Ebb & Flow

My favorite photo of mom and dad taken just before their evening at the Newport Hospital Ball many years ago. Today would have been their 63rd wedding anniversary (dad died in October after their 60th). We still laugh daily about some of the things he used to say.

My favorite is still the way he would say “oh jeez…that guy!” whenever we were on the boat in Block Island and Aldo would be out in his boat early in the morning with his fresh baked muffins and doughnuts. He’d be singing at the top of his lungs . “Andiamo…andiamoooohhh!!”…which because of the way voices carry when you’re on the water, would wake dad up. But there was normally about a three second delay before I would hear “oh jeez…that guy” in his tired, exasperated tone.

Mom’s favorite was the morning she saw the ad for a calico kitten while reading the classifieds in the newspaper here in florida. She read the classified to him and asked “do you wanna go look at a cat?”

“No, not especially” he said “but I will if you want me to.” (He was cool like that – also a sitting duck whenever it came to anything having to do with cute kittens in our family).

“How much?” He asked my mom.

“A hundred dollars” she answered. (insert long paws here).. and then he said “you shouldn’t have to pay for cats, people should GIVE you cats..” (it was a little variation from a few years before that when he had said “you shouldn’t have to pay for cats; people should PAY YOU to take them from them.” .. at least he was steadily evolving).

Needless to say – the Calico came home with them and “Callie” became his cat. It was like she knew he had this opinion of kittens and carried her little “yer gonna love me!” catitude throughout the 6 years she has been with us. – She was lying next to him all afternoon on the day he died.

I’ve always wondered about (and admired) the components in a relationship that keep people together for fifty and sixty years. Lately we’ve been watching a lot of Fixer Upper on HGTV. Whenever mom sees Chip’s crazy antics my mom sort of scoffs and says “I could never be married to him.” – but what she doesn’t seem to realize is that the “balance” in Chip and Joanna’s relationship is extremely similar to mom and dad’s – the way they compliment each other because of the skills they both have that the other one may not and the way that they seem to ebb and flow into one another.

To me, that is what makes a great relationship.

Happy anniversary kids! – and to all of my Facebook buds who make great relationships work.