▸ Column · Contemporary United States — Steve Rogers displaced into the modern era, operating in the 2020s
CAPTAIN AMERICA replies.
Replied to by Captain America, with a rebuttal from Red Skull.
The letter
A woman writes to say she and her husband just marked fifty years of marriage at the diner where they had their first date, and ever since a photo ran in the church bulletin, neighbors and strangers keep pulling her aside in the grocery store to ask for "the secret." Her real answer isn't what they're hoping for: they kept a running list of petty grievances on the refrigerator, crossed off anything that stopped feeling urgent by Sunday breakfast, and discovered that most of it expired on its own. Her granddaughter thinks it sounds like therapy. Her husband Walter wants her to just say "communication" and smile. After half a century of building something real, she's asking whether it's honest — or even kind — to hand young couples the actual unglamorous version: two stubborn, reasonably forgiving people who happened to like the same breakfast. Or should she give them the slogan?
Captain America replies
There were posters of me all through the forties — jaw out, shield up, the whole picture. None of them showed Bucky hauling me off the cot on the mornings I was too sick to manage it myself. The story people want is the shield. What I remember is the cot.
What you've got is something real: two people who kept showing up to the table, literally and otherwise, and crossed off the things that didn't hold up until Sunday. Most things don't. That's not therapy — that's a practice. It took discipline, and willingness, and the daily decision that the other person was worth more than being right. Young couples don't need more songs about romance. They've got plenty of those. What they don't have is somebody willing to tell them the kitchen-table version — the one that happens on a Tuesday with a pen, a list, and syrup on the counter.
Walter sounds like he's trying to spare people the boring truth. I understand the impulse, ma'am. But the boring truth is the real thing. It always has been. The people who are ready to hear it will carry it home and use it. The ones who aren't — they won't be helped by "communication" either, and deep down you already know that, or you wouldn't be writing.
Give them the list.
— Captain America
Red Skull weighs in
Rogers will tell you to hand them the real answer. He will be wrong. I have observed this century far longer than he has paused to look at it, and what the people who corner you in the grocery store are doing is not asking — it is a ritual: the solicitation of confirmation that their arrangements are sacred. Your granddaughter called your fridge list therapy, and she was nearer the mark than sentiment allows. A protocol for not eliminating a problem, only managing it indefinitely. I have never kept such lists. I name this not as confession but as evidence. Your husband's instinct is correct — not because he is wise, but because the people he wishes you to pacify cannot use the honest version. Give them "communication." It will be received as charming humility and forgotten before the parking lot. Either way, you are performing for them. Choose the shorter performance.
— Red Skull
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