September 2, 1968
Tue., September 2, 10:36 AM
It was a beautiful day, the kind I’d always hoped for – with a sudden brief shower as our ceremony began. (Snow or rain accompanies so many important milestones for me.) And here we are, still together after thirty-five years. At least, here I am; sometimes I feel like I’m talking to the wall.
A perfect marriage? I don’t think such a thing ever existed. But a workable life? Oh, yes. For those of you who might have missed it, may I refer you to one of my early entries, What’s a Homemaker.
We had one definite goal in mind when we got married: we wanted a family. Husband had grown up without any family except a few cousins; his friends at the Home, even if they had no parents, had siblings. He only knew that he wanted kids; I wanted to give him the same feeling of family unity that I had grown up with.
Husband did the right things to attain our goal:
- he took care of me – financially and physically – while I had his babies and took care of them
- he spent a lot of time with his kids, usually without being asked. (Actually, I think he felt like one of them.)
- He didn’t break the rules that I had set. When he said, “Mommy says no,” that was the end of an argument. There was no one left to ask.
As the song asks, “How do you keep the music playing?” I don’t know; my guess would be that it’s just not the same song. I’m not looking for the man who phoned me – long distance! – every night, even when there was an operator’s strike. It’s kind of touching to remember how he taped my diamond ring into a birthday card and, after I had opened it and thanked him, added: “Here’s the box”; but I don’t expect to see that man either
At least once a day I swear I’m gonna kill him, but I suppose I’ll keep him for a while longer.
And, to break the mood, here’s an anniversary story from Bosslawyer.
It seems this couple had been married for twenty years and went out to celebrate their twentieth anniversary. They had a nice dinner and went dancing – really a very lovely evening. And then they went home and went to bed.
In the middle of the night, the wife woke up and realized her husband wasn’t in bed. She could hear him downstairs in the kitchen, loudly sobbing. And of course, she went down to see what was wrong.
“Honey,” she said, “what’s wrong.”
And the husband answered, “Remember when your father caught us in the back seat of my car?”
“Yes.”
“And remember how he said I could marry you or it would be twenty years for statutory rape?”
“Yes,” she replied, wondering where all this was going.
Sobbing even louder, he said, “do you realize, I’d be getting out now!”
