Last Tuesday was my parents 50 th wedding anniversary. They were married on Thanksgiving Eve, a Wednesday night, so that they could have a four day weekend honeymoon and be back to work on Monday morning. They were young, just 18 and 23.
Their three grown children were planning a surprise evening for them—they knew it was coming, they just didn’t know what. We wanted it to be a special evening for them, but part of the surprise was how special it turned out to be for the rest of us!
The family is now nineteen—the original two, three kids, three spouses, nine grandkids, and now a granddaughter-in-law and one to be. I’m the oldest, and my husband and I picked Mom and Dad up at 4 pm and took them the hour drive to the big city.
We met the rest of the crew at Union Station and hopped on a rented trolley to go view the Plaza Lights. Mom and Dad lived in Kansas City in the early years of their marriage and told us stories and pointed out various landmark buildings which were tied to memories they had. I had been afraid the trolley ride would be dorky, but it turned out to be a lot of fun, even when my little brother asked the driver to pull in at a QuickTrip and all the young folks hopped off to get fountain drinks.
We returned to Union Station and went into a private room at the classy restaurant Pierponts, and enjoyed a beautiful meal together. Everyone was happy and enjoying themselves, and we all told a lot of stories. We all gave them cards that had heartfelt notes included. I had written that the older I got, the more I understand that so much of what I was I owed to them, and that I appreciated it more all the time. My siblings wrote similar things, as did the older grandkids. But the climax of the evening was still coming. My two oldest sons, the two oldest grandchildren, had prepared a video of old photographs, telling the story of fifty years together. They had worked for many hours, and had only finished at 3am that morning after a mammoth 17-hour work session.
It was worth every minute. We all laughed, we all cried. At the end, my dad, who is not much for speeches, stood up and addressed the grandkids, saying he hoped that they would all make their parents as proud as his three had made him and Mom. That made us cry more. There were hugs and kisses all around, and then wedding cake and nuts and mints, before we all went contentedly home.
As I thought about the video we watched and all the scenes and memories from fifty years together, I realized that it was more than entertaining. There was a statement being made, that all the snapshots of life, all the individual days taken as a whole, were much more than the sum of the parts. No single day could begin to measure up to what a lifetime of staying together, through good times and through bad times, meant. Marriage is meant to be for a lifetime, and much of the happiness and blessing all nineteen of us were experiencing is because the original two determined to stick it out and stay married. All the goodness that flows from a covenant kept is immeasurable. Fifty years together is an awesome accomplishment, especially in a society where marriage is so lightly esteemed.
Congratulations, Mom and Dad! And thank you, thank you, thank you!
