-from the movie "The Notebook"
It was a summer romance. There were shooting stars. It was a spectacular moment of light in the heavens. But fortunately it wasn't gone in a flash. We met 47 years ago and the romance is still there. When summer began to fade away into fall we went our separate ways. I went to school in West Virginia. He went to school in Connecticut. I dated but couldn't wait for school breaks so I could see him again. We wrote letters to each other. Sporadically at first and then daily. After two years I knew I had to keep him with me for the rest of my life.
It was forty-three years ago this past Wednesday that we said "I do" on a beautiful late spring day under sunny blue skies. The ceremony and reception were simple. Probably boringly simple by today's standards. A reception on the lawn of the parish house. Punch served with sandwiches and cookies made by the ladies of the church. The most expensive item in the reception was the wedding cake. My brother, who is a minister, once told me that from what he has seen the length of a marriage is often inversely proportional to the amount of money spent on the wedding. No wonder we're still together!
More money was spent on our honeymoon than the wedding. Back then a week in Bermuda cost $600, including air fare. It was all the money we had. We only could afford the cheapest room in the hotel, a room that was smack dab against the boiler room and had a view out the window of a concrete wall. But someone said "do it because you will probably never have another vacation like it". They were right. We had schooling to finish, then came children and a mortgage. Paul opened his own business. Then came college tuition. There was never time or money for another trip like that. It did not matter. The memories of that week have kept me happy for 43 years!
Tonight we went to the Falls Village Inn to celebrate our years together. Very appropriate since Falls Village is the town where we first started our long affair. While there we happened to see someone who worked a couple of summers for my father when I was very young. He invited us to sit and chat with him after dinner at his table on the porch. We sat and reminisced about old times as the sun set and sent a cool and summer scented breeze our way. That is the nice thing about growing old. There is so much more to reminisce and talk about. On the way out we stopped on the front porch and chatted with some young hikers from the Appalachian Trail and filled their heads with local ghostly legends. 
Before leaving for home we took a ride down the Mosquito Path. I wanted to take myself back to where it all began so long ago. He was the lifeguard at the local swimming area situated on the Mosquito Path. I can remember him (and I thought "him" was really hot!) walking over to me as I was sitting next to the water and asking me my name. "Okay, maybe he's a little interested in me, too", I thought. I smiled up at him (probably a pathetically flirty smile) and told him my name........"Mary Margaret". "Well, Mary" he said as he patted me on the head like a kid sister, "could you watch the children for me for a minute while I run inside?" Little Mary-Margaret was shot down.
The town has built a new swimming area in another part of town. There is nothing left here but a sad skeleton of happy days. Most of the water is gone. Weeds have replaced the neatly mowed lawns that used to surround the pool. The tall grass has attracted an army of mosquitoes that attacked us and made our stay very short. This place that was once so lively and filled with laughter and the sounds of cannonballs and the smell of Coppertone and the swoosh swoosh of the pucks being pushed down the shuffleboard court and the slap slap of the tether ball as it was being sent around the pole now is silent except for the buzzing of the deer flies around your head.
I'm glad that our marriage fared better over the past 43 years than this old swimming hole did. I still love to hear him come in the door at the end of the day. It's a comfort at night to hear his slow and even breathing next to me. When the phone rings I like to pick it up and hear him at the other end. Even when he is completely and totally annoying (and he can be) I am still happy that he is still here with me. In 7 years we will celebrate our 50th anniversary. That sounds REALLY scary. Scary because I always thought someone married that long was...........old. But even scarier would be if this had just been a summer romance and gone in a flash. It hasn't always been easy, but the best things in life aren't always easy. And this is the best thing in my life!
