57 years together

My Marilyn and I.

We’ve been happily married for fifty-seven years as of this past February eighteenth. I can honestly say she’s been the one who has been the bedrock of the marriage. When I spent all those nights and weekends pursuing my second career in the National Guard along with my primary career in industry, she was the one who sustained the family by overseeing the raising of our children and maintaining the household operation. We’ve been very fortunate in that we made very practical plans before we were married, and that we were able to stick fairly close to those plans, such as to save our money while we were both working, buy our first house after three years and start our family at that time. She had no living parents and my only living parent, my father, lived a distance away and offered little advice or assistance, which meant we had to rely on ourselves. I’m very grateful to her for those fifty-seven good years.

You might ask how we reward each other on those anniversaries and other occasions such as birthdays and Christmas. After all these years when we want something or need something we just go buy it. After all, if you postpone it until one of those occasions, after fifty-seven years we might not be here. That doesn’t preclude the other asking ‘Why in the world did you buy that?” or “Did you really need that?” So what we do is give each other $100.00, with the caveat that you can spend it for whatever you might want, whenever you want, no questions asked by the other. She loves to shop so her money goes for clothes, whatever, and she usually spends each $ 100.00 three or four times. I ask no questions. I spend my $100.00 on stupid things I think I’d like and she can’t challenge me. Works out pretty good.

Vacation in Florida

Dateline Thursday, 7 February 2007: We’re now in Florida for six weeks, essentially from my standpoint, to get warm. My wife, I think, kind of just goes along with spending six weeks down here every winter. I think it breaks up the long winter and she thinks its an opportunity to do her shopping in a different location. When we go home after the middle of March, spring is beginning to poke its nose around the corner and things are beginning to green up, bulbs are poking their noses out of the cold ground, and the migrating birds are beginning to return to Indiana. And even better, golf season is about to begin.

Unfortunately, when we got down here, winter was giving Florida a sample of northern weather and it was cold down here. Thursday, the day we arrived, it was sunny, but windy. The next day was cloudy, windy and cooler. The following day was rainy and cold – all day, followed by 3 days of cool, cloudy weather. And about that time, my neighbor across the street back home sent me a picture he had taken of our house, covered with snow, just to cheer me up. But today I got even by sending him a picture of an alligator, sunning itself, on the bank of the canal in back of our rental house. The temperature reached 80 degrees today.

We stay in the city of Englewood, which is located about five miles off the west coast, approximately halfway between Venice and Port Charlotte. We’re situated in a suburb called Rotonda West. We’re not beach people, so we don’t mind not being on the coast. The rental has a pool and we can swim if we want. Frankly, we haven’t done much except lay around and go shopping in Port Charlotte a couple of times. Our highlight so far was getting to watch the Super Bowl and see our fantastic Colts outwrestle those Chicago Bears. In all honesty, when the Bears scored that first touchdown in just 14 seconds on a runback from the opening kick-off, I thought all was lost. But the Colts persisted, recovered their poise, and proceeded to mount one of the best comebacks I’ve seen. So much for the so-called worst defense in pro football. Now maybe we can get back to watching golf on week-ends.