Many people say that if you want to fall in love, you have to talk about a love like your parents, and you will be old together after a lifetime of noisy and bumpy. But every time they see their parents arguing with each other, some people will feel that what binds them together is the bond that allows them to torture each other for a lifetime, and it is not love at all.
So, what exactly is it that makes parents work together for a lifetime? Is there any love between parents?
Italian writer Domenico Starnaone's Shoelaces – a sharp examination of marriage, fidelity, honesty, and truth
The story begins on a hot summer day when seventy-four-year-old Aldo and his seventy-six-year-old wife, Wanda, go on vacation by the sea.
They were like a normal couple, Aldo was a respected university professor, and Wanda was a good wife who was thrifty and thrifty.
Before the trip, Wanda, who was always clean, carefully inspected all aspects of the house to make sure it was clean and tidy, and called her son Sandro and daughter Anna to let both of them feed Grandma's favorite cat, Labess.
But when they returned home on the day of the holiday, both were startled by the chaos in the house. All the chests of drawers had been opened and rummaged through, carpets were thrown on the coffee table, sofas had fallen to one side, and the whole house seemed to have been robbed.
Wanda panicked and counted the valuables in the house, and the pearl necklace left by Wanda's mother was not lost, and the fifty euros placed in the conspicuous place on the dishwasher table were not taken away.
Nothing of value was lost, except that the house was turned upside down, and At the same time, Wanda's favorite cat, Labess, was gone. Aldo and Wanda have doubts in their hearts and panic at the same time, why are all the rich things still there and Wanda's favorite cat, Labes, missing?
The old couple chose to call the police, and Wanda was very worried about whether Labez had been kidnapped and the kidnappers were going to use Rabes to blackmail them, but Aldo was more worried that the robbers would find their secrets from their study and extort a lot of money.
It turned out that at the highest shelf of Aldo's study, there was a blue cube box that Wanda had never liked. Wanda had always thought that it was just an ornament, and did not know that pressing one side of the lower block would open like a door, and that contained all of Aldo's secrets.
For example, there are photographs of Lydia not wearing clothes, and letter after letter written by Wanda during Aldo's infidelity.
The photographs and letters, placed in a blue cube box, piece together the beginning and end of Aldo's derailment of forty years ago.
Forty years ago, Aldo, in his thirties, fell in love with nineteen-year-old Lydia and decided to leave his family.
During that time, Wanda kept writing letters to Aldo, and in Wanda's letters, her first words were often:
"Dear sir, if you forget, it doesn't matter, I can remind you: I am your wife."
When she was young, Wanda believed that real feelings would not change, especially after marriage, only superficial people would cheat.
But Wanda did not think that Aldo was the superficial person, in the face of Aldo's derailment, Wanda couldn't stop asking herself what she had done wrong?
Wanda even began to try to renew herself, to imitate the dress of young girls, the manners of Roman girls, but this renewal was always in vain. At that time, Wanda did not understand that what needed to wait would never come back.
In Aldo's eyes, he was happy, relaxed, never bored, always energetic, writing, publishing articles, and being welcomed by people when he was with Lydia.
And with Wanda, Aldo only feels that he is a middle-aged man who has not aged and is not in the mainstream.
In the face of Wanda's repeated inquiries, Aldo could not tell Wanda that he felt happier with Lydia.
Aldo not only had to leave the family, but did not even want to fight for the children, but would only send money to the children on time.
During this period, Wanda even chose to commit suicide, and Aldo did not go to visit after being rescued, which completely saw Aldo for Wanda.
For Wanda, suicide is just a proof, in Wanda's heart she feels that Aldo killed herself a long time ago, not to ruin Wanda's identity as a wife, but to strangle her as a person, and marriage will turn this once carefree little girl into the yellow-faced woman who bargained for two corianders in the market and was happy.
The money aldo sent was only enough for two children to live, which made Wanda, who had always been a housewife, no longer ask herself where she was not doing well enough, no longer bother with The things that Aldo had left her, but began to work non-stop to make money.
After four years, as he grew older, Aldo always remembered his two children. For his lack of growth in the process of his two children, Aldo is indeed regretful.
At the same time, after the baptism of time, Lydia, who was once 19 years old, has become more mature, more charming, and exudes a queen-like temperament in every move.
Aldo, who will be forty years old, also feels powerless for Lydia, and feels in his heart that Lydia will leave him, so at the age of forty, Aldo chooses to return to the family.
Wanda also accepted Aldo's return, but both Aldo and Wanda understood that there was an indelible rift in the broken mirror.
At home, as long as Aldo is a little unhappy, Wanda will become cold.
Many things in the family, Wanda will always intentionally or unintentionally pull on Lydia, and exude a signal that "I am no longer the good talking woman before, if you don't do what I say, then you get out".
In the face of the signal released by Wanda, Aldo can only give in to tolerance, whether it is the size of the family chores, or the two children want to watch more TV, eat a little ice cream, Aldo completely lost the status of father and husband in this family, reduced to a silent audience.
But whatever Wanda says, Aldo must default to being correct, but whatever Wanda decides, Aldo must carry out.
But in the face of the gathering of relatives and friends, Wanda will also watch Aldo give a few sarcastic compliments, and will not let Aldo lose the face that a successful person should have.
After so many years of crisis, Aldo and Wanda both understood that to live together, it was best not to say anything, and silence was longer than talking, which worked.
But Aldo's decades of obedience also obscure the fact that there are no common feelings between them.
In the third month after returning to the family, Aldo already had lovers again, but unlike Lydia, these lovers had only physical relations with Aldo, and this relationship had to be carried out behind the back of the woman.
Aldo has been consistently cheating, because in Aldo's heart, although Wanda is his wife, although he wears a wedding ring, he is actually free, and Aldo has never established a real relationship with anyone.
This face-saving marriage lasted for more than thirty years, until this time the two returned from an overseas vacation in their seventies.
While cleaning up the house that had been messed up by thieves or robbers, Wanda found a Latin dictionary, and on that Latin dictionary clearly stated the name of Wanda's favorite cat.
The three words That Wanda shouts every day mean falling, collapsing, collapsing, and destroying in the dictionary.
At the moment of seeing Labes's name, Wanda had suppressed the grievances, shame, and resentment that she had suppressed for more than fifty years in an instant.
Wanda sneered, when her life has gone through nearly eighty years, she can finally say that she has never encountered anything she likes in her life.
Wanda didn't like Aldo, didn't like the two children, and didn't like herself.
Even in the matter of Aldo's departure, The reason why Wanda was angry was not out of love but because she felt stupid, stupid that she did not leave first.
Wanda did everything in her power to get Aldo back, but only to tell Aldo that this time she was leaving.
Rabes is a disaster, living in a disaster, enjoying the shame, and that's what binds Aldo to Wanda.
Aldo ren wanda shouted loudly, and Aldo did not comfort or defend, although Aldo understood that this was the first time in decades that Wanda had confided in her heart and told the truth.
But Aldo knew better that to protect the rest of the day, the rest of the days might only be a few years, a few months, but still to pretend that nothing had happened.
Admittedly, Aldo's trick of pretending that nothing had happened worked, and after Wanda had vented her emotions to the fullest, the two began to clean up the room again, pretending that nothing had happened. It was just Wanda who said, "Labes will never come back." "Indeed, Rabes will not come back, because Rabes and the messy house are not the ghosts of the so-called thieves and robbers at all.
It was the children of the two, daughter Anna and son Sandro.
In the eyes of her daughter Anna, the beautiful and attractive Lydia is much stronger than her mother,
At the first sight of Lydia, Anna was attracted to Lydia's beauty, and at that moment Anna realized that her mother could not be compared to Lydia.
And his father was indeed never separated from Lydia, and he hid Lydia in his head and at home all his life. Even though his father returned home, he abandoned himself and his brother.
The marriage of the parents was like the laces of her father's shoes tied to her father's shoes, bound to each other for mutual torture, not out of any love at all.
So when her parents went on vacation by the sea, her daughter Anna contacted her brother Sandro to return home, and the two discussed that their parents would sell the house to rent a small apartment to spend their old age, and then divide the money from the sale of the house equally between the two.
So the two began to rummaging through the whole house, making the whole house look like thieves and robbers, and after all the chaos, Anna felt a little comfortable in the home where she had lived for more than twenty years.
Just as the two were leaving, Rabes followed the two, Anna wanted to take Rabes away, and Sandro didn't agree that it would be sad to her mother.
But Anna smiled, picked up Labes, and said:
"But Labes won't be sad, how happy you look at it!"
Looking back at Aldo's marriage to Wanda, it seems that the two never had a happy day. But such a marriage, the two continue to maintain. Perhaps because Both Aldo and Wanda feel that the integrity of the family is very important, but the two do not find that their marriage has eaten away at their daughter and son.
Anna refuses to have children and believes that having children is a symbol of barbarism and backwardness, a manifestation of human animality. The son Sandro, on the other hand, is ruthless and has several children with different women.
In this world, even the happiest marriages will have 200 thoughts of divorce and 50 times in their lives of wanting to strangle each other.
Irish law once provided that couples could not divorce for life once they were married. The seemingly romantic law, which countless people envy, was lifted by a referendum in 1995.
Because the marriage of lifelong union is not necessarily romantic to the extreme, it may be tied to each other, stumbling and complaining to each other, and in the end, the two people are bored, and they feel sad when they think of falling in love.
And the feelings of leaving are not necessarily fragile, perhaps they are forgotten in the rivers and lakes, hidden in the bottom of their hearts, and occasionally remembered just like the old people to bring tenderness and warmth.
Not everything requires a long time, and for a family, love is always more important than completeness and longevity.