I'm sorry-not sorry to repeat this yet again, but it's a favorite. And Tuesday would be my parents' anniversary. Maybe it's a favorite because it reminds me of not only the goods in a long relationship, but the bads as well--and that we can get...not over them, but through them. Thanks for reading this again.
In 2012. I had a book out called A Soft Place to Fall, about a marriage gone wrong and how two people found ways to make it right. I still have a soft spot for that book and for long marriages. I regret that I sometimes get a little too glib when I talk about it--I make it all sound easy when it's not at all. At the end of the day, though, marriage is private and what goes on within it is not to be shared. No one really understands anyone else's. Looking back on this, my feelings toward my parents' marriage haven't changed, but I have come to realize that--at the end of that day I just mentioned--it wasn't really any of my business.
“A great marriage is not when the 'perfect couple' comes together. It is when an imperfect couple learns to enjoy their differences.” ― Dave Meurer
On September 28, 1935, my parents went to a minister’s house and got married. My dad wore a double-breasted suit and my mom had on a hat. They stayed married through the rest of the Great Depression and three wars, through the births of six children and the death of one at the age of three, through failing health and the loss of all their parents and some of my father’s siblings. Dad died in 1981, Mom in 1982. They were still married.
On September 28, 1935, my parents went to a minister’s house and got married. My dad wore a double-breasted suit and my mom had on a hat. They stayed married through the rest of the Great Depression and three wars, through the births of six children and the death of one at the age of three, through failing health and the loss of all their parents and some of my father’s siblings. Dad died in 1981, Mom in 1982. They were still married.
From the viewpoint of their youngest child, who was born in
their early 40s when they thought they were finished with all that, it was the
marriage from hell. I never saw them as a loving couple, never saw them laugh
together or show affection or even hold hands. They didn’t buy each other
gifts, sit on the couch together, or bring each other cups of coffee. The only
thing I was sure they shared was that—unlike my husband and me—they didn’t
cancel out each other’s vote on Election Day.
“Why on earth,” I asked my sister once, “did they stay
together all those years? Mom could have gone home to her family, even if she
did have to take a whole litter of kids. Heaven knows Dad could have.” (He was
the adored youngest son and brother—he could do no wrong.)
Nancy gave me the look all youngest siblings know, the one
that says, “Are you stupid?” When you’re grown up, it replaces the look that
says, “You’re a nasty little brat.” But I regress.
“Don’t you get it?” my sister asked. Her blue eyes softened.
So did her voice. “They loved each other. Always. They just didn’t do it the
way you wanted them to.”
Oh.
I remembered then. When they stopped for ice cream because
Mom loved ice cream. How they sat at the kitchen table across from each
other drinking coffee. How thin my dad got during Mom’s long illness because “I
can’t eat if she can’t.” When they watched Lawrence Welk reruns
together and loud because—although neither would admit it—their
hearing was seriously compromised.
And the letters. The account of their courtship. We found
them after Mom’s death, kept in neat stacks. They wrote each other, in those
days of multiple daily mail deliveries, at least once a day and sometimes
twice. When I read those letters, I cried because I’d never known the people
who wrote them.
I have to admit, my parents’ lives had nothing to do with
why I chose to write romantic fiction. I got my staunch belief in Happily Ever
After from my own marriage, not theirs. But how you feel about things and what
you know—those change over the years.
As much as I hated my parents’ marriage—and I truly did hate
it—I admire how they stuck with it. I’ve never appreciated the love they had
for each other, but I’ve come to understand that it never ended. I still feel
sorry sometimes for the little girl I was, whose childhood was so far from
storybook that she wrote her own, but I’m so grateful to have become the adult
I am. The one who still writes her own stories.
But—and this is the good part—these are the things I know.
Saying “I love you” doesn’t always require words. Sometimes
it’s being unable to eat because someone else isn’t. Sometimes it’s stopping
for ice cream. Sometimes—and I realized this the other day when my husband and
I were bellowing “Footloose” in the car—it’s hearing music the same way,
regardless of how it sounds to anyone else.
Marriage is different for different people. So is love. So
is Happily Ever After.
Happy Anniversary, Mom and Dad.
