anniversary

What makes a marriage last? Can you know when you're standing in front of the judge or priest or rabbi, slipping the rings onto each other's hands? Can you see into the future with surety? Are there signs? Or are those signs just measures of how things are now and might be then? When you look back on a life you can know the decisions you made, the life you led. That's the only way you can tell.

What makes a marriage? Two people in love? What's love, then? Romantic, companionable, a spark, comfortable silences, convergent views? What about when you dislike each other; when two people live together, their lives enmeshed, that can happen and then can reverse itself too. Two people. A relationship. A living organism.

I went to a wedding once. Thought the couple would stay together forever. They didn't. I went to another wedding. Thought the couple was doomed. That was over a decade ago. They're not only still together, but I believe happily so.

I went to another wedding. Actually, no. I was in another wedding. This one, it felt right from the inside out. Felt like reality. Felt like comfort and family and rightness, the way a hand fits into your hand, they clasp, they hold.

This one held. Thirteen years today. Longer than my parents' marriage. That ring still on my finger, a matching one on his. You don't always know but sometimes you do. And sometimes you're right.

Thirteen years today.

Posted by Tamar at May 14, 2004 11:36 PM