M & D and 41 Years

My parents celebrate 41 years of marriage today.  They are the kind of couple who respond humbly yet not without humor about their marital success.  They act like they made it by the skin of their teeth.  It goes like this:  Chuckle, Eye-roll, Not-Sure-How-We-Did-It Joke, Ha-ha, Next Topic?  In short, they cannot take a compliment.  M & D -as they are exclusively referred to in my journals and letters over the years- act as if 41 years of marriage just happened to them.  Like, maybe Time should get the Congratulations, not them, the very members of the marriage.



But you can't fool me.
I am not 8 anymore.
Or 16.
(* I am happy to blame my current age on Time:  "I'm really still in my 20s, as my wardrobe will try to attest; the last 17 years just happened to me.)
Time did happen, and maturity requires as much active participation as marriage does.
I didn't have to get married to know that.  A committed relationship ain't -for anyone- a passive arrangement.

When I tell people that my husband (We'll call him 'S' for the sake of writing-style consistency) . . . that S and I live apart for weeks at a time, they are often baffled.  When I explain that we don't really know "what's next" or where we are going to "settle down," I am often met with an expression of fear and sympathy.  "We're taking it job offer by job offer, case by case."  I know it's weird, but it is part of our Agreement:  Negotiation, Compromise . . . Choice.  I don't expect anyone to understand.  Nor do I pretend to understand the choices, agreements, and actions that make up the relationships around me; how could I?   (*I am going to use "marriage" and "relationship" interchangeably today, since some of my favorite committed couples aren't married.)

M & D have -in their own way- simply kept choosing the same thing.  I don't know what all of those choices are, but I know they've agreed to have dinner at 6:00 every night unless otherwise determined.  They agreed on a city of residence for 41 years, where to send us girls to school, that curfews and college were important, that dishwashers and MTV were not.  They started out with parallel religious views, yet have agreed in recent years to disagree at times when it comes to church and prayer.
Case by case,
Agreement after agreement,
Year after year.

But not all choices come easily.
I'm not privy to all that my parents faced, but, like most couples must, I have seen them overcome a lot.
S. and I agreed what color to paint the bedroom walls.  We agree that I'll do the cooking and he take out the trash.  And...
Well...
S. and I have agreed to live  in New York for a while.  Five years, probably.  However, the winding road of an actor's journey often means "based" in New York, rather than "living" in New York.  S. has been out of New York for six weeks and I have just left it for four months.  So, you see, it's a somewhat flexible agreement we've made, yet we honor it.  Except...
Well...
When I left New York, I went to Ohio and my commitment faltered (!)
The flimsy commitment to dirty noisy New York crumbled under Ohio's beautiful blue skies stacked over a stripe of green on top of the amber stalks of the coming corn.  This is the very backdrop that I disparaged throughout my teen years.  It went like this:  Chuckle, Eye-roll, Cow-tipping Joke, Ha-ha, Next Subject?  But...
Well...
Time happened to me!  And what used to represent the opposite of action and opportunity now looks like Paradise!  Perfection!  Poetry!  (PS. Is there a better phrase for that image than "amber waves of grain?"  Don't knock it, Peeps, that's a perfect set of words right there.)  So...
Well...
Over the course of five days in the MidWest, I find dozens of reasons I should jump in the sack with my old flame, Ohio, and let New York find out from mutual friends some sad night at some dark and overpriced bar where drinks are three times their worth and the bartenders are mean as spit.  This is not a surface one-night stand I am after with Ohio.  No, I want to buy a house with Ohio and have kids.  I found myself taking note of the For Sale signs in German and Victorian Village and calculating the walking distance between them and the establishments I imagine will be my local hang-outs.  Yet...
Well...
I know that all this daydreaming is contrary to my Agreement with S.  I'm not moving back to Ohio just yet.  Our Agreement could change, but for now, I just want to be with Sheffield.  It's inexplicable how much I like to be near him.  I love him with my arms and legs, and with a constant pull that relaxes a bit when we are apart but becomes fully charged when we are in the same room.
And I can only imagine that this is what happened to Charlie and Shelley.  Watching them now, they seem to have retained the same sense of humor and draw to each other that appears in those 1970 wedding day photos.  They don't have to explain it; it simply is what they choose.  What we choose.  We choose to be together.  Again and again.  That's how it happens to us.  That's how 41 years creep up on a couple.  We don't have to agree to all 41 or 50 or 100 years all at one.  We just have to keep agreeing -one thing at a time- and BAM!  Seventy-some such years have happened.

Case by case,

Agreement after agreement,

Year after year.

Happy Anniversary, M & D.