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Sept.
2003 |
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Family
to kick-off ‘jubilee year,’
vowing to celebrate the vows |
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On the 21st of each month, my dad brings my mom flowers
to mark their “monthly” anniversary. On the
paper around the flowers he writes the number of months
they’ve been married. They were wed on Oct. 21,
1967, and as far as I know, my dad has never missed a
month. “Happy 435” will be what he’ll
write this September.
Anniversaries were a big deal for my parents, and as a
child, I remember having trouble understanding the jokes
I heard occasionally about the husband who forgot the
anniversary. At first, I thought it meant forgetting the
“monthly” anniversary, which I could almost
understand. I was horrified to learn that it meant forgetting
the actual yearly anniversary. In my family, that would
have been unthinkable. For each anniversary, my mother
would write my dad a rhyming poem detailing the events
of the year. My dad would buy or make my mom something
out of the official material for that year of marriage.
They would always go someplace special for dinner —
I knew it was fancy because my mom took her small black
purse, and came home with sesame breadsticks and mints
for my sister and me.
In a couple of weeks, Bill and I will celebrate our 10th
year of marriage. I have decided to declare a jubilee
year for our family, starting on our anniversary date.
I thought the church had an excellent idea with its Jubilee
2000 celebration, which included Masses and events throughout
the year. Like the pope, I see no reason to contain our
celebrating to one day. (And like the pope, what I declare
in our family tends to come to pass, though not always
without dissension.)
Why a jubilee year for a 10th anniversary? Anniversaries,
much as I love them, are like Valentine’s Day and
New Year’s Eve in terms of unrealistically high
expectations for levels of fun and romance. After 10 years
of marriage, romantic nights are not as easy to come by
as they used to be. Especially with that crib in our room.
A yearlong jubilee celebration gives Bill and me a fighting
chance.
A jubilee year will be an opportunity to consciously decide
to do more of those things that brought us together in
the first place. At our stage of life, marriage can easily
spin into rounds of the endless chores it takes to keep
a family of five relatively clean, healthy and well fed.
But I didn’t marry my husband because I loved the
way he could scrape paint off an old window. And I know
he didn’t fall in love with me because of my outstanding
ability to wipe jelly off the face of a squirming toddler.
I fell in love with Bill as we ran together along the
banks of the Milwaukee River. It was during these runs
that we’d talk about our hopes and dreams for the
future. Now, because of schedules, we mostly run one at
a time. During our jubilee year, I am declaring that we
run together at least once or twice a week. Jacob and
Liam are old enough to ride their bikes for our three-mile
run and Teenasia loves her running stroller. I’m
hoping for some good conversation as the boys race ahead
and Teenasia munches on a graham cracker.
Our jubilee year will be the chance to say “yes”
more often to the best parts of marriage and family life.
We love going to Lake Michigan and looking at the water
as the kids try to skip rocks. We love family bike rides
and morning picnics with bagels and hot coffee. We all
love playing ball and Frisbee. Why don’t we do these
things more often? Well, there are socks to sort and the
papers from the kids’ school seem to breed at night
and multiply if left untouched. There are big globs of
blue toothpaste stuck to the side of the sink basin in
the upstairs bathroom. The porch needs repainting and
Liam said he saw a mouse in the garage.
It sometimes feels like if we don’t keep on top
of our jobs around the house, our home might actually
collapse around us. I can’t help but believe, however,
that the same must be true of our relationship as a couple.
A marriage, like a house and a yard, must be given care
and time or it will start to become dilapidated. Without
time together to talk, relax and have fun, Bill and I
will drift apart and our family will suffer because of
it.
The exchange of vows is the first hint a couple receives
that marriage is not always easy. And during difficult
times in our marriage, Bill and I lean on those vows.
We hold onto the sacrament we received one sunny day in
September 10 years ago. We hold on, believing we are not
together by chance, but because there are things we are
called to do together that we cannot do separately.
This year, we’ll try to lean on the vows less and
celebrate them more. And if you stop by our house and
notice that the windows seem more smudged than usual and
the lawn needs weeding, don’t be alarmed. We’ll
get to lawn and home maintenance eventually. But during
our jubilee year, we’ll do the marriage maintenance
first.
(Scobey-Polacheck and her husband Bill have two sons,
Jacob and Liam, and a foster daughter, Teenasia. They
belong to SS. Peter and Paul and St. Monica parishes.
Scobey-Polacheck welcomes dialog regarding her column.
E-mail her at <ascobey@hotmail.com>.) |
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