What's Love Got To Do With It? Everything and nothing.

My parents were young and beautiful when they met during WWII. Just twenty years old when they married, their thirty-five year marriage that lasted until my mother's death was fraught with many of the typical marital discords: money worries, in-law and family issues, three kids before reaching thirty years old, and evolving into unique individuals as two people are wont to do. As an older woman who has married and remarried, I look back on my parents' journey together and wonder how the hell they managed to stay together. The catch-all phrases: family values, faith-bound marriages, tradition, etc. all feel anemic in light of the day-to-day tribulations a young couple must navigate. The nitty-gritty: children get sick, mother-in-laws fail to respect boundaries, family members want to borrow money, many fathers work despite the need for more of a presence at home, and discovering the odd couple's dilemma where Oscar's carefree ways will drive finnicky Felix nuts. To forge through this and stay together takes skill and hard-earned life lessons. It also takes common commitment and integrity - the glue that holds a union together for decades. All the loquacity wrapped around discussions of family values, faith, and tradition are easily frayed and eventually fall apart without the ability to practice behaviors that sustains a relationship.

I witnessed several occasions wherein my parents were able to summon the courage to stay together. They loved one another fiercely, that I am sure of; however, I know many couples who deeply cared for one another that could not summon whatever it might take to keep the marriage alive. So what's love got to do with it? Well, everything. Love is powerful. And yet, for many, not powerful enough. So while without love the relationship certainly cannot survive, love has nothing to do with it. Ask Tina Turner.

Not until I had reached well into my sixties was I able to fully comprehend my parents' incredible love affair and commitment not only to one another but to their marriage. Certain memories confirm this for me, but even more so, their ability to cleave to one another through the more difficult times convinces me that they simply did not want to travel through life with anyone else, regardless how rocky things got - and sometimes, things were really rocky, like boulder-sized rocks. Glimpses into small moments, however, reveal the true nature of their commitment to, and love for, one another. These brief insights unlock the heart of their relationship. As I grew into a more perceptive adult, I realized such a bond holds two people together even when everything else round them seems to be falling apart. I distinctly recall two times the world hammered away at them until they nearly split up, but they they found a way back to one another. I am not sure what to call this "bond." The phenomenon goes by many names: love, soul mates, predestination, Yin and Yang. But I do know that both my parents had true grit and neither one believed in giving up, especially on one another. I am not sure if there isn't a bit of magic involved in all this, but whatever it is, my mother and father had it. The following posts are those moments frozen in my memory and in time. Happy holidays Mom and Dad, wherever you two are now.