What the heck is a Silver Anniversary?

Twenty-five years ago today, we were married in a candlelight ceremony that started way too late in the evening. Do you have any idea what time it gets dark in August? It was a different age. George H.W. Bush was president, but we had yet to engage in the Gulf Wars. Mark was driving a black Chevy Celebrity, which I hated. It was so big and boxy. I was driving a hand-me-down 1976 Buick Skylark that had passed from my grandmother to my parents to me. I was grateful for the car and had no complaints. It had a radio and AC, even if it did leak oil. At the time we got married, Mark was newly employed as a computer operator at Alumax. I had just come off a stint as a teaching assistant at PA Governor's School of the Arts, but had no other prospects, just a brand new BFA in Fine Arts. In August of 1990, we didn't have the Internet or email or cell phones or GPS, and I had given half the guests directions to the church which included a wrong turn. We didn't even have DVDs. We went to the movies or we rented video tapes at independently owned video stores. (Blockbuster didn't come to our area until later.) The number one movie in theaters was Ghost, but Dances with Wolves took home the trophy at the Academy Awards that year. Rent for our first apartment, just off the square in Lititz, was $400 a month, which included heat, electric, water, and trash. The U.S.S.R was still intact. Marriage existed only between one man and one woman, which we were--barely. I was 21, and Mark was 22.

As a bride, I wore an off-the-shoulder, ivory gown with a wreath headdress that I thought was timeless, but seems so dated now as we look at the photos. I remember that I picked out Mark's ivory dinner jacket by watching the Soap Opera Awards earlier that year. On the day we were married I had a headache from some questionable blue-green cocktails I had consumed the night before. I ate a hangover breakfast at Burger King and had the first mani/pedi of my life. After a night of barhopping, Mark played golf with his buddies and, not yet having a wife to badger him about sunscreen, got a nice sunburn that showed up great against his ivory dinner jacket in the wedding photos. We registered at Boscov's for a bunch of stuff we no longer own, save our china. Not having many vacation days to play with, we took a short camping trip to Chincoteague, VA, immediately after our wedding, and a more substantial honeymoon trip to Cancun the following year. Our wedding ceremony took place in the Lutheran church of my childhood. We had no intention of keeping the ties with that church after our wedding, but we had yet to find our church home, so we settled for the church we knew. I didn't want my dad to walk me down the aisle, but our minister counseled that this particular ritual represented parents "letting go" which finally convinced me to keep the tradition. I have no idea how it was that Mark's parents "let go" of him.

And so it was when we entered married life. At the time, it meant that my parents could no longer institute a curfew, which they had upheld in the days leading up to our wedding, and that I could park my car on Main Street in Lititz overnight without it being a scandal. I have said before that I got married primarily to be taken seriously as an adult. Not that I didn't love Mark and want to spend my life with him, just that the rush to get married took care of a few other pesky details as well. It wasn't as if I was jumping from one caretaker to another. I considered myself a feminist with enough independent tendencies to stake out my own territories in life. Mark and I were not a fixed unit, but a voluntary union of individuals. I hyphenated my last name not understanding what a pain in the butt it is to have two last names. Today, I would counsel my younger self to just keep my last name and forget the add-on. That, perhaps, comes with its own hurdles, but at least I would know where to find my file at the doctor's office. In spite of our feminist outlook, Mark and I adopted very traditional roles in our marriage. I cooked and sewed. He maintained the cars and the toolbox. We each did our own laundry.

After twenty-five years, the world has changed, the nature of marriage has changed, and we have changed along with it. We have had five different addresses, fourteen different cars, more job titles than I can reasonably count, three dogs, and two kids. We've gone through three mattresses (a fourth is desperately needed), five grills, four lawnmowers and I'm guessing eight televisions--but Mark could tell you for sure. I think we only ever bought two new computers. The rest were put together Frankenstein-style from parts that Mark acquired or bought. The first refrigerator we ever owned is currently my brother's beer fridge. Our first baby's crib had been passed down and used by six children before it fell apart. (No babies were injured.) We have been to 33 different states and five countries together. And Puerto Rico. We have killed a lot of houseplants.

And through all this, I'm not sure I understand any more about marriage than I did when we went into it.  I know it takes flexibility and a commitment to continuing on the path together. You need love, but you don't need the the consistently blissful kind of love. Sometimes love is a verb--a really hard verb that falls somewhere in the category between digging ditches and operating on brain cells. This country is going through a change in what it defines as marriage, but it isn't really a new definition for us. Early in our marriage, we joined the Unitarian Universalist church which, for as long as we were members, performed union ceremonies between same-sex partners. A marriage contract is as much business contract as it is anything else. I believe in divorce. I also believe in what Goldy Hawn has said about her non-marriage to Kurt Russell. "What I do like about the fact that we're not married is that when I wake up in the morning I really do wake up fresh and re-born every day. I know that I could walk out at any moment but we chose to be together." Does marriage keep us from recommitting to our unions each and every day? I don't know. If I believe in divorce and non-marriage, can I really say I believe in marriage? I don't know.

What I do know after being married to Mark for twenty-five years: I love this man, physically, emotionally, and intellectually. Some days more than others. I feel secure maneuvering through the world with him. He has my back, and I have his. I choose him every day. He tests me in every way possible. I am not always comfortable with that. I like who I am when I am with him most of the time. I know I have left parts of myself undeveloped or underdeveloped because he has certain skills and has always been a part of my adult life. I am not sure how I feel about that. I respect Mark as a parent. I am thankful that he was my partner through the main parenting years. (I realize we aren't quite finished yet--and may never be.) I know that we are great traveling partners. Is that a tell for the rest of it? I am glad to navigate this tricky, ever-changing world with someone who is so adept at change and dealing with challenges. If I had to break up the roles, I would say that I am the roots of the operation and he is the wings. And I know, we still have more to teach each other.

I don't think I will ever completely figure out what marriage is exactly or if we are doing it correctly. It's okay. We know how to file our taxes and click off the appropriate boxes when the world makes us declare ourselves. I can live with that. It isn't important what everyone else thinks marriage should or should not be. It only matters that we have agreed to walk this path together and will do so for the foreseeable future. And this silver anniversary thing? Silver: a shiny metal that give me a good excuse to reflect back over many years.

This Arden Marriage

Arden has a reputation as a hippie commune and a nudist colony. I have yet to see a naked person, but have caught a glimpse of the occasional domesticated hippie. (You know who you are, George Brocklesby.) Regardless of the reality, folks love a good urban legend. They get a gleam in their eyes when you mention the romantic life of Ardenites. While I am not saying that fun tales of spirited marital exploits don’t exist in this small village, this is not one of them. This is the story of a real relationship in the face of life transitions.

Mark and I are coming up on our silver wedding anniversary later this summer. I would love to tell you the ways that moving to Arden has affected our marriage, but it is a little difficult. Scientists will tell you that you should really only introduce one variable into your experiment. We have had several variables at this time, not just a relocation. Right before we moved from Reinholds, both of our kids were still in school. We had family dinners, movie nights. We were going to our son's track meets, our daughter's plays. Jonah had his license, so we were just starting to be freed from the shackles of carting kids to and from activities. We had a house with three bathrooms including a double sink in the master bath. We had a family room as well as a living room, and we had a room dedicated to our home computer and my art supplies. 

Fast-forward to Arden. Our kids are both out of the house, at the moment. We are empty-nesters.  Even when Maren was here, she was in-and-out, driving on her own, skipping out on dinner. We are down a bathroom and two sinks. Not only do Mark and I share a bathroom sink, now, but so did our daughter, until recently. We have a catch-all room that serves as Jonah's room when he is here, which perhaps accounts for one-eighth of the time since we moved. We have a living room, but no family room, which means we have fewer avenues for escape. As I am typing out this blog entry, Mark is sitting across from me, working on his laptop. It looks like we are playing Battleship. That would never have happened before the move. 

Taking all those variables into consideration, I will tell you a little of the ways our marriage has changed since we moved to Arden. We are a lot more social. Even though we lost a lot of kids' activities, it seems we are always running to be with friends or do the various activities we do together and separately in the Ardens. We are together more, but that together time is spent with other people. Quality alone time is less than it has ever been--even with kids. We are less dependent on each other for emotional support. We have other people in our lives who support us. We don't always communicate the way we should simply because we don't have to. Most of our communication comes by way of the almighty iCalendar. Oh, you are going out with the guys tonight? We are in synch but out of touch. 

Last week I repaid the wife of couple who bought us tickets to a show. Mark repaid the husband. We didn't tell each other. The other couple didn't tell each other. It was only a fluke that we discovered the duplicate  payment. Those are the situations we can laugh off. Sometimes, it isn't so easy. When we fight, it is because we have lost our connection. We have been so busy bonding with the outer world that we forget to ground ourselves in what is the primary relationship of our lives. Time to add date night to the iCalendar. And walks. When the weather warms and it is light into the evening, we have a better chance of walking and talking, just the two of us. But even that doesn’t guarantee communication.

Now that both kids are out of the house, our dinners together feel eerily quiet. Being the more talkative one, I try to draw Mark out. How is it that he can be in deep and animated conversation with our friends the entire seven miles of a Sunday hike, but I have to force feed him subjects to discuss? Maybe we need one of those box of cards you pull out that have questions on them to start conversations. Or maybe we should try asking each other those 36 questions designed to make people fall in love. Ooh, la la. 

Those are for the times we want to be together. At other times, we feel as though we are on top of each other in this house. We purposely downsized. I hated cleaning all the house we had before. This house is manageable. We do have different sitting areas where we could sit separately doing our own thing, which is fine if our thing is silent. Having the television at the center of our open floor plan is a strange new distraction. In our old house, we only had one TV, and it was located in the basement level family room, away from it all. If Jonah had the boys over to play video games, we barely knew they were there (once we got them to turn down the volume and the bass). We could ignore them. It is hard to ignore the TV now. We have a sitting area in the bedroom that we go to if one of us or Maren is occupying the TV, but it does seem as though we are being banished. I'm not sure why. Our bedroom is the lightest, cheeriest room in the house.

It is a new rhythm for us, that is certain. We have had to adjust at other points in our marriage. When we had kids. When Mark changed jobs. When friends moved away. When I quit work to write full-time. When we got iPhones and joined Facebook. Oy! We will figure this out and get our equilibrium back. In spite of this glitch, we are the happiest we have ever been, and that is a big boon to our union. When we finally get the communication and togetherness piece in place, we will have a more balanced life than ever before. I think we are getting there. Our closest friends here are also folks who have been married for twenty-plus years. It has been a joy to witness other marriages covering the same leg of their journey and know we are not alone. We have been able to compare notes and laugh (cry?) about the potholes in the road. Shakespeare said it best "I have thrust myself into this maze,
Haply to wive and thrive as best I may." (The Taming of the Shrew 1.2.56-7)

Next question: How to celebrate our 25th Anniversary here in Arden. Perhaps matching tie-dye T-shirts are in order.