I married my love on a midsummer morning when the sun was high. My mother cried, my father snapped hundreds of photos without film in his camera and the old folks came. We were healthy and young, we were foolish and wise, and it rained in the afternoon.
Before we reached our honeymoon spot on the Oregon Coast late that night we had a verbal tussle over my forgotten wedding pearls and another over an absentee map. Silly things. We were hound-dog tired and anyway, there ought to be a law against driving long hours in the dark over unfamiliar roads, without a map 鈥� immediately following one鈥檚 wedding.
The sun, my love and I are older by forty years now. The sun has changed least. One by one, my mother and the dear old relatives who attended our wedding have left us. We are no longer young, though sometimes still foolish. We have raised amazing children together, remained partners in sickness and health, better and worse. Miraculous moments so beautiful they swept breath from us, and others so excruciating they cut our hearts like razors. Times when God seemed distant (though he never was) and friends far between (though they never were).
The great miracle, the one that leaves me gobsmacked, is that we survived us. Our petty selves, our unwillingness to release our individual rights for the good of the union, and our (sometimes remaining) insistence on doing things our own way. But on the road to forty years we鈥檝e had to shed many jagged edges and twin pairs of rose-coloured lenses.
鈥淒o you feel like you鈥檙e standing up straight?鈥� he asked me, just last night.
鈥淎s much as possible,鈥� says I.
鈥淲ell, you鈥檙e not. You have a bump on your back. You鈥檙e starting to look like your mother.鈥�
I thought about that a moment, about my poor posture and budding dowager鈥檚 hump. 鈥淚t鈥檚 what comes of spending too many hours at a computer every day, for decades. Anyway,鈥� I added, (snidely, in retrospect) 鈥渟ome of us have bumps on our backs. Others have them in the front.鈥�
He grinned. Patted his belly. 鈥淚n the middle of the front.鈥�
I married my love on a midsummer morning when the sun was high. Perhaps my mother cried because she had travelled for decades along that same road and knew we both needed to grow up. Fast.
It has rained many afternoons since. Our entire marriage (yours, too?) has been a journey without a map. In the four decades since we stood at the altar, pledging before God and those gathered to remain as one until death do us part, our love has changed. It has gone from the flights of fancy favoured by youthful foolishness into what only faith and prayer, time and trial could make it. Today we journey, though not always hand-in-hand, at least side-by-side; determined to end well.
We married our loves on a midsummer morning when the sun was high. And we鈥檇 do it again.
