Our story: What we did not know, what we've come to learn

There we were, moderately successful at life.

Good jobs. Decent car. Nice furniture. Bills mostly paid on time. Exceptional cable TV. Friendly neighbors. Enough food to eat.

And each other.

Some call this wedded bliss, I suppose.

But … uhhhmmm … even the best marriages get to one of those points, you know?

You enjoy each other’s company, and so you know each other intimately, and sometimes you finish each other’s sentences and thoughts, even when they’re not interesting or funny or worthwhile.

You’ve had every conversation you can imagine. Every topic has been covered.

The car stereo has played the same songs millions of times, and the witty one-liners have become redundant and boring.

So, you stop talking, and your mind wanders. And it gets quiet.

For my Reason For Living (RFL) and me, this moment occurred in the summer of 2004, on U.S. 141 in the middle of Michigan’s pristine Upper Peninsula. That area is home to 429 kajillion very green trees, what seems like millions of miles of unoccupied blacktop, a lonely cell tower every five minutes … and a lot of time to think.

Especially when it’s quiet. Which it was. My mind was rifling through the pages of our relationship.

How did we get here? At that point, we’d been a couple for most of 26 years, and there was no question in my mind that we were in love.

But, you know, people and circumstances change, and those white-hot moments of the first few years can easily become a comfy, cozy bed of pleasant, reliable embers.

They flare up every so often, sure. But again … you get to a point when … well, let’s just say you are fully aware that sudden movement by older people can lead to paralysis, sudden stroke, death or, worse yet, embarrassment.

So, yeah, I encountered some fairly abstract thoughts on our way to the Copper Country.

I spoke up, a hundred miles from our destination, with nowhere to go.

"If we were single right now,” I asked, “would we date each other?

"I mean, not knowing what we know now, and not with what we've learned about each other for a quarter-century. If we were strangers, and met on the street or in a bar or wherever, would we be attracted to each other?"

Our first date — "if you can call that a date," The RFL says — was June 17, 1978, and in the years since, we've made pretty good progress. 

Raised two kids. Bought a few houses. Argued, and made up. Had a few jobs. Learned likes and dislikes about each other, and dealt with it all. We were still in the same car.

Most days have been reasonably happy, and a few have been less so.

We’re no different than you. We’re flawed people in an imperfect universe.

So, yes, things were going well. But it never hurts to reassess, right?

Would we fall for each other today, if we didn't have that shared background?

"I think we would date," RFL said. "I still like your sense of humor. You're an attractive guy. You're smart."

Oh, sure, she missed the point of the question.

And we were driving through the middle of nowhere — miles between motorists and homes and towns and civilized society. So, I'm sure that possible abandonment among the various forms of Yooper wildlife didn't occur to her.

"That's nice of you to say," I said. "So, you think we would? Really?"

"Probably," she said. "What do you think?"

"No doubt," I said. "The things I liked about you 26 years ago are still the things I like about you. You still make me laugh. You’re still cute. I still love hanging out with you. That hasn't changed."

So far, so good. An affirmation of long-held love. A comforting conversation between life-partners.

Cute. Sweet. Charming. Poignant. Nice.

And we should have left it there.

But no. The subject came up again a week later.

"You'd really be attracted to me, if we were both single?" I asked. Maybe I didn't believe my good fortune.

"Well, hmmmm." The RFL was reconsidering. "I have to be honest. I usually don't notice average-looking guys all that much."

We laughed — pretty damned hard, actually — but we both know who I am. It's not a well-kept secret. Average-looking is generous.

That spontaneous statement of air-tight, no-questions-asked compatibility, uttered in the middle of nothing but trees, had suddenly sprung a leak.

Honesty prevailed. It always does. 

The truth is, it needs to — to discover what you didn’t know, what you want to know, who and what and how implicitly you can trust.

And why you love who you love.

It’s not always easy, and very often not much fun, but the discovery of true love is always and forever based on a lot more than how she looks in an evening gown, or how he looks in a three-piece suit.

It probably has more to do with what you say when she’s taking too much time getting ready in the morning, or when you can’t agree on where you want to eat, or when you wonder if maybe he would consider getting off his lazy ass to load the goddamn dishwasher.

It’s those honest, real-life moments. They’re the heart of the quest for the truth of who that other person is, and how you can love.

In the beginning, of course, you simply … Do. Not. Know.

In our relationship, this quest for the truth started on the very first date. She was 17, a couple weeks removed from her high school graduation in a small town up north.

And she was a couple weeks pregnant. Neither of us knew it.

It was our first lesson in learning to love each other.

By the time the pregnancy became apparent, we were very close. And very close friends, mostly. But friends who loved each other. We just didn’t know how much, or maybe even why, or what it meant.

And we didn’t say it in the same way we say it today, almost 39 years later. We thought we knew what it meant.

Looking back, we really didn’t know much of anything. But we had a start.

By summer’s end, her college plans were cancelled. Six months later, I was in the hospital in Rhinelander when she gave birth to a gorgeous baby girl. But we didn’t know how we’d cope.

Four months later, we — the baby, her mom and I — became roommates and a sort-of-family in Green Bay.

I was finishing college, and she was getting out of a bad situation in our hometown. She was 18, I was not a good partner, and we ate a lot of tuna, canned tomato soup and cheap pizza.

Less than a year later, she and the baby moved into their own place. If we had a future, we didn’t know that, either. But we learned that couldn’t get by without each other.

After two years of off-and-on relationship and late-night rendezvous, we married on July 10, 1982, in the same small town we’d both left a few years before. We were happy, we were in love, but we were still painfully young and unaware.

I adopted the baby a month later. My new bride entered the full-time world of work, and I was building a career as a reporter.

We didn’t know how to balance any of it.

And because we are fallible humans, we made mistakes, we earned second chances, and learned how to live together, grow up together and build lives together.

We added a second daughter in 1984.

We kept asking questions, searching for our separate truths, and sometimes, we found them in surprising places.

And while there were times that it seemed highly unlikely to turn out this way, we grew into an actual, honest-to-god love story.

Today, that first baby girl is married, a teacher, and the mother of our three grandsons. She’ll be 38 two weeks from today.

Our other daughter is 32, married, and a successful musician in New York.

I’ll be 60 soon. My bride is 56.

We cope. We learn. We are who we are, and we live as we live.

Some questions are still difficult to answer. But we know enough to ask them.

So, today, yeah … I’m pretty confident.

I think we would be attracted to each other if we met tonight for the first time.

We know our truth.

We know our love.

Happy Valentine’s Day. Keep asking the questions, and listening to the answers.