41 Years...how thankful I am.

My parents were married to each other 41 years ago today. The sheer weight of that number truly astounds me. First, it means they are old enough to have been married that long and second and more amazingly, I am old enough to be a child of people who have been married 41 years. I couldn't let today pass without taking a moment to express my gratitude to my parents who stuck it out for this long. I have been married a meager sixteen years and there have been times when I wanted to run away and join the circus. I called my Dad one time when Mike was in his first semester of med school, was failing gross anatomy and I was convinced we would never see each other again because medicine was rapidly consuming the man that used to belong to me. I told my Dad I was coming home from Washington DC. It was no secret I was miserable and that things were hard and different. I don't think my Dad wondered what I meant when I said "I think I'm coming home." He told me okay. Then my Mom got on the other extension and told me in no uncertain terms that I was NOT coming home and that I needed to stay there and fix it. So I did. I can't even imagine what would have happened had she allowed me to run away from my marriage and hide all the way in California. You might think I am disappointed now that I have hindsight that my Dad didn't react the same way as my Mom. But I'm not. He reacted the way a Dad should. My Mom reacted the way a Mom should. And that has been the story of my life as their child. I wanted to write this wonderful post about their marriage and how they are best friends and how they do everything together instead of having a bunch of friends and how my Mom still laughs at my Dad's jokes and how my Dad still does what my Mom wants not because he's scared of her but because he wants her to be happy. All of these things are true but they sort of creep me out even writing them. See, I can only write an anniversary tribute to my parents from the experience I've had as their child. They will always be my Mom and Dad, not a married couple. I think, if you are lucky and hit the parent lottery, that you don't see your parents as this great romance story as a kid. If you are lucky, you don't really "see" them at all. Because you don't have to. You get to just be a kid. Your family is your family, food is on the table, homework is nagged about, you get in trouble when you get bad grades and grounded for sneaking boys into the house. You skate on bright white leather skates through the neighborhood and every Friday night at the local roller rink. Only now do I realize that there were people giving up their Friday nights to cart me and my friends to the roller rink and pick us up and deliver a car load of girls to their respective houses. I realize now that there were people coaching my softball team even though they had full time jobs. I realize now that someone hung all my campaign signs in the cafeteria when I was running for Student Council. My parents were behind the scenes helping me have the most normal stable childhood as possible.

My parents fought but not in a mean way. They loved but never in a mushy gushy way (gross). They championed my dreams for whatever I wanted to do. But my focus was totally and completely on myself. Because I was a kid.

So I guess what I want to say is thanks to my mom and dad for giving me a childhood in which I didn't notice you that much. You held it together and always encouraged me by being there and putting in the long hours required of good parents.

All I can do to show my parents that I learned from them is to have a marriage that honors theirs. No matter what, we will stick it out and if it gets bad again we will fix it. And we are good friends and would rather spend time together rather than with someone else. We love our kids and are trying to provide them with a home and family that is stable and safe in which they never have to wonder if we'll always be a family or not. I think this is a great gift we can give them.

Thanks for hanging in there you guys. It mattered a lot to me as your kid. Way to go. Good job. Well done. And many many more...