Driving … a happy marriage
Carolynn Pianta
MY MOTHER AND FATHER WERE MARRIED FOR 62 YEARS, a pretty amazing feat, considering they knew each other only 18 days before they were married.
Theirs
was a World War II Navy romance — meet, marry and love like there were
no tomorrows, because for them, there might not have been any. But, they
had more than 22,000 tomorrows; some good, some bad, some unforgettable
and a lot of them just plain funny.
I’ve
been with my husband more than half my life, which seems pretty
monumental, yet I know decades together does not always a happy marriage
make. Commitment has nothing to do with a piece of paper downloaded off
the Internet, then signed and filed with the town you’re getting
married in; it has to do with endurance.
My
father was a humble man and the nicest guy you’d ever want to meet. My
mother … she had an answer for everything, and her answers were always
right, even when she was wrong. My father was OK with that, and often
took the blame for being wrong, because he loved her, was a master of
endurance, and he was in it for the long haul.
I’m
wondering at what point the bliss, which we call connubial, reaches its
marital tipping point; the instant at which a couple has been together
so long that bad habits become simply annoying, and the annoying ones
are considered quirky and cute. Personally, this wedded point of no
return basically means I’d rather put up with my idiosyncratic spouse
instead of training a new one.
Because I
didn’t marry until I was 30, I was pretty much used to doing most of the
guy-stuff around the house myself, like changing light bulbs and
cleaning snow off my car. Because I was so used to being in control,
attempting to give that up, and failing so miserably at it, has been an
ongoing thorn in my husband’s side; principally among my control
transgressions, driving.
I like to drive, not
just because it is something I enjoy doing, but because I like deciding
the velocity and trajectory of the vehicle I’m in. Is it because I
choose to exceed the posted speed limit? No, it’s because I like to be
in control of the object in which I am housed as it’s being propelled
down the blacktop mere inches away from other vehicles racing to keep up
or get ahead of me.
After a particularly
hyperbolic exchange regarding my husband’s parking ability, (I always
tell him where to park and how best to accomplish the task), I asked
him, "How do you operate this vehicle when I’m not in it to tell you
how?"
"I simply ask myself," he said, ‘what would Carolynn tell me to do?’" I just love a man with a sense of humor.
Maybe
that’s the answer, not the sense of humor part, the just ask me part; I
tell him what to do and how to do it, and he does exactly what he wants
to do. And that, my friends, is what makes a long and happy marriage.
It worked for my mother and father
I do bow
to my husband’s expertise often. He’s amazing with a hammer and nails.
The man could build a 10-room colonial from the scrap wood stored in our
basement.
I have a sign which hangs on the
wall in our kitchen above the back door: "If a man is alone in the woods
and speaks, and there is no wife to hear him, is he still wrong?"
Unlike my mother, I admit I’m not always right; I’m almost always right.
Enough said.
Enough said.
No comments:
Post a Comment