Tag Archives: anniversary

More and More Every Day

Earlier this week, I celebrated my wedding anniversary—fifty-eight years, all married to the same woman, the lissome lass I first dated when she was but sixteen.  We married four years later, embarked upon fulfilling careers, raised two lovely daughters, and retired to the life we now enjoy together…sixty-three years gone in the blink of an eye, it now seems. Egad!

Friends probably view the longevity and success of our union from my wife’s point of view as a triumph of iron will over probability. From my viewpoint, however, it’s unquestionably a victory of blessed good fortune over whatever random fate I would otherwise have encountered.

Recently, at the behest of our daughters, we each decided to write a short memoir of our lives, intended only for family and close friends.  Mine, titled Being Me, is finished and in the hands of those I care most about; hers, titled My Story, is nearing completion. The trick, as we discovered in the writing, lay in knowing, not what to include, but what to leave out.

As we wrote, we shared memories sparked by old photos, slides, and home-movies produced through the years.  We were amazed by how much we had forgotten over time, and by how different our fuzzy memories sometimes were as we discussed the same events.

“That’s not how it happened!” I found myself declaring more than once, only to have my wife show me a faded snapshot that proved otherwise.  Admittedly, I’ve always had trouble remembering dates, so casting back to those bygone years wasn’t child’s play for me.

By the way, that trouble with dates persists even now, alas.  I recently showed up for a colonoscopy procedure after enduring the requisite purging prior to the visit, only to find I had the right day, the right time, but the wrong year! I was a whole year early! I’m still living that one down.

Through most of our marriage, my wife and I were enthusiastic participants in sports—baseball, curling, golf, hockey, tennis, skiing, swimming, to name but a few—both competitively and recreationally.  As we eased our way through middle age, entering inevitably into our senior years, many of those began to fall away. We found we could no longer glide across the arena or playing field with the same visions of grace and glory we’d previously enjoyed.  Father Time vanquishes everyone, we discovered, no matter how skilled or practised we might be.

An example for me was falling down in my follow-through a few times on the tee-boxes while smoking drives I’d always hit routinely…well, maybe not always, but occasionally.  My playing partners advised me to start wearing a bicycle helmet if I wanted to continue playing.

My exercise today consists of activities where I can’t fall down or off something. I favour the rowing machine, the treadmill (if I hang on), the stationary bike, or exercises conducted while lying on the floor.  Although not a Latin scholar, I find myself chanting under my breath as I work out: sic transit gloria mundi!

As with many things in a long marriage, my wife and I found we had to adjust and change to meet these new demands.  She spends the bulk of her time now, when she’s not reading or doing jigsaw puzzles, making gifts for family and friends out of clay, dichroic glass, and wood, an accomplished artisan.  I call her my boon companion in the arts.

Much of my time, of course, is spent writing—novels, anthologies of tales and poems, and posts on my blog—and listening to classical music.  I’m a prolific reader, as well, and give thanks constantly for online libraries.

Perhaps the biggest change for us is that we no longer find our children and grandchildren to be part of our lives, sharing our experiences; rather, we have become part of their lives, eagerly sharing their accomplishments and happenings. It is we who are the supporting actors now, and they the stars in the unfolding movies of their lives.  We’ve also discovered that this change is very comforting, to be loved and cared for by these essential people in our lives, even as ours wind down.

We still look ahead, however, to each new adventure that might come our way. One of my haiku poems illustrates that philosophy quite clearly—

more yesterdays now
than tomorrows, but it’s the
tomorrows that count

the sails of our youth,
once hoist, are mostly furled now---
though the winds still blow

Back in 1964, when we were still dating prior to marrying, a popular singer, Al Martino, released one of his biggest hits, I Love You More and More Every Day. We adopted that as ‘our song’, and we used to sing snatches of it to each other.  Over the years, it faded for some reason from our minds, although we never abandoned its premise.  But I thought of that song on my recent anniversary day, and began to sing it to myself.  I had to look up the lyrics, of course, after all this time, but the melody was etched in my memory.

On a whim, I decided to record myself singing it on a karaoke track to present to my wife. Although I used to sing bass in a men’s a cappella barbershop chorus, my octogenarian voice is a tad quavery and shrill now, and my range is somewhat limited.  Nevertheless, the sincerity of my singing has not abated, and she at least recognized the song. Sort of.

As I think back to when she and I first met, as I try to remember all that has happened since, as I marvel at the lasting of our union, I find myself overwhelmingly grateful that we celebrated this latest anniversary together, and I offer this haiku to her to reflect those sentiments—

impossible dream!
many might have thought so, but
you made it come true

trusting all that’s passed,
moving forward in good faith,
hands clasped as always

On the State of My Parents’ Marriage

As the 107th anniversary of my father’s birth approaches, I’ve been reflecting on the state of his marriage to my mother.  Their union was ended after sixty-one years when he passed away in 2003.  They had been temporarily separated several times during their life together, mostly during business trips my dad undertook, but never for more than a few days.  His last trip, at age ninety-two, is the only one from which he never returned.

My mother lived another seven years, until ninety-four, the longest period of her life without him since they married in 1942.

As I look back, they seem to me to have been an unlikely couple.  He was the only boy in his almost-Victorian family, coddled (if not spoiled) by his parents and sisters.  He wasn’t arrogant by any means, but he possessed a certain sense of entitlement, a sense that he was born to live at the centre of his universe.  Understandable, I guess, given that he lived at home until he married, looked after by doting parents.

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My mother, who had three sisters and a brother, was raised by a Presbyterian mother and a Roman Catholic father—themselves an unlikely match—who taught her you had to earn what you wanted.  Nobody was about to give you anything for nothing.  Taking the lesson to heart, she became determined to succeed at whatever she did.  My mother had the strongest will of anyone I’ve ever known.

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I’m still not sure how two such different people—she a high-powered woman, he a less highly-driven man—could find each other, wed each other, and remain with each other for so many years.

During their marriage, she left him on very few occasions, mostly on excursions with family or friends, and never for long.  She was fearful, I suppose, of leaving him alone to cope with five children.  After all, we could eat only so much oatmeal porridge, grilled-cheese sandwiches, canned spaghetti, and jello.

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Not that my father couldn’t cook; he could.  He could also house-clean, do the laundry and ironing, shop for groceries, help with homework, perform small repairs around the house, or do any other chore necessary to sustain a family of seven.  But he preferred not to—not if someone else would.  I was a grown man before I realized he had mastered the art of feigned incompetence.

Mind you, that might have been a reflexive defence-mechanism.  My mother didn’t make it easy for him, being something of a perfectionist.  Although she believed in the adage that it was better to teach people to fish, rather than giving them a fish—trusting they would therefore become self-sufficient and proficient—she also had the annoying habit of checking everything my father did after he did it, to ensure it was done to her exacting standard.  I think he figured it was better most of the time to let her do the various tasks herself, rather than suffering through her re-doing of his attempts.

They were loving parents, although their parenting style evolved over the years between my birth and that of my youngest sister, eleven years later.  My mother never lost her sense of high hopes for all of us, but she became more tolerant, more forgiving of our shortcomings as we, and she, grew older.  It wasn’t easy for her, though, because her expectations of herself never lessened.  I loved her for that.

My father, on the other hand, entered parenthood with a blissful belief that everything would work out fine.  And I think, despite the contrary evidence we five children provided from time to time, he maintained that belief throughout his life.  Of course, he became exasperated on occasion—on dozens, even scores, of occasions, actually.  To this day, I can hear his favourite expression of frustration when I had somehow messed up again.

“Crooked cats!” he’d say, shaking his head dolefully.  But he was ever quick to forgive.  I loved him for that.

He usually called my mother Dorothy—never Dote, as her sisters did, and never Dot.  His favourite pet-name for her was just that, Pet.  She called him Bill; if she ever used another form of address, I can’t recall it.  I never heard endearments for each other, such as Sweetheart, Darling, or Honey, from either of them.  Yet I never doubted their love for one another.

Perhaps it was their sense of humour that sustained them through difficult times and enriched the many joyful times.  I remember overhearing my mother’s admonition to my father, whispered from a hospital bed where she was recuperating from a near-fatal heart attack at age eighty-five.

“I guess this means no more wild sex for awhile,” she teased.

“Crooked cats, Dorothy!” was all my ninety-year-old father could say, shocked that she would say such a thing in front of me.

Even at the end of his life it was there, that shared, loving camaraderie.  As my father lay moments from death, my mother leaned close to him and said, “Would you like me to sing to you?”

Without opening his eyes—which would have been twinkling if he had—he muttered, “Not particularly!”

It was their final secret joke.

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So that’s how I remember them and their life with one another.  And I choose to believe they’re together again, forever, their separation ended.

That’s just how it was with the state of their marriage.