In honoring RBG after her passing, clips were shown of her sharing the advice she was given on her wedding day: “In every good marriage,” Ginsburg’s mother-in-law said, “it helps sometimes to be a little deaf.”  This reminded me of the great advice my Grandmother Rose gave me when I got engaged.  In honor of my 25th wedding anniversary this week, I thought I would share her advice and what it’s meant to me.

“Never do in the first year of marriage what you’re not prepared to do for the rest of your life,” she said to me.  Being rather young and naive, it sounded like great advice to me.  But I took it pretty literally.  I thought about the sharing of household duties and decisions about our finances and what precedents I did or did not want to set.  It was all very practical and, I can admit now, rather defensive.  I looked at everything through the lens of what I did not want to get stuck doing or be expected to do from then on. Luckily my husband is a pretty easy going guy and knew it was important to me to keep my independence, especially as I was freaked out about giving up my aspects of my identity in moving to California.

But now 25 years in, I am older, and hopefully wiser, and think just as much about that advice, but from a very different perspective.  Rather than thinking about what I should not do in that first year, I think about what I should keep doing that I did do in that first year.  The mindset of young lovers is a beautiful thing. When we’re fresh in a relationship and falling in love, we tend to give each other the benefit of the doubt, we express our love frequently and delight in the words of the other person and enjoy how we make them happy.  We stay in the moment and don’t throw our history of complaints at them (ok, mostly because we don’t have many) or stay bitter.  We see the best in each other and project that lovely image forward to a lifetime of respected, adoring, and empathic partnership.

Like everyone blessed to reach this milestone, my husband and I have been through a lot together; births, deaths, illness,  fires, professional ups and downs, and financial challenges.  But looking back, it isn’t the magnanimous gestures that I most appreciate, but the little ways we were there for eachother; the steady, trustworthy, reliable voice at the end of the day that said through actions and listening far more than any words that we are loved and valued.  

And to my beloved groom, I still want to make you happy, I still envision our future together, and respect your opinion immensely about most everything.  I want you to live your dreams and know that you feel cherished.  I feel so blessed at all you have taught me and the partnership and family we have created and nurtured together.  And yes, we argue over the same topics and get annoyed at the same pet peeves with one another, but the stability of knowing we can disagree andbe angry, we can say things we regret and forget to do what we promised, but have the faith in our commitment that we are going to say we are sorry and not just say we will do better, but mean it.

And for me, at our 25th anniversary with all of the history together behind us, I look forward to a renewed commitment each year of my grandmother’s wise words:  We will do for each other what we did in our first year of marriage for the rest of our lives.

Funny note, we were finally going to do the honeymoon we never had and go to Greece this week.  That fell through due to the pandemic.  We thought we would play it safe and so we booked a night at a local spa with a mineral pool for soaking.  That just got canceled due to wildfire evacuations.  Such is 2020!  Hopefully we can celebrate it all for our 26th!