Roots

Today is my parents’ 45th wedding anniversary.

Forty-five years, people! Four and a half decades–FIVE and a half decades of knowing each other, if you count from when they first started dating–and they are still IN LOVE. They sometimes even make goo-goo eyes at each other. For perspective, I was ready to jump off a bridge after being married for a tenth of that time.

My parents’ love is one of those gifts that everyone who spends time with them receives. I have been lucky enough to catch the reflection of their love, and to absorb the overflow, for 39 years.

In the darkest hours of my divorce, witnessing Dad flirting with Mom made me feel lifted up and reassured. There was no woe is me no one loves me like that, just, “Thank God for proof of love.”

Tonight over dinner (they were in the city and invited me to dinner), Mom and Dad were talking about how they grew up in the same town, about all the intersections of their extended families, dating back 60+ years. How my mom, as a little girl, would go with her father to the grocery store owned by my dad’s cousin. How there is a picture of them at the same brithday party of a mutual friend when they were in elementary school. How all these people–families, friends, neighbors, clients–lived within blocks of each other. I got all choked up.

How beautiful it must be to have such a network of people who know your roots. For the first time ever in my life I thought, I would like to have that.

True love is umistakable, you just have to open your heart to see it.

Happy Anniversary, Mom and Dad!

[Photos from across the subway platforms.]