anniversaries

I actually wrote this yesterday, but then computer problems got in the way 
and I never got around to posting it.  I might also have been hoping that 
I could come up with one extra sentence that would give it a better-paced, 
less-abrupt ending.  Ah well.  It'll do.  And better late than never.

- - -

Today is my parents' 42nd anniversary.

I happened to mention this to someone at church a couple days ago.  He 
replied, "Do you think you'll make it that long?"  And my immediate first 
thought was to calculate how old I'd have to be: 76, or 36 years from now.

And then it dawned on me that he wasn't asking me about my life 
expectancy.

Incidentally, the person who asked me this question is D's former fiancee. 
They were engaged years before D and I met.  But D became Orthodox partly 
through her affiliation with this guy, and I became Orthodox partly 
through my affiliation with D, so make of that what you will.

But I must admit, I get a kick out of the thought that this guy might be 
going around, asking his ex-girlfriends' husbands if they think there's a 
chance that they might get divorced someday.

(I like the guy, I do.  Just, that question, coming from him...)

Another thought I had shortly after he asked his question was that I was 
34 when I got married.  34 is less than 36.  I had lived less years, when 
I got married, than I would have to live starting now in order to be 
married for as long as my parents have been married.

A somewhat convoluted and not particularly meaningful statistic, I grant.

But then it suddenly hit me that 34 seemed young to me now.  Gadzooks, I 
did not see that coming.  I mean, at the time, I was convinced that I had 
let myself get too old before I got married.  Oh well.

Yesterday was a holiday, so we spent the afternoon with D's mother (who, 
for what it's worth, hasn't been married in years; D hasn't seen her 
father since she was, like, two years old, though she heard his voice on 
the phone once, just over a decade ago).

Afterwards we stopped by D's grandparents' place to drop something off for 
D's mother.  D's grandparents don't have the most functional of 
relationships, I gather, and the constant hospital and/or doctors' visits 
that come with age haven't been helping matters.

We didn't see D's grandfather, but we did speak to her grandmother, who 
was tending her garden out front.  D's grandmother looked in the van, said 
hello to all the kids, and to us, and asked how we were doing.  (I had 
been sick for a full week, from two Saturdays ago to last Saturday, and 
the kids had taken turns being sick for a day here and there too.)

D's grandmother then said, "Take care of each other," and then she began 
to cry.  She quickly semi-recovered and said, "I'm just sentimental."

As we drove away, I took D's hand and thanked her, again, for taking most 
of last week off from work so that I could rest and try to recuperate from 
one of the nastiest stomach bugs (or whatever) that I've ever had.  (How 
nasty was it?  By the end of the week, I was having thoughts of mortality, 
and *now*, I'm really happy that I'm fit enough to clean up around the 
house, go to church, buy a milkshake or two...  I'm liking life.  Which is 
not to say that I was in *pain* all week; I wasn't, save for a day of 
vomiting.  I was just somewhat debilitated, and in a way that was 
beginning to seem alarmingly permanent... and in a way that was beginning 
to remind me of the two local writers with whom I had a semi-personal 
connection, who recently died in their early 40s of colon cancer...)

Anyway.  I took D's hand and thanked her for, indeed, taking care of me.

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