Wednesday, March 14, 2001

By SALLIE SATTERTHWAITE
sallies@juno.com

He was the first guy she met in college that she didn't try to impress.

For one thing, he was all but engaged at the time and, for another, she was painfully aware that her plain features were not enhanced by pool-wet hair and an old sweatshirt, so why waste the effort? Maybe this unstrained climate allowed romance to bloom. Or maybe it was the differences between them that sparked the interest that led to love.

He was an "older" man, all of 23, whose four years in the Air Force had put the finishing touches on a self-reliance rooted in a somewhat unsupervised childhood. She was 18 and virginal, in both the traditional sense and in her social inexperience, the result of a religious rural upbringing.

He was profane and irreverent, she articulate and impressionable. He smoked, drank an occasional beer; she had never even tasted table wine until she was a guest in his parents' home. He appreciated music, but could not hum a tune; her skill at the piano enchanted him.

She was baffled by any mechanical project more complex than changing a light bulb, and watched, awestruck, as he repaired pocket watches and 1950 Studebakers with ease.

His engagement fizzled and they began to date. She couldn't believe it when the thin young man with James Dean cheekbones and far-away blue eyes told her he was falling in love with her. He was taken aback when she told him she had never really been in love, and would not say "I love you, too" until she was sure.

Two weeks later she was sure, and in less than a year they married. Neither family really approved his mother thought the bride too "country" for her son, and her father regarded the groom as unstable but they gave reluctant blessing. On an early spring Sunday, in a church full of friends, a Scottish Presbyterian minister supervised the exchange of the plain gold rings.

I wish I could say, "and they lived happily ever after," but this is a true story. In the young, emotions run deep, and their ardor for each other was sometimes matched by their anger with each other, as selflessness warred with selfishness. Like the day she wept for fear 50 years would not be long enough to love him; the next, she wondered how she could have tied herself to such an insensitive beast.

The years do funny things to people and in the process of growing together they may also grow apart. Eventually both became deeply committed to their church and to the responsibility of child-rearing. They shared their delight in classical music, nature and books. They complemented each other's do-it-yourself skills, evident in the old Dutch Colonial they restored.

But when the children were grown, she channeled her time and energy into public service. Outgoing and trusting, she involved herself with people and their needs, and he was torn between pride and possessiveness. She could not understand why he felt no obligation to serve their community, or how he could spend whole days lurching from one side of a lake to the other in a sailboat.

He found fault with her friends; she found fault with his reclusiveness. The fights were less frequent but more corrosive, and it occurred to them both that they had known marriages to founder on less provocation.

I said this is a true story, of a marriage which is alive. Living things are capable of change and adaptability. Like a tree that eventually overcomes a barbed wire fence, scarring over wounds and incorporating them into its being, a living relationship can absorb injuries and grow stronger around them. The will to survive will find a way.

Compromises were struck, and each finally learned to accept the other as he or she is. They have found joy in watching each other become the man and woman they were meant to be: independent, respected, enjoying life on their own terms, defining success as satisfaction rather than as wealth.

It's too soon to say how their story ends 'way too soon, I hope but as each year ends, they are wiser than when they were before. The most important lesson they have learned is that it is unrealistic to expect all of life's dreams to be fulfilled in another person. Marriage has grown into friendship, as age and retirement have moved them into more nearly parallel paths.

As they age, they joke that it takes both of them now to make one whole person. His vision is good, his hearing not so. Hers is acute, but she keeps a magnifying glass at hand.

She's responsible for social obligations sending friends a sympathy card would never occur to him but he remembers to pay taxes and renew licenses she doesn't even know they have. Household chores fall naturally to each: to him, vacuuming, dishes, windows; to her, laundry, meals, cleaning.

They finish each other's sentences, or don't bother since they already know where the thought was leading.

Wish them well. Their plain gold bands have been worn by the heartaches of time. But they shine with a deeper luster than when they were slipped into place on a blustery March afternoon 45 years ago this week.

Back to the Top of the PageBack to the Weekend Home Page