Golden Anniversary

Fifty years ago today Karen and I “tied the knot”.

It was a double wedding – Karen’s parents couldn’t handle two weddings in one year, and Karen’s older sister Linda and her fiance Malcolm graciously allowed us to share their special day. That we’re still all best friends says something for their grace.

I won’t say much about the ceremony except that there were a few dicey moments when the minister got a bit flustered. I think it was his first double wedding, too.

I can’t speak for Mac and Linda, but as for us, we went into marriage without a clue. Not a clue. No idea about how to live together, how to deal with finances, how to agree, how to disagree. We knew none of those things, and nobody had yet invented pre-marriage counseling. We more or less stepped out into the dark intending to make it work. I’d say “so far, so good”!

We completely trusted one another. We had to. No side deals, no hedging of bets– it was “all in” for a lifetime. This was not a trial run to see if it worked. We were of an age and a generation where it was all or nothing.

From the beginning everything was held in common. I don’t imagine that over fifty years we ever had more than a few hundred dollars that weren’t in the common account, except for business, and even that was of common concern.

Some people say you should marry your best friend. I’m not sure that we did it that way, we were so young. But we ended up becoming best friends with the person we married, so I guess that worked out.

We were lucky (or perhaps I should say I was lucky because Karen led the way in this regard) because we never screamed at or insulted one another. Sure, sometimes we sulked, but we never had the time or luxury to do much of that. Even when we were upset with one another, the baseline was civility.

Sunshine and roses? Occasionally, but not always. In fact, there were one or two times we stared into the abyss, wondering if it had all been a mistake, and those were awful times. They didn’t last long, because we’d made promises that had to be kept, so we got past the dark times, back into friendship, with trust unbroken.

A friend from Swift Current explained to me once that marriage is like an investment – the more you’ve put in, the more valuable it is, and the more important it is to keep it growing. I think he was right.

And Mac and Linda? Yep, it’s still working fine for them, too!