Tomorrow marks 50 years of marriage for Kathleen and me, and that seems like a big deal for any number of reasons. Of course, wouldn't it be great if marriages lasting that long were NOT such a big deal? To get to this point combines marrying (not always a choice couples make), with both partners living to see this point, and avoiding divorce.
So, a bit of luck and lots of will power and loads of love are necessary for a Golden Anniversary.
Our finding each other involves a rom-com cliché -- I was dating Kathleen's college roommate, or we would never have met -- as well as my parents not being all that enthusiastic about the match (at first). Oh, and there was that pesky Vietnam War thing in the mix.
I was their first-born and I was not even 21 when we announced our engagement and plans to marry. I'm not sure my parents were prepared for that and have to admit that now the idea that we would marry at age 21 seems precipitous. We weren't worried about how the marriage could thrive and last for five decades (and counting!). We were in love and simply wanted to be together.
Every marriage has its stories, of course, and most people outside the immediate family could not care less. But one fact that even a stranger might find interesting is that I flew off to England just a few weeks after the ceremony (I was in the Air Force in 1971 and RAF Lakenheath was my first deployment). Kathleen followed as soon as arrangements could be made, arriving in December.
My first airplane trip was flying to San Antonio for basic training. Kathleen's first plane trip was from Cedar Rapids to Gatwick Airport in England (and she has all sorts of stories about that).
We had very little money. I was paid about $100 per month until January, when the military received "huge" pay increases -- my monthly pay went to $300, for instance -- and Kathleen received a separate spouse support payment of $100 per month. I know. It was ages ago, but even then $200/month was not good.
Yet we had enough to live. Ah, youth!
But enough about that. My point is that we ended up having a two-year honeymoon in Europe, far away from family and friends. When we returned to the States in 1973 we brought home a five-month-old daughter, which is probably NOT how most people finish their honeymoon. But that's also another story, for another time.
We never sat down and planned out much of our life. Heck, we were 21 and mostly just stumbled along. We were in love and we also liked each other. And if and when we ran into difficulties or disagreements, we couldn't call parents or commiserate over a beer in a local bar. We had no options but to work it all out.
I occasionally think about how our long marriage began and wonder why our partnership has endured so long while many others (look at the statistics) ran aground. I give some credit to that two-year "exile" in England where we learned so much about ourselves and each other.
We only faintly resemble the strong, fearless youth we once were, though every once in a while I can "see" us as we were. We don't love each other in the same way as we did 50 years ago -- I'm not sure anyone that young truly understands what a partnership can be. Our love for one another is so much deeper today.
What does that mean? I don't know that this can be explained to someone NOT in the partnership. You have to take it on faith, I guess, with 50 years as a piece of evidence.
There's a Zen saying, "Leap and the net will appear."
We took the leap and, somehow, it turned out fine.
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