Fifty Years: An Anniversary Poem

 Entry for 19 August 2023:

(Diane & Robert fiftieth wedding anniversary, with notes for our grandkids)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1. A Story of Us and How We Got Together

 

You

Me:

50 years

Watergate to Ukraine

Green youth to gray age

 

You

Me:

Grand Forks

Palo Alto

 

Both born in the very midst of a turbulent century

In the shadow of two great and horrid wars

Grandchildren of the Great Depression.

 

First-born to bright, educated, caring

But quite young parents

Themselves youngest, or almost youngest, children,

Dads still studying, arcane lore.

Moms doing odd bits of work and raising us

Your mom as short as my mom was tall

All of us learning as we went.

 

You

Me:

Pleasanton

Lodi

 

Raised in small, flat California towns

In the process of becoming suburbs

In the buttoned-down 1950’s.

 

Children of privilege

That we did not even recognize at the time:

WEIRD WASPs.

(Note: By WASPs we don’t mean the stinging insects

but White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant;

and WEIRD stands for Western, Educated,

Industrialized, Rich, Democratic.)

 

You

Me:

Santa Cruz

Los Angeles

 

Wearing the privilege of oldest children,

Used to responsibility for others

But ambivalent about our power,

Proud but burdened.

 

Glad to escape to university

As soon as we could

We happily exchanged

The small uptight inland places

For a counter-cultural beach town

That we were almost too square for.

 

Looking back, it’s striking

We could have shared so much:

But it’s no surprise we immediately

During orientation week

Recognized each other as fellow refugees.

 

And then remained friends for years

As we grew, experimented,

had other crushes and connections,

Began to learn who we were,

And eventually, in a time of transition,

found our way back to each other.

 

And thence to the big city and marriage

Full of the usual sorts of contradictions

Shy extraverts

Traditionally heterosexual

But androgenous, tolerant and curious

Sheltered from major loss and trauma

But acquainted with sorrow and failure.

 

Optimistic pessimists (or is it the other way round?)

Blending acceptance and pickiness,

Stubbornness and flexibility.

We like a good laugh but do not suffer fools gladly;

We do not insist on our way

But do not like at all to be pushed around.

 

We did not imagine that our shared background

And rampant contradictions would turn out to be

Just what we needed for a fifty-year journey together.

2. Fifty Years Passes

 Like the time-lapse photos

our granddaughter Mizuki took

Of her flight here from Seattle,

Or a magical version

of our living room gliding love seat

which our grandson Yuki immediately takes to

Rocking it vigorously as he tries

to reach the land of his imagination,

We now play back the past fifty years

Since our wedding:

They flash by in our minds,

Rocking us repeatedly back

To places and people

Both remembered and (until now) forgotten.

 

Days, years; beginnings, endings;

A rhythm of repetition

And each moment unique:

Toledo, Sheffield,

Toledo, Leuven,

Toledo, Toronto,

Toledo, Melbourne,

Toledo, (sons to Cleveland),

Glasgow.

Pleasanton.

 

Over these many years,

The elder generations pass:

The last remaining grandparents, then parents,

Aunts, uncles, teachers,

Friends timely and untimely lost,

Until we are the elders,

And our passing, still unknown

Is nevertheless not that far away.

 

In the meantime, we’ve been looking

Through old photos of us

Excavating the layers of the years:

We wonder at our younger selves,

When was this?

Who were those people?

Were they really us?

 

Yet we know the answer:

Yes, they are all still in there

Mizuki’s time lapse

Of flickering faces and places

This crowd of us

Wildly varying hairstyles

Strange, but not strangers to us,

In all these different places

Exotic and mundane

With all these different people

Who we have loved

And who have loved us.

            *          *          *

Yuki’s commandeered our rocking sofa;

It’s now a time machine

Swinging us creakily through the years.

“Don’t swing too hard!”

We tell him repeatedly

For we fear It will break us

And our old-but-young-at-hearts hearts.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 (Link to Mizuki's airplane timelapse movie)

 

3. The Secret of a Long Marriage

 

It appears that being married for 50 years or more

Is unusual enough these days

That people want to know what our secret is.

 

The fact is, we don’t know

And fear to look too closely

As if that might jinx the whole thing

Like the poor centipede trying to figure

How it walks and falling

Into a ditch instead.

 

Nevertheless, friends have pressed us

With questions and pet theories:

One said the secret was “Inertia”;

Another, “Failure of Imagination.”

To these I’m inclined to add

“Insecure Attachment” and “Stubbornness”.

 

But I think all of these miss the point:

We know that close relationships

Are inherently unstable

And difficult to maintain.

 

Stability is either an illusion,

A skewed family system (psychobabble

for one person having too much power),

Or the result of hard work.

 

As in the universe itself

Entropy is the law.

 

We learned this in the tenth year of our marriage

When I had survived my tenure vote

(Following years of severe workaholism),

When our first child was two

(Sorry, kids and grandkids,

But having kids

Is a huge stressor for couples),

Only to face the abyss between us.

 

A year of couples therapy helped us through this

And from that experience

We took two essential things:

One: A microwave oven, which lasted 34 years

(we gave up on it, before it gave up on us);

Two: Not taking ourselves too seriously,

Which is timeless.

 

The fact is, we are both very aware of the other’s

annoying habits, limitations and emotional allergies,

Which we constantly try to correct

Even though we know perfectly well

that this is impossible

And would make the other

A perfect person,

who we wouldn’t even recognize

… And might even feel inferior to.

 

And we know all too well

that even though other people

Might see us as caring,

thoughtful, good-hearted and so on,

We can each at times

“In our present imperfection”

act like jerks toward the other,

Especially when stressed, ill or emotionally injured.

 

And so from time to time

One or the other of us

Realizes that there’s a problem:

Something’s gotten out of balance between us,

One of us has begun to disengage.

 

This means:

There is an unattended-to injury

That must be addressed,

Painful truths spoken,

New understandings to surprise us,

New accommodations to be forged.

 

The result:

We muddle through,

For better or for worse

Helped by friends and family

Deeply grateful for the time we’ve had together,

Knowing it to be completely mundane

And at the same time completely amazing,

Treasuring the times we’ve had with each other

And the times that remain to us

Knowing that it’s all temporary

And therefore infinitely precious.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

4. Coda

 

(Note: A Coda is a part

Near the end of something

Where you review

The main points of the whole thing,

so you can finish.)

 

We are two people with many similarities,

And just as many inner contradictions

As most people.

 

We found each other when we were still pretty young,

Thought it would cool to get married,

Then found out how hard it is

To make a life together.

 

If we wanted to stay together

(Which we did),

We had to figure out

How to make our little family

Work over a long time.

 

But we didn’t do this on our own,

Because we had a lot of support

From the people who loved and surrounded us

And who we loved and still love.

 

Eventually, we reached a point where

There is more happiness than pain,

And many shared moments

Of joy and connection,

Built on all

we’ve been given by life.

 

And we know that these moments,

Won by hard work and stubbornness,

These moments will always be

And will always have been.

 

For this we thank you,

Our family, our friends, our community.

 

                                    -Robert Elliott, 18/19 August 2023

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Drawing by Mizuki Elliott, (c) 2023) 

 

 (Link to 50-year slideshow of Diane & Robert, created by Brendan Elliott)

 

(Link to Robert reading this poem)