How do you know you’ve been married for forty-one years? When you spend your anniversary with your grandkids at Discovery Place, and have your romantic dinner at the airport Wendy’s as the boys are about to return home. Afterwards, we both commented that it was once of the nicest anniversarys we had spent together.
When you’ve been married this long, people start to ask how you made it. Suzy usually responds, “Did I have another option?” I on the other hand think about the phrase – While you’re up. I’ve lost count of the times both of us have used those words. “While you’re up will you get me, will you do, will you turn off or on, etc. It symbolizes those minor inconveniences we perform for each other in a marriage or in life. You don’t keep score, you don’t expect reciprocity, and you usually perform them in good humor. Marriage mirrors life in our obligations to others.
We do for each other not because of any obligation or contractual requirement, but out of love for your spouse or for others. Over years the flames of the first years of marriage turn to burning coals, but as any good barbecue chef will tell you – the warmth of coals is the perfect fire. We keep them fanned by doing those little things for each other – while we’re up.
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