“Cupid shot an arrow,” he says to me when he’s feeling good. “I had the perfect scenario (said the spider to the fly)—dinner at Rancho Grande in Greenwich Village followed by a night cap at the Irish Pub. It wasn’t supposed to last forever.”
We are 18,262 days married plus seven. On April 29 the D guy and I celebrated our fiftieth year from the marriage that sealed the deal, during lunch hour at the Panama Consulate in NYC. “The one,” he says “that got us over the hump.” The festive wedding, happened in Panama in June.
I’m trying to put my head around all of this. It just wants to be explained. Eighteen thousand cups of coffee, fifty thousand meals juntos. Nights, fights, pre-children Sundays on the Upper West side of Manhattan. Many other lives after that.
So I took an informal poll. I asked friends who’ve hung together with partners for 37 and up to 50 years what’s really the truth of it. (I’ve used initials to protect the innocent.) This is what they said:
P - 47 years of marriage:
It’s a mystery really. Half luck and good judgment. On some deep level I understood his goodness. Character matters.
E - 50 years:
Trust, openness, communication. When I was dating him a priest told me that marriage is not a 50/50 thing. Sometimes it’s 60/40 or 70/30 or even 90/10. “As long as the numbers keeps shifting and no one is on the low end for too long.” In the early years I was giving in to my husband more than the reverse, but when we had children things began to shift. We had different parenting styles. This led to strong conversations. I held my own, and we learned from each other. My husband is a moral, ethical man.
S - 47 years:
I still see a boy. We were college sweethearts and grew up together. I love his long, curly hair and beautiful green eyes.
S - 41 years:
There are different timelines in a marriage—when you are married 15 years, when in your fifties--and later. When I was a girl I was looking for someone who was perfect and would figure out what I wanted. (I was an innocent). My husband needs adventure to feel alive. I am more apprehensive. And his way of being helped me. I’ve lived his life. Now I am learning that I don’t want so much adventure. I love his mind and his body.
N - 37 years:
My husband and I are in the world differently, and we take one another to different places because of who we are. Long ago, a friend told me about the 80/20 rule. No one likes their partner a full hundred per percent. You like eighty percent and hate the other twenty. So, when you are in a twenty percent mood, try to remember the eighty percent.
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Now D and me. I’m ready to talk:
The Ying and Yang of us has been good. We are windows into other worlds for each other. We soothe each other with our oppositeness. I couldn’t stand living with someone who was like me(!)
A commitment to marriage has been essential because so much will happen--good and bad. We grew up with enough good examples, and marriage was largely the unchallenged way to live.
Laughs. That’s, a big part of it. Really. When I’m most angry at him, D casts an angled joke that disarms me. Romancing jokes--apology jokes--I call them. When he goes too far and almost goes off the cliff, he reels himself in. I think that’s love. Early in our marriage, to his lawyerly pronouncements I would use the “silent technique.” It was the perfect antidote. Now that I’ve learned some Brooklynese, no one can shut me up.
Beautiful green eyes. Character matters.
Here’s a poem about long love. The Bean Eaters by Gwendolyn Brooks.
What do you think is essential to long lasting love? Or friendship?
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A book agent in the US reports that books are still selling. Fiction and children’s sales are up. Non-fiction, not as much. With time on their hands, a lot of celebs are trying to get book deals.
My cousin Sandra who lives in Amsterdam rides her bike for groceries, like almost everyone else. Prior to Covid-19, Amsterdam and other historic cities in Europe had been overrun with tourists. Now the streets are empty. Sandra walks about and sees the empty shops. What will survive? “Nights are beautiful,” she says. “It’s like walking into an old painting.”
If we are lucky, we are only reading about grief and the exhaustion of nurses and others on the frontlines working to keep us alive. I pray for them and for us.
D and I are ordering take-out meals every so often to change things up.
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Spanish words of the day:
AMOR – Love
CINCUENTA AÑOS – Fifty years
AÑEJO – Vintage, Antique