On Happily Ever Afters

Posted Jul 16 2012, 12:56 am in fiction, Miscellany, romance, Stereotypes in Fiction

I had a week off from work and planned a ‘staycation’ because my husband’s parents were planning to spend the week with us. They live in Florida and we only get to see them once or twice a year now. My husband, who will hit the half century mark later this year, is the ‘baby’ of the family… which means my in-laws have been married over fifty-seven years.

Consider that for a moment. Fifty-seven years. Do you know how long this is? It’s 288 Kardashian marriages. It’s as long as The Tonight Show has been on television. They were married before Elvis got famous, before Disneyland opened, before McDonald’s sold their first million hamburgers. They have three children, seven grandchildren, and two great-grandsons. All of these are impressive achievements. But you know what’s even more impressive than this?

They like each other.

After all these years, they genuinely like and respect each other.

I’ve been watching them all week and more than once, found myself wiping away a tear at the pure sweetness that sustains their relationship. They don’t need to finish each other’s sentences — each knows what the other is thinking by a lift of an eyebrow or a curl of a lip. They spend a lot of their time playing cards and board games and, despite their obvious affection for each other, are quite competitive. My mother-in-law can tell when my father-in-law is sitting on a great hand simply by the way he sits and does her level best to make sure he can’t play it. *snickers*

If one coughs, the other fetches water. Despite having a bad hip, my father-in-law walks all the way around the car to hold the door for his wife.

They still hold hands.

I write romantic fiction and fans of the romance genre know how often it’s bashed for giving women unrealistic ideals. To all those who think happily ever after is a fantasy, let me introduce you to Robert and Janice Blount.

 

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