Of The Nature And Timing of Anniversaries

So different, this man
And this woman:
A stream flowing
In a field.

William Carlos Williams, Marriage

My brother Mike was feted this week by our home town YMCA for 60 years of continuous employment.  It’s difficult to imagine both the string of years and the resoluteness of will necessary to attempt a single endeavor over such a time.  Mike played many roles at the Y during that period, and, at times, was its de facto manager without portfolio, title, or compensation appropriate to the task.  And all the while, he engaged in personal activities without breathing a word of them to his siblings: reading to and helping older men at the local Veteran’s Hospital simply because it seemed to him the right thing to do and he enjoyed their company and stories; mentoring kids who worked for him at the Y and giving them whatever hand he could as they started their lives because it gave him joy; helping our mother without fail during her declining, lonely years without a word of complaint to the rest of us because of his sense of duty.

But Mike’s is not the only anniversary of the moment.  My wedding anniversary is tomorrow – January 1st.  Helen and I chose that day as a symbol of new beginnings, for both of us came to the marriage after prior attempts with others.  I’ve found no reason over the years (33 tomorrow) to question our choice of wedding date – other than to note there is something about being married on the first day of a new year which makes me always want to follow my computation of our years together with a question mark – a question mark such as in ‘(33? tomorrow)’.  In fact, as I write this, I wonder whether Helen will agree with my computation when she sees this piece.  She may not, but she will understand my confusion if she doesn’t.

Her understanding will come from the knowledge that while I might not be able to count properly, it is not due to meanness or any personal hesitancy about the state of our union.  In fact, on each anniversary we acknowledge this confusion and discuss the length of our marriage; a discussion which is essential to our ritual of shared remembrance, for at its core are our shared memories.  Sooner or later, one of us will refer to some shared event, some event which will assist us in pinning down the correct number of years we’ve been together. And mention of one event always invokes recollections of a myriad of others.

We could, of course, read our marriage certificate instead for I know exactly where it is, but that would be cheating.

At the heart of any anniversary lie memories; they are the yardstick simultaneously used to measure the length of a relationship, the variety of and variations in its attributes, and its overall quality and depth.  Because some portions of a relationship work poorly and others work well, some memories are not as enjoyable as others.  But when the fact of failures is combined with the fact of a steadily lengthening marriage (as evidenced by the attainment of yet another moment for application of the yardstick of memory) we rest assured that our marriage has worked – does work – at some fundamental level in spite of whatever faults we each bring to it.

I’ve spent a good deal of my time writing a novel during this first year of retirement.  In my novel (Son), the protagonist marries at age 25 and his marriage endures for 40 years until the death of his spouse from cancer.  He looks back on his marriage with complete satisfaction and without memory of faults or discord, his only unhappiness stemming from the fact of her death and the enormity of his loss.  I chose not to disclose the quotidian aspects of their marriage because of the novel’s construction, a choice which renders their marriage as seemingly ideal within its pages.  But while I chose not to disclose the  arguments, the cracks, the heartaches, the hurts, and the differing recollections of shared events which must have occurred to my characters, I know they happened even if I chose not to write about them.  For how else could their marriage seem so rich on the page if it hadn’t outlasted such things; if it was not found wanting after being tested in the fires of a shared life and by the periodic strangulations attempted by fate?

And so it is with our marriage: it is and it goes, and in the going is its measure.

Congratulations, Mike.   Happy anniversary, Helen.

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