St. Valentine's Day and birthdays and other survival stuff

The survivalists think that survival involves building temporary shelters and finding edible leaves and bugs in the woods.

Wrong.

Survival is remembering your wife's birthday. I have no problem with that. I married a woman whose birthday is the day after St. Valentine's Day. This makes the birthday easy to remember, but it has one huge disadvantage. I have two days, back to back, that I had BETTER get right, or I run a serious risk of being dogmeat until our June 21 anniversary. And if I get that wrong. . .eek.

My second issue in this regard: I married a woman who squeezes a penny until Abraham Lincoln cries "Uncle!" As Mike Ditka said of George Halas, she "throws nickels around like they're manhole covers." In that regard we are very different, and God bless her for that. If I find a nickel and a penny in my pocket I wonder what I can buy for those six cents. She lets me have no cash.

So, I gotta get Valentine's Day and her birthday right. With no cash. Well, our next anniversary will be our 36th, so something is going very right. (Makes one wonder how a woman who is 29 years old can have a 36th wedding anniversary, doesn't it?) We tell some folks we're been married that long and they look at us like we're aliens that have just landed. I guess people just don't do that anymore.

Thirty-five years plus. Maybe we're entitled, finally, to have an opinion on what exactly love is. That first glow, that initial bloom, is nice and magical and wonderful. And it disappears. Oh, it comes back periodically, but a marriage can't be built just on that. Many a marriage was broken up because one partner decided that they were having that wonderful glow of novelty with someone else. That bloom can be a dangerous bloom.

Love is work. It isn't easy and wasn't meant to be.

Marriage is commitment, and there are times when the commitment is all you have. Make no mistake, the glow comes back, but it's different. In the meantime, you hang in there - because that's what you committed to do.

So here's what 35 years has been.

Thirty-five years when we both lost sleep over sick kids - when we both have had our turns spending the night at the hospital with those kids.

Thirty-five years when one of us stood by the other while that other was sick or injured. When I has open heart surgery in '92, my wife arrived at the hospital early in the morning of the day of the surgery. She stayed in the waiting room while a procedure that should have taken maybe three hours stretched into four - then five - the wait was interrupted only by the news that "Your husband is sicker than we knew" (OK DOC YOU WANNA TRANSLATE THAT!?!?). She didn't go home until I was moved from the Cardiac Care Unit to my regular room, days later.

When she had surgeries in '76 and in '93, I did likewise.

When I slipped and fell on ice last December, she waityed on me. She did whatever could be done to make me more comfortable  - to help the healing process.

When she fell and broke her wrist, I was there to help with the day-to-day tasks we all take for granted. Showering and getting dressed is easy if you have two good arms. Having only one good arm makes it very difficult. I tried to do my part to make it easier.

Living with me hasn't always been a bowl of cherries. See "Alcoholism - impact on families." But there was this commitment thing, and she stuck through it.

There were times when our kids flirted with trouble, and times when they found it. But, we stuck with each other. There were days when we were upset with each other - but there was that commitment.

Commitment. If that's present, and if that's honored, the glow comes back, now more mature, now built on awareness of what it's all about.

I love you, Cindy. I always will - faithfully, commitedly. Forever and ever - not for as long as it's convenient, but until death us do part.

Happy Valentine's Day, Cindy. And happy 29th birthday again!