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Personal Perspectives
Sometimes it's just about hanging on
How to stay married 40 years, or not!
Posted June 13, 2010
Who knows what makes a marriage last a long time? Certainly not me, and I’m about to celebrate my 40th wedding anniversary. I doubt anyone thought it would last this long. Everybody knew we were all wrong for each other.
They were probably right, but here we are in 2010 looking back on a really lively bunch of decades—not so much a rollercoaster ride as one on a tilt-a-whirl (which, as aficionados know, involves not only stomach-churning up-and-down motion but also a whole lot of swinging in dizzy circles).
He’s coffee, I’m tea. He was raised west of the Mississippi; I have always lived east of the Hudson. He dropped out of two or three colleges; I stuck it through for a master’s degree. He’s a “gimme the remote” tv freak couch potato; I curl up in another room with a good book. I’m “Jeopardy!” He’s “Star Trek” and military history. I’m medium rare; he’s well done (try to cook a roast with those parameters).
I’m crunchy, he’s smooth. He’s white bread, I’m rye. I’m balsamic vinaigrette; he’s creamy Italian. I’m in the pool, he’s hunkered down in the shade. I have regular big plans for our lives; he’s realistic. I’m gregarious; he……isn’t.
And don’t get me started on music. He thrives on oldies from the 30s to the 50s; I am a child of the 60s loving folkies and Credence Clearwater Revival (go, “Proud Mary”!) We both enjoy long car trips but the entertainment portion of the experience is contentious: his “memory station” vs my audiobook of the moment, which could be anything from wild adventure travel to steamy romance.
We got off to a shaky start. With my alcoholic, one-size-fits-all-bigot stepfather, a small wedding was clearly in order. We had a total of 13, counting the minister, since it was risky to invite my good friends the black woman and the Jew. I’d like to remember that the event came off perfectly, but I’d be lying. This was the first important life event my stepfather had attended in the then-15 years of my mother’s second marriage: no scout events, chorus performances, graduations (and I was high school valedictorian), no plays, nothing.
I didn’t know when I was well off. And I forgot the Number One Rule for families with alcoholics: Never Plan An Evening Event. Yep, with the whole day to prepare, he got drunk. (No surprise there.) He did escort me down the aisle and when my mother poked him, he “gave me away”, but by then we were all shell-shocked from his appearance among the gathered guests at the house before the ceremony: fresh from the shower, he wasn’t even wearing a towel. He “streaked” the assemblage. Mom was at the church and didn’t know about it for years, but she is still clearly furious about his inebriation in all of the photographs.
With that rocky beginning, I didn’t expect a “Father Knows Best” life, and I didn’t get one. I quit my job to be Earth Mother, and in rapid succession our dog was killed in the street, the good friend I relied on to sustain me through motherhood moved away, and our first daughter was diagnosed with cancer. For the next 30+ years we coped with her cancer therapy, the side effects, the late effects, kidney failure, dialysis and transplant; it was a rare Christmas Eve we didn’t spend in some ER with a crisis. Meanwhile, our younger daughter struggled to gain our attention with various body adornments and was in the Terrible Two’s for about 24 years.
So we became major consumers of psychotherapy, struggling to cope with all the vicissitudes of life. We hung on until, with our 40th anniversary, we have approximately surpassed the total years of my mother’s and two siblings’ marriages (six in all). It’s interesting to me to note that among my cousins, the ones whose marriages have survived are those who have faced really serious crises—MS, leukemia, and the like.
Still, here we are, 40 years later. A Big Anniversary. I mentioned to one of my daughters that some children give their parents nice gifts or a party for a big anniversary. A cruise would be nice. We had a good laugh over that—my kids are just barely independent and worry about their utility bills. (In fact, one of them rarely turned on her electric heat all winter, since one thing she remembered from high school science classes is “heat rises” and she’s on the top floor.)
I have heard about silver and gold and diamond anniversaries, but I wondered about the 40th. Being a reference librarian in my day job, I looked it up. It’s the Ruby Anniversary. The ruby is a symbol of the passion smoldering in a marriage after 40 years together. Hmmm… maybe the smoldering passion is heartburn?
But we have learned to compromise. We also both love Maine, the Red Sox, iced tea, cats, dogs, and our daughters. And he still makes me laugh.
Apparently that’s enough.
