40 years worth celebrating from any perspective

I celebrated my 40th wedding anniversary this summer.

“We marry young in the South,” I tell friends. “I was 8.”

That always gets a laugh.

Even so, my friends, especially the younger ones, seem in awe of – amazed, actually – by a 40-year marriage. By a 40-year anything, really.

I’m not sure if it’s a compliment against the backdrop of today’s seemingly popular styles of on-and-off encounters or just living together without, as we used to say, “benefit of clergy,” not to mention those unpleasant divorce statistics.

Is their reaction a tip of the hat to a living anachronism? Or wonderment that something that is four decades old could still be breathing?

Whatever it is, Bruce and I are still breathing – and still pretty much breathing in sync, thank you.

If I’ve learned anything over these 40 years since we said “I do” in Miami in 1967, it’s perspective. Things that seemed big or important sometimes were, but they weren’t insurmountable or deal-breakers. And sometimes they just weren’t all that big and important once we got a little bit of distance from them.

I also have learned that just when things seem to be smooth and fine, there’s likely a whammo coming in some form or other. That’s how life is.

Bruce was stationed at Fairchild Air Force Base during the Vietnam War, which is why we came to Spokane in the first place. His family was in his home state of Alaska; mine was in Florida.

It wasn’t great in those early days to be in a strange new city without family close by, especially when Bruce was sent overseas. But then, we were able to do all those dumb things you tend to do when you’re first married – without witnesses to remind you for the rest of your living days about this or that particular screw-up.

Sure, there have been ups and downs.

Emergency runs to the hospital with an injured child, untenable job situations, the deaths of all our parents, the debilitating stroke of Bruce’s father and moving him into our house to care for him in his final years.

But I remember many more ups than downs.

Like our son Carl earning a master’s degree from the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies and his passion for travel and work around the world – China, Korea, India, Madagascar, the Czech Republic, Botswana and now Spain.

Like our son Sam’s great passion for the performing arts, for cartooning and for teaching – and the happiness we felt when he found the love of his life, who turned out to be a very nice young man named Ian.

There is a process parents go through when understanding that a child of theirs is gay. It’s bumpy, but if you are fortunate enough to recognize the joy in your child’s eyes and in his heart when he is comfortable within himself and has been blessed with a soulmate, then all is really well.

Perspective is indeed a good thing.

On Tuesday and Thursday mornings, I spend an hour in the warm-water pool at St. Luke’s Rehabilitation Institute.

Bad knees and arthritis, so the warm-water exercise helps keep my joints moving fairly close to properly. (OK, so I really wasn’t 8 when I got married.)

There are several regulars in the pool on those mornings, among them Faye and Maurice “Buzz” Van Patter. Faye is a friendly woman who often visits as she exercises.

One Thursday in July, she asked me if I was doing anything special that weekend. I told her my husband and I were going to Victoria, B.C., for a few days to celebrate our anniversary.

How long had we been married, she asked. I told her.

“Oh, 40 years,” she said knowingly. “That’s a good year. You’ve gotten over most of the rough stuff, raised the kids, are all settled into each other, and things are smooth.”

I hadn’t thought about it that way before, but she was right.

“How long have you and ‘Buzz’ been married?” I asked.

“Fifty-seven years,” she said as she paddled off toward the deep end of the pool, toward where ‘Buzz’ was.

Suddenly, I felt like a newlywed.

It really is about perspective.