How can we have been married eighteen years? I don't feel like I'm old enough to have been married that long. I feel like I'm still this age:
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| Teenagers in love |
Our church has the nice practice of praying for couples celebrating anniversaries during the intentions at Mass. Another couple married the same week as us is celebrating their 60th anniversary. Cheers to them! Praying we'll make it to 60 since we got an early start.
These are the "hard work" years people told us about when we were engaged. We didn't believe we'd have those years at the time. The card I gave my husband said something about "life in the fast lane." (This year I went for the humorous card with cute dogs on the front, instead of the romantic one.) Like others, there are many days when our conversations are to-do lists: who's picking up whom, what time we have to be where, grocery lists, appointment reminders, etc. There are some days when we don't talk because I'm being peevish. There are some days I talk at my husband because I am anxious about something. There are some days when he is gone and our phone conversations are simply a catalog of what has happened that day because I am too tired to think of anything interesting to say. But, thankfully, there are some days where we fit in a morning walk or sit down on our back patio and have a glass of wine - usually cheap, like Cook's - and talk for awhile. The night of our anniversary eve, our teenagers came out to join us (not for wine) after they got home from a social event and filled us in our their night. We didn't mind the interruption. We are discovering that one of the pleasures of being married a decent interval is that our maturing kids are pretty fun to talk to.
There have been some studies about whether married people or people with children really are any happier than single, childless people. But you don't get married because it is going to make you happier, (when are you ever happier than in the midst of young love?) but because you can't imagine going through life without this person who has the good of your soul in their care. Marriage opens you up to all kinds of potential miseries. But it also opens up a world of joys.
Like this cute person:
And now because poets say things about marriage better, I'll let them. I can't remember if I have copied this poem here before or not. I like John Ciardi.
Most Like an Arch This Marriage
Most like an arch—an entrance which upholds
and shores the stone-crush up the air like lace.
Mass made idea, and idea held in place.
A lock in time. Inside half-heaven unfolds.
Most like an arch—two weaknesses that lean
into a strength. Two fallings become firm.
Two joined abeyances become a term
naming the fact that teaches fact to mean.
Not quite that? Not much less. World as it is,
what’s strong and separate falters. All I do
at piling stone on stone apart from you
is roofless around nothing. Till we kiss
I am no more than upright and unset.
It is by falling in and in we make
the all-bearing point, for one another’s sake,
in faultless failing, raised by our own weight.
John Ciardi, “Most Like an Arch This Marriage” from I Marry You (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1958). Used with the permission of the Ciardi Family Publishing Trust.
Source: The Collected Poems of John Ciardi (University of Arkansas Press, 1997)
Source: The Collected Poems of John Ciardi (University of Arkansas Press, 1997)
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/176395
And for fun:
Yes, I'll Marry You
Pam Ayres
Yes, I'll marry you, my dear,
And here's the reason why;
So I can push you out of bed
When the baby starts to cry,
And if we hear a knocking
And it's creepy and it's late,
I hand you the torch you see,
And you investigate.
And here's the reason why;
So I can push you out of bed
When the baby starts to cry,
And if we hear a knocking
And it's creepy and it's late,
I hand you the torch you see,
And you investigate.
Yes, I'll marry you, my dear,
You may not apprehend it,
But when the tumble-drier goes
It's you that has to mend it,
You have to face the neighbour
Should our labrador attack him,
And if a drunkard fondles me
It's you that has to whack him.
You may not apprehend it,
But when the tumble-drier goes
It's you that has to mend it,
You have to face the neighbour
Should our labrador attack him,
And if a drunkard fondles me
It's you that has to whack him.
Yes, I'll marry you,
You're virile and you're lean,
My house is like a pigsty
You can help to keep it clean.
That sexy little dinner
Which you served by candlelight,
As I do chipolatas,
You can cook it every night!
You're virile and you're lean,
My house is like a pigsty
You can help to keep it clean.
That sexy little dinner
Which you served by candlelight,
As I do chipolatas,
You can cook it every night!
It's you who has to work the drill
and put up curtain track,
And when I've got PMT it's you who gets the flak,
I do see great advantages,
But none of them for you,
And so before you see the light,
I do, I do, I do!
and put up curtain track,
And when I've got PMT it's you who gets the flak,
I do see great advantages,
But none of them for you,
And so before you see the light,
I do, I do, I do!
http://www.wedding-references.com/poetry_on_marriage.htm
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