The Wedding Speech

Summer is a time for weddings and I’ve been asked to speak at one. It is the wedding of my niece, my husband’s niece really, and we, my husband and I have been asked to give a speech about what makes for a long and happy marriage.

I’m a writer. “You’re the writer,” my husband reminded me just this morning when I told him I was stumped. He was complaining a bit about the task at hand. He is actually a great speech writer. He’s given quite a few. At my daughter’s bat mitzvah, our niece and nephew’s wedding, even at his sister’s funeral, he brought down the house. There were laughter and tears each time. He was appropriate, loving, charming and approachable. When we each wrote my daughter a letter for her senior retreat, the nuns chose his over mine to be read out loud and rightfully so. But this speech about marriage weighs heavy on both of us.

“I’d like you to give a speech about how to have a long, happy marriage,” my niece said. “We are having all our friends and relatives with marriages we admire light candles, but you and uncle Mike first. You will start it off by giving a speech.”

I was deeply honored and equally daunted. What make’s a long, happy marriage? I have no clue.

I was tempted to repeat what my aunt said to me on her 42nd wedding anniversary. My mother’s sister married a wonderful man. A doting husband, an available father, a pillar in his community for sure. There is a day named for him in San Diego for God’s sake. He had purchased the most beautiful flowers I’d ever seen for their anniversary and I asked my aunt how she did it? “How do you and Uncle have such a happy marriage?”

Gazing with me at the gorgeous bouquet she replied, “It’s not good, honey, it’s just long.”

I thought that said it all. My aunt is funny, but there was a lot more to her joke than met the eye and as I approach 26 years in my own marriage, I think I’m beginning to understand.

What makes a good marriage is an unanswerable question. I can tell you why I like my own. Bring a sleeping bag and lots of water, it will take days. And it will change, if not moment to moment then at least day to day. When I saw my husband, I knew he was mine. There were no words spoken, maybe he said, “Hi.” I think he said, hi and managed to say it to my face. I was wearing a bikini at the time and he was a 25 year old boy. But hours before he spoke, when I saw him in his brother’s backyard, I knew he was the one. I can not explain this. I think it was my dead grandmother thumping me on the head from the beyond and screaming, “There he is!” But I can’t prove that.

My husband told me he loved me on our third date. I can’t explain that either. Goodness! Did no one ever teach him the benefits of playing hard to get?

Since then we have crafted a divine balance of lust, kindness, mutual respect and passive aggressive behaviors so complex that we couldn’t figure it out in the simplest of escape rooms. That is an activity I will never do with my husband, we might kill each other in that tiny space with no relief but to figure it out together. (The metaphor for marriage is not lost on me, but trust me on this one.)

What we have taken our entire adult lives to build and treasure, could crumble at any moment. None of life’s ups and downs have broken us so far, but these things are precarious. What people survive, put up with and carry in marriage are personal and sacred until they aren’t. So it would seem that having a marriage that is, “just long,” as my aunt joked, at times is gift enough.

The point is, each person in the world is unique and so are our unions. The complexities and idiosyncrasies of marriage are so vast, they are impossible to elucidate. No easier in 5 minutes in front of 100 people who are waiting patiently for cocktail hour.

I’m tempted to write a skit my husband and I can perform about our faults, he takes hours to put on sunscreen, I leave my shoes all over the house. We could take a couple of yuks and call it a day. But one thing I can say about marriage is that it’s no joke and our niece’s union deserves better.

So I will try to give her some sound advice. I’ll try to write something with humor, love and compassion just like my husband has done in the past. I will stare at my screen for hours and maybe find something of value to say about having a long and happy marriage. It won’t matter in the end. On the way to the wedding, Mike will write something on a napkin in the car, and that is what we will read, together.

Kimberly Anton is a writer living happily ever after with two daughters and a very good man.