By Heart

By Heart

If you don’t count song lyrics, I have a short list of things I’ve learned by heart:  the 23rd Psalm, a brief poem from my childhood, the Preamble to the Constitution, and Antony’s soliloquy from Julius Caesar.  Oh, and the Pledge of Allegiance.  Because ‘Merica.

Ancient Greeks used to believe the heart was the seat of intelligence, emotion, and memory.  In some ways, that may be true.  In many cases, people who have had heart transplants report having at least temporary memories of things that happened to the donor.

This week, we are celebrating our 25th anniversary, and while we may not have exchanged hearts in a literal sense, we do share decades of memories.  If such a thing can be true of people and not just poems and pledges, I know him by heart.  The date of our ceremony is engraved on the rings we wear, but we started learning about each other about 7 years before that, essentially growing up together since meeting in high school.

weddingOn a stifling hot June afternoon, we got married under a canopy of trees in a state park across the street from my parents’ house.  After the promises and shy public kiss, we walked hand-in-hand down the aisle to the Beatles singing “Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I’m 64?”.   I was barely 22.  He was in the middle of vet school.  He had hair.  I had a waistline.

We had exactly one fabulous week at the beach, where we both got alarmingly sunburned and had to drive 10 hours home trying not to let our skin touch the seats of the car.   Good times.

Cue the sound of crashing expectations.  Those first years were sweet, but tough.   Tuition and car insurance led to cereal for dinner occasionally.   Late nights studying for vet school made for lonely channel surfing instead of foot rubs and cuddles.  Stress from work came home with me.  We fought.  Sometimes badly.  This was a far cry from hours of sharing dreams and giggles on the phone at night and going out on dates each week.  Now we shared finances, family, furniture.   Everything, it seemed, had to be negotiated, compromised.

Eventually, we leaned in.  His infinite patience and our shared sense of humor buoyed us.  That, and the fact that we treated the union as a third party, something separate from ourselves that needed care and attention.  Looking at our wedding photo back when we were fresh and doe-eyed, if I could have shared some wisdom with the Young Us, it might include the following.

  1. Congratulations!  You are now a complete family.  Notice children have nothing to do with this, so when people ask you when you plan to start a family, tell them you’ve already checked that off.   If later on you feel the need to procreate, rock on.  But you’ll just be expanding the family you’ve already made.  When the kids leave home, I still got you, babe.
  2. Your spouse cannot and should not fill all your needs or empty spaces.  While you might make a great team and complement each other in all the right places, you still need friends, interests, and soul-filling that have nothing to do with one another.  (Ditto for children, by the way.)   It’s not in the marriage job description for him or her to make you happy.
  3. Have a focus outside yourselves that you can look outward toward together.  I’m not talking about a weekly trip to Home Depot for the latest DIY project.  I mean a common service to your community/world at large, so you can remember that there’s a whole lot going on outside your little bubble of two.  Pray together.
  4. Learn how to fight.  Even if you can’t imagine a cross word in your lovey-dovey state of bliss, it will come, and arguments shouldn’t shake your whole foundation.  You’ll disagree about something–in-laws, money, sex, division of labor, children, or asinine stuff like rinsing out the cereal bowl or peeing with the door open–and if you know each other’s battle mode and can see beyond the conflict, the casualties are fewer.
  5. Assume the best.  Beyond the morning breath, snoring, hair in the drain, and the way she sings off-key is the person you chose for better or worse.  Remember their best self.  Don’t see them as they really are, see them as their best version–Spouse 2.0– and stockpile your grace.   Hope like crazy they’re doing the same for you.   You like someone because.  You love someone although.
  6. If you got married for safety or security, it’s too late for a refund.  You should’ve read the fine print.  Love is not safe.  Human love is never pure or perfect.  It comes with truckloads of imperfection.  Love like this is the biggest risk out there.  If life is kind and nobody gets hit by a bus, the payoff is golden.  You get to be those adorable old people that everybody envies walking hand-in-hand  in the park.  You’ll hold up your hair and he’ll automatically zip up the back of your dress.   You’ll straighten his tie and admire how good he looks in a suit.
  7.  Being a person is hard sometimes.  When you lose a job, or a parent, or a child, or if there are surgeries and procedures and prognoses involved, hang on.   Love is not the honeymoon at the beach.  Love is the roof sailing through the wind in the tornado, and the two of you huddling together in the closet, not letting go.  Be each other’s weight-bearing wall.
  8. Find other people who are doing it right and copy them.  Don’t make it harder by trying to do it all by yourselves.  Ask for help if you need it.  Sometimes an objective voice is critical.
  9. Forgive.  Forgive lots of times, and then forgive some more.  Kindness goes a long way.  Speak life to each other.  The world is hard.  Be each other’s safe place.

So, the Preamble, Psalm 23, a poem, a bit from Shakespeare, and Bob.  The things I know by heart.  Happy Silver.  old couple

 

50 Years

50 Years

My best friend’s parents will have been married for 50 years this month.  Fifty years.  Living side by side while they jockeyed through careers, children, parents, finances.  Fifty years of tolerating, compromising, communicating, sighing, partnering, and in their case, laughing. “Aren’t they lucky?” you might think, but luck has nothing to do with it.

I first met them when they were about 20 years into their journey, having moved from Ohio to Tennessee.  By that time, they already had three girls and a boy, ranging from high school to kindergarten.  Their home was full of noise, laundry, chore divisions, and chaos.  I loved it.

I’m from a big family too—I’m the fourth of five—but by the time I met the Bettler’s, my older siblings had already left home and we were down to just my younger brother and me. Our house by comparison was very, very quiet.  We had easy dinners for four each evening after school, while they had Kitchen Productions—each family member playing a role in the cast of some hilarious unscripted play that unfolded nightly, with multiple “exit stage lefts” as one left to go to some sports practice, another had to finish an assignment, and the others argued over who was supposed to cook the side dish and who was supposed to load the dishwasher.  Glorious.

He was a chemist and she was going back to teaching now that her nestlings were all school aged.  The way they complemented each other was obvious.  She organized.  He guided and coached.  She planned and nurtured.  He listened and offered comic relief.  A well-oiled machine.  I thought of them as my second parents since their oldest daughter and I were best friends, and we were at their house so often that I’m surprised I didn’t find my name on the duty roster.

After I left for college and they moved up north, I didn’t see much of the Bettler’s anymore, but they were always in the back of my mind as I kept up through my best friend.  I got the annual informative Christmas card like everyone else, followed the multiple marathons that Bud ran—still runs!—and always looked forward to seeing pictures of him in whatever goofy hat he decided to don for the latest race.  Barb was proud of her students and the Odyssey of the Mind competitions she headed on their behalf.   And the grandchildren!  They multiplied quickly over the years and were scattered all over the place, necessitating frequent trips to spoil them all just right.

When I lost my own mother too early—she was 55 and my parents had been married 33 years—I immediately thought of Barb as “mom.”  Whether she knew it or not, when I had my own children and started juggling life, I often thought of her and her family and asked myself what Barb would do in a given situation.  I was at the end of my rope at one point, wrestling with worry over my teenaged daughter, and I wrote asking her advice.  She didn’t get ruffled or act appalled at the ruin I’d apparently made of my child.  In her calm, sweet way she made me feel like I was “doing ok” and that it would all work out, which it did.  When I found her note in the mailbox that day, I cried all the way through it, feeling as though my own mom had been able to give me a reassuring hug and listening ear.

A few years back, our family was on a quest of visiting all 50 of the United States.  We were able to stop in at their house in Delaware and spend a warm, hospitable evening as we checked off another state.  Being the Steve Martin of Granddad’s, Bud knew just what to do to engage my son, Ben.  He treated my children like interesting, intelligent people in their own right, and Ben, now almost 15, still refers to that visit and the cool joke book that Mr. Bettler gave him.

Only 5% of couples make it to their 50th anniversary.  For some, like my parents, the C-word dashes their chances.  For others, they get married at a later age and time just doesn’t allow them to make it that long.  But in the majority of cases, most people just give up.  They let the tedium of everyday life and the stress of children, money, jobs, and car trouble make them forget that once upon a time they actually liked each other.

What’s so readily apparent when you meet the Bettler’s, whether today or over 30 years ago, is that they actually DO like each other.  They always took time to work on their marriage in spite of life’s busyness, treating their union like one of their children, needing to be fed, cared for, and nurtured.   They are true spiritual partners, helping each other grow to be better, serving together in their church and community with the Stephen Ministry and other avenues.    Mentally, they are equal and active, always learning new skills or developing new talents like photography.  They share books.  Physically, they stay active together, running or ball room dancing or traveling.   Emotionally, they support one another, whether through retirement, the death of a parent or the birth of a grandchild.  They’re social butterflies, meeting new people and finding other people interesting.  It’s no wonder that they have been able to reach the fifty-year mark, really.  They have been the perfect fit for each other in every area that matters.  Because they’ve been solid, they’ve been able to raise four successful, independent, thoughtful children who are decent and good.

My husband and I are not quite to the quarter-century point in our marriage.  We often look to the Bettler’s as an example of where we’d love to be in another 25+ years—still enjoying each other, still active and happy, and still working on tolerating, communicating, and appreciating each other, able to laugh often, especially at ourselves.  We have a sign above our bed that bears a line by Robert Browning: “Grow old along with me, the best is yet to be.”  Bud and Barb have lived that out in their life together, and it’s been beautiful to watch.  I look forward to the Christmas cards and their tales of family and joy for many more years!

Happy Anniversary!