’t tell the whole tale. One study suggests the rise of Thai divorces is due in part to the many Thai–falong marriages that are becoming more common. In fact, one report from a study done in 2008 found that all divorces filed in a one-month period were from mixed couples, tangible proof—as if it was needed—that unions built on “mah-nee” and “bee-you-tee” are even shakier than those founded on love. For couples that endure, at least to my way of thinking, it is commitment, in one form or another, that gets the credit. Certainly, it’s commitment and commitment alone that keeps you changing your partner’s adult diapers year after year.
But what are Traca and I committed to? Are we committed to being together forever at all costs? Is that what marriage is? Or is that kind of love an anchor, as Traca sometimes suggests, stifling growth and trapping people who might otherwise feel called away? How does “forever” accommodate change? And what happens if you’re the last ant holding the wing?
I sat at the back of the assembly hall, listening to more microphone monk and watching the ants. They hadn’t quit, but they were virtually standing still, one pushing, the other pulling. Progress was minimal. And then, for a reason only the heart knows, one of the remaining ants opened its mouth, let the wing drop, and scurried over the edge of the wall out of sight. Seconds later, probably sensing the futility of it all, the last ant let go and hurried off in the opposite direction.