As is my Sunday morning custom, I sat down with my coffee to browse the wedding/anniversary/birth announcements in my local paper. It’s often an exercise in disappointment, with each week bringing another crop of infants all bearing their fathers’ names. Lately I’ve found some consolation, as I’ve posted before, in the rare anniversary announcement in which the wife is not vaporized at the altar, i.e. referred to as “the former Jane Insert Maiden Name Here.” (As an aside, whenever I read that “former” bit I get a
Distinctly different, equally delicious
visual of Agent Smith in “The Matrix,” going around sticking his hand into some nice, matronly lady, who then morphs into a clone of his evil, smirking self.)
But today there was a real heartener. A 50th anniversary notice for a Traverse City couple. It ticked off the usual details: Married Nov. 28, 1959. The careers from which they are now retired. Things they liked to do. Then, after dancing, camping, traveling and more, was this beautiful sentence: “They have continually supported each other with individual hobbies.”
In all my Sunday mornings with this “Milestones” page, I’ve never read anything remotely like that statement. No wonder they’ve lasted 50 years. It says so much about that couple. They’re confident - both in themselves and their marriage. Complete by themselves - and therefore not looking to the other to fill in the missing pieces. Unselfish. Generous. Trustworthy. I could go on.
One reason I kept my name after marriage was because it reflects my belief that one spouse should not absorb another after the wedding. Different flavors enhance each other. The Matrix metaphor holds too, to an extent. Agent Smith may be science fiction, but how much more insidious is it when the golf-hating wife feels like she has to paste on a smile when she finds a set of clubs under their first Christmas tree? Or when the takeout-loving husband is placed in charge of the Fourth of July cookout because the barbecue tongs are deemed to belong in a man’s hands?
This couple didn’t choose individual last names as a means of reflection. Not surprising, considering they married 50 years ago. But their anniversary announcement shows they understand this truth: A successful marriage requires two independent individuals choosing to parallel their life paths — and then taking care not to step on each other.