My parents, Mr. and Mrs. Mockingbird, celebrated their Golden Anniversary this past weekend. It's a funny story - when Mom was considering the wedding date, she didn't choose to commemorate their first date, or some equally romantic time, for my mother is nothing if not pragmatic. So she selected the anniversary of the date my dad received his Navy flight wings. As she puts it, "He won't forget that one!" That's them up in the corner - happy and joyous on their wedding day.But the wedding is not the same thing as the marriage.
While I'm sure my parents have had downs as well as ups (it's been fifty years, after all. And we're Southern, so we can hold a grudge good and tight), they've always been excellent role models for me. While I made more than my fair share of (ahem) unfortunate romantic decisions* prior to meeting FryDaddy, I always knew what I wanted, even when I wasn't sure how to get there. And those were lessons learned, in large part, from my parents.
Chief among those lessons is that people don't usually change that much after marriage, they just become more of what they already are. Take me, for example - I'm an indifferent housekeeper at best. I'm most unlikely to suddenly become Martha Stewart and it would be a foolish thing to hold your breath waiting for that to happen. Oh, I always have good intentions of dusting the shelves and emptying the ironing basket, but - well, that's part of the Road to Hell Paving Company. After a certain point in time, you just can't domesticate people, so it's best to look around carefully and decide if you can accept what you see.
Mom and Dad apparently did and it seems to have worked out well. Happy Anniversary, Mom and Dad!
*In the spirit of full disclosure, it should be noted that not all of my decisions were unfortunate. Bad timing, yes. Unfortunate, no.
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