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How to Manage a Happy Marriage
Octogenarians’ recommendations for connubial bliss
My wife and I will celebrate our 62nd wedding anniversary soon. That milestone, the imminent approach of Valentine’s Day, and a challenge from the Challenged inspired this attempt to share our matrimonial advice.
Although I hold a Ph.D. in an obscure academic discipline, I have no professional qualification for offering anyone counsel. So, I asked my wife. “It’s luck — finding the right person,” she said. “And then remembering all birthdays and anniversaries. And, of course, keeping romance alive.”
I always remember. As to luck, my story resembles a romance novel. Here is the plot: She is a Puerto Rican studying in New York. I am a gringo, studying in Puerto Rico. We are 1,600 miles apart, unaware the other exists.
She graduates and returns to Puerto Rico. I am studying (the Iliad) on a porch in my lodging house. It is where she lives. She enters. I look up and am dazzled. For me, it is love at first sight.
It takes her just a little longer. We begin dating. Eventually, I ask her father for her hand (the custom in Puerto Rico at the time). A year later, we marry. A year after that, our son is born. A year after that, our daughter is born. We have many adventures. A lifetime later, we are still happily…
