OMG!

I just did the math!
Tomorrow, or today, October 27,  Charlie and I will have been married 32 years.
That's not the math thing I did.

I wanted to know when Mother and Daddy had been married 32 years.  What year was it?  I did the math.  It was 1979!  The year Charlie and I married.   Mother was 60 (my age now)  Daddy was 66 ( Charlie is 58 right now) 
Again, OMG.  Oh, my gosh!  I didn't know.  I thought they were settled. I thought they'd been married forever.  I didn't know that....
they still remembered their single life
they wanted to stay connected
they wanted time alone
they still needed to know they were loved by the other
they still wanted to be parented by their parents
they didn't see themselves as old 
they still asked God for answers to the really big questions
So many "they didn't's", and I thought "they did".  I assumed.

Differences .....
We have 6 grandchildren.  They had none.  
I want to go back to Evergreen.  Mother had always lived in Evergreen.  Daddy was a man.  He loved Evergreen.  But if he wanted to go anywhere else, it would have been Troy.  Again, differences - Daddy was a man.  

It would be 2 years before they became grandparents.  Wow.  I have 6 grandchildren.  Big difference.

Mother was  61 when she had a masectomy.  Breast cancer!  I was still very very very attached to her.  It felt as if I couldn't live in the world and her be gone.  I didn't want to do it - not at all.  They didn't know all that I thought they knew.    I don't know anything.  I don't feel as if I know anything.  Well, I know some things, but not enough things.  They were ( I know this now)  tired of..... so many things - yet just wanting to enjoy their daily life.  I want that now, which is how I know they felt that.  They never told me any of that.
I know this.  Mother and Daddy were connected - Charlie and I are....connected.  Whatever love is, they loved each other.  Charlie and I love each other - but the word has become a cliche in the secular world and an impossibility in the spiritual world - so we are joined at the hip - hearts in the equation - in covenant and glad to be so - we are Charlie and Elizabeth, married and glad to be so.  His feet and mine touch at night under the covers - while we sleep our independent ways and styles and manners.  He usually makes the bed in the mornings and I usually make the coffee.  We love the "whodunnitshows". Criminal Minds, Bluebloods, The Perfect Wife, Castle, The Closer, CSI - Those are our shows.  We like yardwork together - if we can get on the same page, doing it together.  He makes great salads - I make whatever whenever I make it.  I never doubt him, nor he, I.  Either of us can walk in a room and we can see one another's countenance and know something's off.   Is everything okay?  we ask each other.  We each persist until the truth is told - the thing that is bothering either of us.
It's a relief when it's just him and I.  That is definitely love.
I did more math.  Grandmother and Granddaddy in 1934 had been married 32 years.  They lived to celebrate their 50th.  
Ella and Elbert, well, I don't have their dates -but I think they might have celebrated their 50th.  Ella and Elbert were my Mother's parents.  
Happy Anniversary to Charlie and Me!  October 27, 1979.  October 27, 2011.