Happy un-Anniversary

Hal and I were married sixty years ago today.

We were a couple of clueless optimistic kids, just as it is with young kids marrying or the equivalent today.

We met when I was hired as the only permanent staff of a local neighborhood weekly paper; he edited the paper while taking a full course load at the local university. He'd take the streetcar over from campus after classes each day and he seldom slept.

I wrote some, managed the classified ads and young paper carriers and did my best to avoid my lecherous boss.

In the blink of an eye, Hal graduated, took a job as reporter with a daily newspaper, I worked as a commercial artist painting flowers on wooden salad bowls and it seemed a perfect time to get married.
In hindsight if we'd waited until we could afford it, we'd still be waiting.

My parents had dreamed of a fluffy white wedding for their only daughter so that's what we had. Still, by today's standards it was simple and relatively unpretentious.



We were dumb as sticks about the way the world works and it's probably just as well.

We quickly had two children and we moved to his new job three thousand miles away.

As an example of our dumbness and extreme good luck, we found a tract house an hour's drive from his workplace and we wrote a cheque for a down payment. This was on a Saturday; we had no money but for some reason this wasn't daunting.

Hal got on the phone and by Monday we had money to cover the down payment along with a mortgage and two demand loans.

We celebrated by having another baby.

We had six children all told and he spent the better part of our marriage working as a free-lance writer working from our house.
another time I'll tell you what that was like.

This may sound strange but the last year of his life was a happy one.

He had cancer and we both knew he wouldn't survive; every silly marriage game fell away and I learned what unconditional love really means.

We were together every step of the way and he died a week short of our thirty-eighth anniversary.

We had time to say all the things we needed to say.

This I've learned -- we never get truly smart about life--we just bumble along doing our best, trying not to hurt others in the process. Eventually we learn not to repeat the same mistakes and we concentrate on our own behaviour and forget about judging others.

Happy anniversary Hal, wherever you are; that was quite the adventure we shared.