Yesterday, Nov. 6, was our 50th wedding anniversary. I am, to be honest, stunned.
Prolonged marital harmony comes as no great surprise — we are the sort of people who like being married and are pretty good at it. I am not one to run off with a supermodel, and she wouldn’t let me — just kidding.
But shock and awe comes from this: Where did the time go?
Fifty years? OMG!
“And I still like him,’’ she tells acquaintances, an endearing remark. I am on mushy ground here, but I swear before the entire paid readership of the Valley News that the feeling is mutual.
Fifty years!
We were married on a late Saturday afternoon in a ceremony overseen by an Episcopal priest and a Catholic priest, too. This was not exactly kosher, to borrow a word from another faith tradition, but Dede’s hometown was radically ecumenical. A former nun played guitar and sang Noel Paul Stookey’s “The Wedding Song.” It was very sweet.
At the reception, our first dance was “Color My World” by Chicago. Any fool could shuffle around to its wobbly pace, and that fool was me. Dede used to joke that she had to pay me a dollar to get me to dance. She forgave me this flaw, and more to come.
I recall the band playing “Joy to the World,” the “Jeremiah was a bullfrog” song by Three Dog Night. It got everyone up. Compare it to Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy,” without the majesty:
Joy to the world
All the boys and girls
Joy to the fishes in the deep blue sea
Joy to you and me
I would like to say I have lived in its spirit ever since, but no, not really. Life is a series of ups and downs, and sometimes coffee spills in your lap just as you arrive for an interview.
I found a person to share it all with: the highs and lows, laughter and tears, slings and arrows, sickness and health. We promised to love through massive baby poops, teenage snark, school projects revealed just before bedtime on a Sunday night. Then came college trips, bathroom remodels, a first Medicare visit, and on and on until someday one of us will be the last to turn out the lights.
We made it through the stages of marriage: Double Income, No Kids; Less Income, Two Kids; Empty Nest, Less Stress; Double Retirement, More Naps.
Fifty years doesn’t go by in a flash, but it feels like it when you dig through a bin of old photos and are confronted by how you looked through the years. That hair, those glasses!
I wish I had great wisdom about marriage longevity, but I’m not sure if our path suits others. Marriage can be an epic journey, like “The Odyssey” with Matt Damon. Bosses, landlords, car salesmen, recessions and such are modern-day boulder-throwing giants and cannibals, and then there are sorceresses who turn men into pigs. (Ahem.)
What is there to do but keep your head down and keep rowing like Matt Damon.
Dede is a kind and friendly person, but I have had to work at that, since I tend to withdraw from certain emotions and situations. With 50 years of practice, we are better partners. She makes me fried eggs on brioche buns. I help her find TV shows with the clicker.
We rarely squabble, and when we do, both of us apologize within an hour or two. This would almost make you think one of us is up to something, but 50 years is an awfully long time to run a criminal scheme. Love must be true.
In the early years I was funnier than her, but she is catching up. We often chuckle on the way to the market, or the landfill. We could well become colorful old coots. If you can laugh at yourself and laugh together, you’ll never lack for material.
I think it helped that we both like being parents, and are crazy loony ecstatic about being grandparents. It is the best, a payoff for long labors.
Many say your life purpose is to discover your bliss. Perhaps one way to move closer to it is to help someone else find theirs. When your spouse’s happiness becomes your happiness, then … shazam!
We are average people, not glamorous in any way. We have lived in the here and now — not Disney World, not Paris. Just recently we took a lazy ride up to Lyme and bought a “gobbler” turkey sandwich from the general store to share. We ate at a picnic table on the pretty little green.
The warm afternoon sun lied to us about winter — it’s not coming, it said. We knew better, but we called it a beautiful day, one to add to our collection.
Fifty years. OMG!
The writer lives in West Lebanon. He can be reached at dan.mackie@yahoo.com.
