LETTERS FROM HOME: FIFTY YEARS OF SEEING EACH OTHER THROUGH THE IMPERMANENCE

Nov. 13, 1997

Dear Julie,

Tiny flakes of snow are falling past my window this morning, the first of the year. The party's over.

The yard is sprinkled with golden brown leaves, and an early wintriness is in the air. My golf clubs have replaced the rake in the closet. Things change. Acceptance of change is essential to seeing its beauty. "You do not suffer because things are impermanent," says the Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh. "You suffer because things are impermanent and you think they are permanent."

My parents celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary over the weekend. Fifty years ago, they took off to Mississippi to get married: the justice of the peace and two witnesses routine. This time they reaffirmed their vows in front of their minister, their family and a big roomful of their friends.

You'd think a 50th wedding anniversary might be sedate, but my parents have entered their 70s youthfully and have friends who are a generation younger and more.

The air was filled with laughter, balloons -- gold, white and teal, my mother's favorite color -- and jazz.

My parents and their friends spent the afternoon doing what many of them like to do most: Make music. There were a couple of sax players, a clarinet, trumpet, my father-in-law the trombonist, drums and a host of piano players, including my brother. Dad played bass and mom sang. The grandchildren danced.

It was the wedding my mom never had, and I don't know if I've seen her so excited. During the ceremony she nervously swung my dad's hand back and forth. Afterward she flitted about the tables and hardly spent any time on the stage. Finally a chant rose from the back of the room. "Pat, Pat, Pat, Pat," and she went up.

As she began singing I looked for her granddaughter Carly, who has been gifted with an angelic voice. All the other grandchildren were still running around. Carly was standing transfixed at the back of the dance floor, watching her grandmother and listening to her sing in public for the first time. Later, the grandchildren crowded around my brother on stage and watched him play.

These are the moments, perhaps unremembered, when children consider all the possibilities life holds for them.

Sadness is built into these events as well. Moments when you are reminded of the friends and family members absent for all the best reasons life offers: Death, distance and incapacity. Many ghosts were there.

In those 50 years, my mother and father have weathered many upheavals. They've each buried a parent. My father has been on strike and lost a job he thought was secure. My mother walked away from one that no longer treated her with dignity. They've seen each other through.

Family, I said in a toast, is "the seat of happiness and mayhem and all the extremities in between. To live in marriage is to attempt the nigh impossible: To understand and accept without reservation another soul as you do your own."

DC and I would have to live into our 90s to ever see our 50th wedding anniversary. I do see how difficult marriage is and how accepting of change people must be to stay together and happy for so long in this impermanent world.

The snow is falling faster now, and beautiful white mists are gathering in our backyard.

Love, Sam

~Sam Blackwell is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.