After months of unanswered questions, Mom went upstairs with some of Norm's clean clothes and, pulling open a drawer, found it entirely stripped of its former contents. She pulled open another...and another...they, too, were empty. Mom now faced an even greater question. Norm had moved out with no warning while the three of us were absent from the house. He was gone. But where? And why? That evening, Norm came back to the house to reveal his intentions, and to give Mom and Dad a formal explanation regarding his sudden move. His appearance alone served to quickly escalate the conversation toward a destination which was beyond my realm of involvement, so I turned to one of the far corners of the kitchen where my gerbil cage was situated and stared unseeingly at my pet while listening intently to the scenario unfolding behind me. Norm stated that he had moved in with Tracy. "You kids got married then!" Mom exclaimed, moving closer as if to embrace her son. A quiet, no frills wedding would have been characteristic of Norm. "No...," he replied. A silence followed his statement, as if each person was attempting to understand the conversation which was unfolding and see beyond the misconceptions that had obscured the truth. "You mean you're just going to live with each other?" Mom asked. "Didn't our marriage and family mean anything to you?" She was aghast, tearful, frustrated. Norm appeared awestruck by the magnanimous fervor he had evoked. He had not thought that marriage could have meant so much to my parents. "You have made a beautiful home!" Norm exclaimed, "But it just can't be for me." Questions flurried about the room like a mid-summer blizzard; upset parents, I learned, excelled in the art of interrogation. Mom's voice had transformed into a slightly nasal, high-pitched whine which characterized both disapproval and sickness of heart, while Dad's speech quickened into abrupt, angry darts which leapt through the air and stung their recipient. To each question, Norm bowed his head a bit lower. "If she loves you, she'd marry you." "It just can't be for me." It was all he could say. He loved Tracy, and wanted to spend his life with her; love of the heart should require no legal document to assure its sincerity. He could not understand the importance of marriage. Norm's was an idealistic view of human love. Society, however, having judged man's ineptitude in the areas of honesty and integrity, found that unceremonious love was not, generally speaking, taken as seriously as love proclaimed before an audience in the form of predetermined vows. In certain circles, religion amplified the significance of marriage, entrenching the ceremony itself into the hearts and minds of society...and to my parents; moreover, it was tradition. To them, love alone was not enough to justify a man and a woman living together as one unit; Norm's proposition was a revolt against their values.