I spent the day with my dad on Saturday. It was nice - we spent enough hours together that we got past the "headline news" style of talking, and actually connected in a way that we've been too busy to do for too long.
And here's one of the interesting things we talked about.
He told me a little anecdote about a time recently when he and my mom were watching the news together. In one of the stories, they interviewed an older wife who said something like, "My husband wanted to talk to me about something. He had such a serious look on his face that my first thought was that he was going to tell me he was leaving me, or that one of us had cancer."
In fact, the husband was going to tell the wife something about a third person, whom this story was about. But that's not why my dad was telling me the story. It was my mom's reaction.
She turned to my dad and said something like, "You know, if you wanted to talk to me about something serious, it wouldn't be my first reaction that you were going to leave me."
It took me a minute to process what my dad was saying, and why he was saying it. And then I got it. That little statement of my mom's was a pretty amazing tribute to the strength of their marriage.
It made me reflect on how lucky I am. As individuals, my parents are both terrific, and I'm lucky to have them. But I've also been lucky to have been a child of that marriage. I have no doubt at all that my marriage is as successful as it is because there are so many ways of being successfully married that are second nature to me, from having lived in a home with a successful marriage. And it doesn't hurt any that my husband's parents have logged more than 50 years too.
I'm not saying that their marriage was always happy. I'm not saying mine is either. But it sure is healthy, and strong, and terrific. Way to go, Mom and Dad! And thanks.
