Sixty-Five

The other night, the One True Wife and I, along with Sister #3 and her adorable new husband (also #3), took the Aged and Revered Parents out to an upscale Mexican dinner.

If "upscale Mexican" seems like one of those oxymorons like "military intelligence" or "jumbo shrimp," then ponder the astounding fact that the dinner was the occasion of another seeming impossibility: my parents' 65th wedding anniversary.

They were married less than six months after Pearl Harbor was bombed by the Japanese. They were married in the year in which The Man Who Came to Dinner and The Pride of the Yankees were box-office smashes.

There's that old joke that goes:

Q: Why do Jewish men die 10 years before their wives?

A: Because they want to.

My parents may be the exception that proves this rule. Surely, spending most of the last 15 years or so in Florida, walking on the beach and basking in the warm sun, has extended their lives, but it also seems to have deepened their love. They spend every damn day together, and they actually enjoy it.

At dinner, Mom presented Dad with a small book of watercolors she'd done that beautifully captured this chapter of their lives together: asleep in bed; chatting over morning coffee and the New York Times; evenings watching a ballgame, or the News Hour, or, more likely just dozing off in front of the TV; it perfectly evoked the quiet companionship and the loving lassitude of this time they've had, and their taste for simplicity. (Besides, what are you going to buy someone you've been married to for 65 years? If dad bought her jewelry, even once every decade, Mom would look like a walking magnet.)

Dad wrote Mom a poem, the last line of which said how lucky he felt to have been married to Helen of Troy all these years.

Holy crap. I thought of her more as Joan Crawford.

(Just kidding, Ma! Drop the coat hanger!)

(For a more accurate assessment of my mother, see this beautiful piece my niece Sara did about her grandma on Huffington.)

I've been reading me True Ann-Sister's posts about rounding the bend from fecundity to irrelevance; and Danny Miller's haunting post about his late mother; and I've been feeling the subtle but undeniable aging of my body, as I struggle to get ready for another middle-age-defying run tomorrow; I restlessly review the torments of my first marriage, and the delights (and, oh yes, the challenges), of my second, "permanent" marriage; and I think, 'How many people of our generation will stay married that long? How many would want to?'

When the One True Wife turned 50 -- and when she created a whole concert of both borrowed and original music, and basically sang her life before her family and friends -- it made me feel, in a way I never had, how the direction, the feeling, the very velocity of life has changed. I had to stop blogging because I had no idea any more why I was blabbing so damn much.

Now I know: the most important thing to blab about is love, in all its forms; and the forces that oppose love, in all their guises.

What else matters?

Thanks, Ma. Thanks, Pa. Long may you wave.

--T.A.

Comments

[Richard Lawrence Cohen]

A beautiful tribute, David. Good to see you back here.

[amba]

My God, their MARRIAGE is old enough to get into the movies for half price!

[Starry]

Good to have you back, wise TA!
Mazal tov to your folks.

[perplexed]

Best wishes to Ma and Pa, they help put the institution in marriage.

[Danny]

Great to see you back, and with a new focus, and mazel tov to your parents who have become like iconic characters to me. The only other people I know who stayed married long enough to celebrate their 65th wedding anniversary were my great-grandparents, and they, like your parents, were true role models in the art of marriage. I'm celebrating my third anniversary this weekend and know that getting to 65 is no simple task! I would LOVE to see some of your mom's life-inspired watercolors if she and you were to consider sharing them with your blogging family.

[Alison]

I wish I could remember the name of the theologian I heard quoted recently. When asked after retirmenet what he'd learned, he said, "I used to say the most important life lesson was, 'You've GOT to love.' Now I know it's this: 'You GET to love.'"

I love that. Your post reminded me of it.