Summers and weddings – and wedding anniversaries – “go together like a horse and carriage.” A while back a friend and his wife celebrated their 50th, evoking the following verse, which these days might speak to any couple celebrating their years together.
50 Years — and Counting
More than a lifetime for many,
Half of a lifetime for few
But when it comes to measuring
a marriage
What is a couple to do?
Look back on the years behind them?
Settle into the year that is now?
Or wonder about the years ahead,
While others ask, “What?” and “How?”
What is their secret, their magical mix?
What do they hold in their
bag full of tricks?
How did they do it? How’d
they survive?
How did they keep their
young love alive?
How did they manage to last the years
through?
What do they know that so few of us
do?
“It’s not what or how,” they would
likely reply.
“It’s been more a matter of whether and
why.”
Whether is part of most marriages’ lives
Whether the husbands or whether the
wives
Get what they want or give what is
needed;
Marriages thrive on the whethers
conceded.
But “why”? Ah, the why! That’s the
diamond that’s shared,
That makes all the difference when
couples get paired.
Fifty years, thirty, or twenty, or two,
-It’s the why that explains how couples
get through.
Once upon dreamtime, once upon youth
He and she met in a moment of truth.
They said to each other and knew in
their heart
That life was not life when they were
apart.
Both found a love wide and deep as the
sky,
A love that’s their answer to anyone’s
why.
“Happy Anniversary” to any and all
who are celebrating their love story this
summer.
