Sunday, August 21, 2011

Forty Years

 Forty years is 14,600 days, 350,400 hours and 21, 024,000 minutes.  It is also how long Paul and I will have been married as of August 21 - almost two-thirds of our lives, which is a little overwhelming when you think of it that way.  All those days, hours and minutes seem to have passed in no time, although they say one-third of your life is spent sleeping so that probably explains some of it.

The year we got married, both of our parents celebrated their 25th anniversaries, my grandparents celebrated their 50th and Paul’s would have done so, too, if his grandfather was still living.  I remember thinking that they all were SO old and our twenty-fifth anniversary was light years away.  Right.

So much has happened in the past forty years.  We have lived happily in five places - a cute little townhouse with homemade burlap curtains, a tri-level city apartment with a view of Cincinnati’s downtown skyline from the shower, and three houses, two old and one new.  We have had countless great neighbors, with only the occasional wing-nut - the old couple who engaged in shouting matches on Sunday nights (alcohol was definitely involved), the guy who ran a flea market out of his house and the guy who spent all his time shooting off firecrackers and bottle rockets except when he was in his tanning bed.

Together we have planted geraniums, perennials, impatiens and basil, pulled up carpet on hardwood floors, weeded ground cover beds, painted furniture, washed thousands of dishes and raked zillions of leaves.  We have also passed the ultimate test of a marriage - wallpapering bathrooms together, although not recently – there’s no point in pressing our luck.

Together we have ridden on ski lifts, a hot air balloon, subways, sailboats, horses, a puddle-jumper plane, snow and water skis, rollerblades, tandem bikes, a helicopter, and golf carts.  We have not ridden and will not be riding a jet ski, a motorcycle, a submarine, the space shuttle or the Beast at Kings’ Island. (Our first and last roller coaster ride together occurred on our third date when I wanted to impress Paul and agreed to ride the Wild Mouse at Coney Island – it was literally a white-knuckle ride and not an experience either of us wants to repeat.)

Together we’ve seen The Big Red Machine, the Eiffel tower, bald eagles, moose and grizzly bears, the Roman Forum, Pete Rose and Luciano Pavarotti, mountain meadows covered with flowers, The Sopranos, traffic jams in LA, orcas in the San Juan Islands, London Bridge and the Pooh Sticks Bridge, and so many plays and musicals that I don’t recognize half the titles anymore.  We’ve also been lucky enough to see two babies born and to see them grow into two wonderful men.

Over the past 2080 weekends, we’ve given some memorable parties together.  When Paul was in dental school, at one of our first parties, eight of us put away a gallon of Cribari red wine, four kinds of cheese fondue, a five pound box of chocolates and made a feeble attempt to play bridge –the after-effects lasted for a week.   Our Battle of the Sexes party featured hotly contested competition in events like ironing a shirt, hammering a nail, sewing on a button, blowing up a bicycle tire, and baiting a fishhook. The first of several New Year’s Eve parties that included both kids and adults was a huge success although we did learn that, if you leave a group of grade school kids alone in the basement with a large tin of popcorn, your sweeper is going to get a work-out the next day.  We even survived last minute crises like having both kitchen sinks back up from carrot peel overload just before 16 people arrived for a pizza party fundraiser and having the Shop-Vac spew out ash and dust instead of sucking it up out of the fireplace just before the whole family arrived for Christmas dinner.

So, what’s the secret of a long-term marriage between two people with different personalities, talents and interests? Well, for one thing, in forty years, we’ve developed a workable division of labor.  When we have a computer issue, it’s up to me to solve it.  When we want to send a text message or do anything fancy with the cell phone, Paul’s on it.  I’m in charge of remembering names; he’s in charge of remembering where we parked the car.  He is good at Physics (e.g. siphoning water out of the basement); I am good at foreign languages (e.g. getting directions to the nearest bar in Italy.)  He finds our way out of the mountains or the woods; I find our way out of Macy’s. 

We’ve also learned a lot.  He’s learned that I need to do the crosswords and the Sudoku before I do anything else in the morning.  I’ve learned that if I take just four quarters out of his poker money, he’ll notice.  He knows that, if I’m preparing five dishes for dinner, I’ll make at least five messes in the kitchen before I clean up anything. I know that, if I turn my back on him, he’ll start cleaning up after me and every measuring cup and spoon, rubber scraper and bowl that I need will be in the dishwasher. He’s given up expecting me to hang up the bathmat so it will stay up.  I have given up expecting him to suggest going out for ice cream.

And, after forty years’ worth of disagreements, we’ve finally agreed to disagree on the edibility of lima beans, bananas, peanut butter and coconut, the importance of replacing the toilet paper with the paper coming out the top, and how many times you can wear a shirt before it belongs in the wash, even if it doesn’t have an odor.  We’re still sorting out our driving differences. I say he pokes along in the car like an old man and rips around in a golf cart like one of the Beverly Hillbillies.  He says I speed in the car and drive a golf cart slower than he can walk the course.

While our marriage has survived forty years, most of the things with which we started our married life haven’t.   We no longer have our black and white checked couch, our orange plastic end tables or anything in avocado green.  We have swept up the pieces of many casseroles, plates, bowls, and glasses, especially wine glasses. Recently, we got rid of our last wedding gift appliance, a popcorn popper, after it contracted leprosy -  its yellow plastic coating was peeling plus it gave out an ominous smell when you plugged it in. 

We have one or two pieces of 40-year-old furniture including the desk Paul and my dad made the summer before we were married.  We also have a full set of our good china (thanks to 1-800-REPLACE) and the good stainless steel flatware we got as a wedding gift with only a few garbage disposal dings.  The prize for the most practical, most durable, toughest kitchen gadget of all time goes to a jar opener I got as a shower gift – at 40, it remains in prime condition.  The original Betty Crocker cookbook that Paul’s mom gave me is still on duty as well, even though it is about 5 pounds heavier than it was in 1971 because of the duct tape, scotch tape, reinforcements, crumbs and food spills on its cover and pages.

However, the most important things with which we started our marriage and which have been with us throughout the past forty years are our wonderful family, our constantly growing circle of treasured friends, a sense of humor, a generous measure of good luck and each other.  This post barely scratches the surface of everything that we've experienced together over these incredibly good years. I sure could go for another forty or so.

Click below for a video of my favorite Broadway duet about a long-term love affair

1 comment:

Tom Murphy said...

Jill and Paul: The BEST! Just a wonderful statement about marriage. t and j