Search This Blog

Friday, December 5, 2008

What do 50 years bring?

Marvin and I will celebrate 50 years of marriage on Sunday, Dec. 7. Actually we started celebrating over Thanksgiving when Marvin reached the magic age of 70 and will be continuing to be joyful until after Christmas when all the family vacations in Florida. Four nights and five days of family will be a fitting tribute to our time together. If married folk produce 10 family members they are proud to claim as children and grandchildren, then what else has meaning in life? Really!

We have accomplished other goals: good jobs, our own companies, a few good friends, and many meaningful activities. But children always make the difference, at least for me. We've both affected the lives of many children besides our own. But a long marriage isn't about doing stuff, it's about being silent together as well as talking through a shared meal. It's about trust even in despair. It's about enjoying one another, and of course, there's love. We have loved each other through pain, sorrow and anger. We don't give up on marriage, even when divorce sounded so much easier. Perhaps tenacity had something to do with it. Perhaps it was the memory of our parents saying that we must be patient and work at marriage. I don't know, really. We have found what makes being together work, but would never presume to tell others how to do it. Not all marriages are made in heaven, but surely more of them should be working than the statistics show! 

Saturday night we will dine out at our favorite expensive restaurant and toast one another. I am toasting a healthy, happy, frustrating, and long-loving marriage. I pray that it will continue to become all these things and more! Well, maybe not the frustrating part!

 

No comments: