This is What 50 Years of Marriage Looks Like

“Dad, you should really step out of your mud boots for the picture!” I chuckled.

“What? I like my mud boots. Besides, they’re white, they match the dress.”

“His boots are fine, they’re not muddy! Just take the picture,” my mom beamed.

She’s standing on the little wooden step stool that my Grandpa Mac made for her when I was ten or so. The one with the blue macrame top. This gives her enough height that she is not tripping on her dress. The hoop, years ago, was rented.

“It’s almost right,” she mused as I tried to figure out how to attach the Chantilly lace train to tiny loops hidden in the waist of her dress, “I cut the longer part of the bottom layer of the train off to make Hannah’s christening gown, remember?”

I “mmhmmed” around the pins sandwiched between my lips. I got a couple of kids out of that christening dress, but not all four.

“I thought I might just come downstairs tomorrow morning in this and surprise your Dad… but then when I got it out and tried it on this morning I realized I could never get into it without help.”

“Well, to be fair, you didn’t get into it the first time without help either,” I reminded her. “There. You’re in.” I stood back, satisfied.

She shuffled off to fix her veil and I hollered my Dad back down the stairs as I heard them creak under his feet starting up. She needed to be able to make a grand entrance.

“I hope your Dad doesn’t laugh, TOO much,” she giggled, as we carefully inched down the stairs, wads of lace held above her knees in all four hands and I prayed she wouldn’t tumble and break a bone this way… imagining the discourse with the hospital personel: “HOW did your Mom break her hip? And WHY is she pinned into her wedding dress?”

“Careful Mom, watch your step!” I reminded her as we both giggled out into the yard, step stool under my arm, crystal bowl full of roses in her hands, pearl and crystal tiara, that her nineteen year old self had chosen, more than slightly askew.

My Dad did not laugh.

He grinned a lot. He posed in his “wedding white” yacht boots. He clowned with a rose in his teeth. And he kissed his bride.

There was no party (I did that for them at 25 years and they made me PROMISE I wouldn’t this time.) Just the three of us in the garden, giggling and trying to get the light right.

“Dale these are just the BEST roses I’ve EVER seen,” my mother gushed, over the dozen gorgeous pink long stems my father sneaked over, by ferry, to the city to procure for her this morning. “These did NOT come from the grocery store, did they?”

They most certainly did not. And, he suggested that perhaps they should sit them on the pool table in the basement where it was significantly cooler and they wouldn’t wilt so quickly.

“But I want to enjoy them!” Mom frowned.

“We can stand down there with them where it’s cool and look at them,” Dad suggested.

Mom gave him her, “Dale, you’ve got to be kidding, face” and replaced them on the table.

Mom insisted on taking a picture with me too, sticking the veil up over both of our heads and laughing until my broken rib was killing me.

“Oh, now the BBQ is in the background!” she giggled, trying to find a better place on the deck to get our last selfie.

“Yeah, well that’s truth in advertising, isn’t it,” I chuckled. “No one sees the dirty BBQ, the mud boots or the weird little step stool coming when they get married in a white lace gown, now do they?”

This is what 50 years of marriage looks like.

What a delight to sit on the deck in the wilting heat with a glass of iced tea and talk politics with your old people on the eve of their fiftieth wedding anniversary.

What a sobering realization when your mother points at her Dad in the sepia toned original photos and starts doing the math, only to realize that the father of the bride was only two years older than my husband… and my mother was his THIRD daughter married off. The bride the age my daughter is now.

This is what fifty years of marriage looks like:

• A house built with the help of your children
• A forest planted by hand
• Gardens weeping squash and beans
• Kids, grandkids, and still each other
• Adventures on six continents

A number of years ago The Man and I realized something sobering:

We are the only adults that we know who are still married to our original partners, who both have two parents married to their original partners, with all four sets of grandparents having remained married for the long haul too. That’s quite a legacy in this day and age.

I do hope I can manage not to mess it up.

My particular generation is rife with people griping about their parents. Perhaps every generation is this way and I am noticing now because this is the only one I can remember belonging to.

Most of the people I know roll their eyes over their parents, dread their visits, grumble about their in-laws, or stress out over the adult parent child relationship. They’ll tell you that it’s all their parents’ fault.

This has not been my experience. But it’s still all my parents’ fault.

It’s all my parents’ fault.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again:

All that is patient, domestic, or kind about me is a testament to my mother’s long suffering instruction and example; because my nature is about as impulsive, wild and blunt as they come. I get that from the other side of the family.

Everything that’s logical, intelligent, or wander-lusty comes from my Dad’s dedication to teaching my brother and I to do every damned thing the hard way, hours, and hours, and years of read alouds (from Mark Twain and Watership Down to Josephus’ heavy pink volume) in my childhood. Not to mention a propensity for jerking us out of school on a particularly good fishing day, or because work needed to be done, or because this winter just seemed better spent retelling the stories of the Conquest of Mexico, by Bernal Dias on location.

It’s all my parents’ fault.

All the good stuff anyway. The stuff I’ve messed up is my own deal, they did their best and can’t be blamed for my hardheadedness.

Fifty years is a good gift to give and a kind legacy to leave.

I’m sure they’ve had their moments. I know they very nearly lost the plot over the conundrum of whether or not it was a good idea to bring me into the world (glad Mom won that round… pretty sure my Dad is too.) They must have fought almost to the death a few times. Surely they came right to the knife’s edge on throwing in the towel. But they didn’t. I’m glad.

I’m not saying everyone should stay married for fifty years. I’m just saying I’m glad my folks did.

• I like that my panda bear (that was actually my Dad’s first) sits next to his bed and winks at me when I walk through the room.
• I like that his garage is a hodgepodge of every single unexpected thing (if you’ve seen it, you’re laughing now, if you haven’t, another 3000 words wouldn’t do it justice, so just never mind.)
• I like that right above it is my mother’s art studio that is bathed in light colour, fabric, glass, paint, textures, and the washer dryer. Because art is important, but laundry doesn’t do itself, now does it?
• It’s lovely to get to sit on the porch and wring our hands over the electoral process in our other country together on a Thursday afternoon.
• It’s nice to have them turn up in Africa and Guatemala for months of adventuring.
• It’s even fun to haggle my Dad down over him “letting” me take my mom off to the Amazon for a few weeks. (I’m currently negotiating for this giraffe hotel in Kenya… as our next girl’s trip; my mom loves giraffes.)

I like that my Dad brought me two live raccoons for my birthday last year… that he’d trapped out of his garage… even though I was on the wrong side of the continent that day. (Thank goodness he didn’t trap skunks that morning!)

I like that he grew me an enormous cabbage last fall, and that today (after grumbling hard at my mother over having cut me two summer squash last week, which were actually half grown delacatas, to be picked in September, not July), he hunted all over the six new blueberry bushes until he found one, almost ripe blueberry for me to munch while mom pulled a bouquet of beets for me.

I like that my mother sometimes beats me at Scrabble and sometimes I beat her and we both chase Dad out of the sunroom when we play. He hates the game, so WHY does he hover and drive us crazy?

I like that they’re negotiating over where to spend winter this year; the only consensus is “somewhere not cold.”

I love that they are both still my wildest cheerleaders even though they often (quietly) think I’m totally off my nut. They know this is their fault. Secretly, I think they like it. Mostly.

This is what 50 years of marriage looks like:

• Two fresh faced kids with not the first living clue where the road would take them.
• Two grandparents still laughing together.
• A trip to the city, by ferry, during the time of year when we’ll all do just about anything not to have to ride the tourist clogged ferry, to pick up a dozen long stemmed roses for a girlfriend he’s had since she was 13.
• A hot sweaty wiggle into a wedding dress that still fits, mostly, to make a guy she’s hung out with since way before he was cool laugh.

And a bouquet of beets, planted in a garden where the soil has been carefully cultivated and improved for several decades, watered faithfully every night since the seeds were planted. Weeds pulled. Plants thinned. All to be given to a girl that was seeded and cultivated much the same way by the same four sets of hands.

That’s love.

Happy anniversary, mis padres.

• Thanks for the great start.
• Thanks for the continued cultivation.
• Thanks for keeping it together and being the fabric of my world.
• Thanks for finding ways to keep at it.
• Thanks for teaching me stuff, even when I was less than enthusiastic about the lessons (insert lecture on attending a hundredth set of boring ruins over reading Nancy Drew on an overly hot day in Central America somewhere here… that was shortsighted of me.)
• Thanks for being cool with my particular brand of crazy and never trying to cram me into the box that didn’t suit me.
• Thanks for being the best grandparents ever.
• Thanks for paying for my education, not paying for my extras and not bailing us out over the pasta years or the bullet hole in our first apartment window.
• Thanks for supporting the outside the box upbringing of the herd.
• Thanks for never guilt tripping me, even once, about anything, ever, in my entire life.
• Thanks for freezing your ears off that Christmas camping in the Sahara. I should have gotten us a hotel room… if there was one in that one horse town.
• Thanks for teaching me to snorkel and not killing me when I pushed you into that piece of coral, Mom.
• Thanks for letting us do all the things that parents can’t let their kids do anymore (of course I do… but I’m weird… and this is also your fault!)
• Thanks for doing life your way and showing us how it’s done.
• Thanks for fifty years and letting me share 42 of it.

You’re my favourite people of all time. I’ll do my best not to drop the ball on your legacy.