Still Married After 53 Years

Nobody thought we'd last, but we couldn't let go of the great, ever-changing creation known as Us.

Celebrating our 50th in lockdown, steak dinner about to arrive.

I often walk my dog through a cobblestoned enclave where couples flock from all over the city to take their vows in a restored Victorian distillery. Here they come in their finery of choice—stiletto heels and platform-heeled sneakers, leather and silk, fascinators and fedoras, now and then the retro flutter of a veil. They swish, they teeter and they stride, a procession of the hopeful in every combination of gender and race. The ring bearer chases the flower girl. Grandparents bring up the rear, arm in arm. A lifetime ago, they led the procession, sashaying to the Just Married car in a swirl of confetti.

My eyes mist over.

It's been 53 years, almost to the day, since Paul and I said “I do” at City Hall, surrounded by a gaggle of classmates on a lark. Our parents looked somber—his out of English reserve, mine because they doubted this marriage could be anything but a mistake. I wore a velvet minidress I’d loved since high school (everything old, nothing new but the pantyhose, purchased at the last minute). Paul had just hacked several inches off his only tie, knitted by his sister with more enthusiasm than skill. A feckless bridal couple, even by the freewheeling standards of the time. If you were going to do anything so uncool as marry, you should do it in a farmer’s field, crowned with daisy garlands, to the strains of a mandolin. We didn’t know any farmers or mandolin players. As for weaving daisy garlands, forget it.

It was October 20, 1970, the first date on offer when we lined up to book our wedding. My twenty-first birthday, as luck would have it; we didn’t plan much of anything then. But whatever gods there be seemed to have my future in their sights, which is more than I can say for myself.

I have edited and relaunched a magazine, published two books. None of it required more grit or creativity than doing my part to make a marriage of 54 years. Not even raising a son quite compares because motherhood is for life. You can always walk out on a marriage.

As my mother had insisted, we weren’t ready, two English majors with vague thoughts of grad school until we skipped the condom in a lighthearted moment and literally tumbled into parenthood. The stress of caring for a baby while managing course loads and finding our rhythm as a couple nearly broke us. We took the separation agreement to a lawyer with a walkup office and a sagging face. He refused to take any money from clients whose worldly goods, now divided 50/50, consisted mainly of tea towels, wooden spoons and scratched LPs by every icon of the 60s. Our only candlestick would be mine, the penny can Paul’s. Said the lawyer, “You kids have enough problems.”

We were 21, kids with a baby we didn't plan.

Every marriage is a country with a population of two. Outsiders cannot grasp its arcane customs, rituals and rules. If the natives themselves understood the workings of the place, couples counselors would be out of business. A marriage rests, for good or ill, on a history. In the beginning comes a Me, a You, two solitary souls with firm views on how things ought to work from now on. Holidays with my family or yours? A budget or spend-and-see? Dishes piled in the sink for later or scoured before bedtime? If you haven’t shared your home with a partner, you find yourself dismayed by the blizzard of negotiations and the ferocity they can unleash. Through clashes, compromises and moments of delight, you create the state of being known as Us. It has a gravitational pull. I thought I was leaving Paul forever, but I missed Us.

Some couples hang in out of sheer inertia; others feed on shared misery (“The rocks in his head fit the holes in hers”). In our case, devotion to Us pulled us through. We endured a lot of wearying fights about dishes to reach that ledge in the Dordogne where we sat on a sun-warmed rock, pleasantly weary from hiking, and feasted on the gamey cheese our steps had earned as the valley below spread out like a dream, pierced by the towers of a chateau. As newlyweds we couldn’t see past the next rent check, much less imagine that view.

I married Paul, after knowing him for all of six months, because from our first night I felt the tug of Us. His room with the sloping ceiling was as naked as ourselves, no shade for the only light and nothing on the walls or floor. Everything he owned could fit inside two cardboard suitcases, a point of pride with him. My green and orange room was a wild abundance, from the patchwork quilt salvaged from a trash can to the Mexican beads draping every surface. If our tastes were any indication, we’d last one night. Yet I found myself strangely at home in Paul’s white box, where trust bloomed in 12 hours out of John Donne:

And now good-morrow to our waking souls,

Which watch not one another out of fear;

For love, all love of other sights controls,

And makes one little room an everywhere.

When I left Paul for my pink and white childhood bedroom, taking our toddler with me, I thought it was because I never loved him. But sometimes love goes into hiding and stays there for months, maybe years, while you forget it ever was. In such a state I was capable of telling my husband, "I never loved you." (I am now deeply skeptical when anyone tells me, with desperate sincerity, "I never loved him.") Full credit to Paul for rekindling the memory of love. He sent letters, single-spaced on many pages. He hitchhiked 600 miles from Toronto to see me at my mother’s in New Hampshire, braving her conviction that I was well rid of him. He doesn’t recall holding out his thumb with our son’s red rocking chair in the opposite hand, but I swear it happened. I chose a man who wouldn’t let his child lose that rocking chair—or Us to lose each other.

At my mother’s, ready to start over.

We started over, thinking we’d finally cracked the code of marriage, as if anyone ever does. Just when you find your groove, some life change knocks you out of it. You welcome a new baby, drop your baby off at the dorm and hope the parties won’t be dangerously wild. You claim the keys to your first home, hand them over to new owners you hope will thrive there. Mourn your parents and friends gone too soon, celebrate your milestones. As with writing a book or any other creative endeavor, you are always starting over in response to the latest marital plot twist. But you don’t have to brainstorm your own way out of the doldrums. You’ve got a collaborator who may shine when you are flagging.

In the ho-hum years that followed our retirement from two all-consuming jobs, Paul took my hand one night at dinner and made the wildest proposal: “Let’s get a dog.” Us, at 63, first-timers with arthritis and no back yard? I knew nothing about dogs and wasn’t keen to learn. But Paul had always wanted a dog, and I decided to trust his instincts. With Casey the rescue mutt, we found a more fun-loving way to be Us.

On Casey's first day., Paul became his favorite human.

Had I known he would poop and puke all over our expensive Tibetan carpet after scarfing down something vile, I might have backed off. Here’s the thing about Us-ness, though: You can’t predict the next complication, so you’re wise not to try.

I watch bridal couples strike poses for the camera, and it’s almost as if they’re my children, heading off into the unknown. They don’t notice me, a stately old dame with a big hat and a dog of no particular distinction, sniffing for edible trash. If I could offer them one piece of advice, it would be this: Think of marriage as a never-ending road trip with a lot of low-rent strip malls between beauty spots. You will eat your share of gas-station sandwiches. You will find yourselves stuck in traffic, wondering how far ahead the accident is and when you can get to a bathroom. There will be times when you wish you could be on some other road, with more cheerful company. But when the lake appears—or the canyon or the wild coast—you will hold your breath as one because you made it. And then you’ll head home with your photos to Us-Land, where you’ll tell the story again and again. You never guessed you could live this tale. But here you are. Together.

Okay, friends. Your turn now. Are you or were you Us with someone? What have you discovered about nurturing Us?