It is my grandparents 60th wedding anniversary today! Sixty years, people, sixty years of a balanced, harmonious marriage, based on love and respect, that's an achievement in itself!
That is not to say that there haven't been ups and downs, tough times, rough patches, call it what you want. And compromise. But given that my parents got married in 1953 and that both of them were born in 1930, you can see that we are dealing with people from another time, with a different set of values and a different attitude towards relationships, obligations, families, responsibilities. For them, marriage is something you enter into for all the right reasons - they were seriously in love when they got married - and then cherish and work on in order to make it last. It is not to be taken lightly, it is not to be dissolved, solutions and means are to be found, the family is to be kept together and ripe old age and death are to be faced together. Truly, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health . . .
I admire my grandparents for sticking to it, sticking with each other and making it work all these years. I've spent my childhood with them and I grew up on love and care that was always in abundance in their house. Money was never overflowing but there was always enough. My grandad was the bread-winner and my grandma the home maker, though a miracle worker might be a better term for that, given what she managed to do with just one salary.
It was not all plain sailing all the time. They've lived through some really tough times, like the war in former Yugoslavia, and loosing their birth place and members of their families to atrocities of the civil war. Between them, there was also mention of potential infidelity on my grandfather's part at one point, although, reportedly, it never went so far as to become physical. But my grandma suffered some for it, that I know.
Yet, they made it even through that.
It's hard for me to say whether my marriage will see the same ripe old age. But I know I want it to. And I'm willing to work on it!
When talking to my grandparents yesterday, I heard about the weather predicament that could have prevented their wedding from taking place 60 years ago. My granddad spent 12 hours in a snow-blocked train up in the mountains of Lika before being able to reach the village and the whole wedding party that was waiting for him to go and get the bride and get married. There was a lot of drama involved, as we are talking of an age that didn't involve cell phones and wireless communication, so no one basically knew what was happening with him and where he was. Talk about nerve-wrecking!
But he made it and 60 years after they have two children, four grandchildren and two great granddaughters to show for!
p.s. pictures from the weekend spent in my home town in Serbia . . .
That is not to say that there haven't been ups and downs, tough times, rough patches, call it what you want. And compromise. But given that my parents got married in 1953 and that both of them were born in 1930, you can see that we are dealing with people from another time, with a different set of values and a different attitude towards relationships, obligations, families, responsibilities. For them, marriage is something you enter into for all the right reasons - they were seriously in love when they got married - and then cherish and work on in order to make it last. It is not to be taken lightly, it is not to be dissolved, solutions and means are to be found, the family is to be kept together and ripe old age and death are to be faced together. Truly, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health . . .
I admire my grandparents for sticking to it, sticking with each other and making it work all these years. I've spent my childhood with them and I grew up on love and care that was always in abundance in their house. Money was never overflowing but there was always enough. My grandad was the bread-winner and my grandma the home maker, though a miracle worker might be a better term for that, given what she managed to do with just one salary.
Yet, they made it even through that.
It's hard for me to say whether my marriage will see the same ripe old age. But I know I want it to. And I'm willing to work on it!
When talking to my grandparents yesterday, I heard about the weather predicament that could have prevented their wedding from taking place 60 years ago. My granddad spent 12 hours in a snow-blocked train up in the mountains of Lika before being able to reach the village and the whole wedding party that was waiting for him to go and get the bride and get married. There was a lot of drama involved, as we are talking of an age that didn't involve cell phones and wireless communication, so no one basically knew what was happening with him and where he was. Talk about nerve-wrecking!But he made it and 60 years after they have two children, four grandchildren and two great granddaughters to show for!
p.s. pictures from the weekend spent in my home town in Serbia . . .
No comments:
Post a Comment
Fire away - I'd love to hear what you have to say . . .