My parents were married on this day in 1956. Yes, they've been married for 50 years, and they're still happy together. I admire my parents greatly; they are a couple who made great sacrifices for their five children. I don't think they've missed a Sunday Mass in all fifty years; they managed to send all of their kids to college (except my sister who joined the Navy) and they always made education a priority. They kept us clothed and fed with one modest salary (my father was an engineer), and my mother, who was skilled in almost every art, sewed and knitted and crocheted and made delicious meals that taught us the flavor of Europe.
My mother is a voracious reader of mysteries, and both of my parents are excellent writers. I suppose I should thank them for my all-consuming second job. I shall quote Shakespeare in their honor, since this is an amazing accomplishment of love.
"Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no! It is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved."
--William Shakespeare
Happy Anniversary, Mom and Dad.
