Adventures at Midlife

It’s true: The Spouse and I will be celebrating three decades of wedded bliss — or mutual tolerance — on June 1. Included in that number are one grandchild, two kids, three sets of washers and dryers, four homes, five refrigerators, nine surgeries, about ten cars, at least a dozen job changes between us and I’ve lost track of how many mortgages and refinances.

We’ve gone from a king-sized water bed to twin beds back to a king-sized mattress (he can’t sleep with or without me). Other than a three-year stint in Chicago, we’ve lived in the same little town we grew up in that, thanks to urban sprawl, isn’t a little town anymore.

We’ve married off one son and will leave London in two weeks to fly to Columbus to marry off the other. I spend Christmas Eve every year with his close-knit family, he goes out to dinner occasionally with my rather dysfunctional siblings. We’ve buried his father and my mother, and if he turns into his father, or if I turn out like my mother, we’ve both vowed to divorce each other. So far, so good.

We’ve traveled all over the world, both with and without each other, and gone to literally hundreds of one another’s performances (he’s in theatre, I’m a singer). We read each other’s books and listen to the music that the other buys or downloads on our iPods. He mows, I weed. I cook, he does the dishes.

We watch a lot of the same television, although I don’t watch sports as much as he does, and he doesn’t understand my penchant for true crime and “Sex and the City.” (That’s why we have more than one television, folks. And Tivo.)

He’s learned to like artichokes, and I now can willingly eat salt-and-vinegar potato chips. I don’t make casseroles, which he hates, and he orders lamb when we go out to dinner, because I can’t stand the smell of it. He tolerates my Coke obsession habit, while I pretend not to notice that the console of his car is sprinkled with salt from all the French fries he eats when he’s driving.

We wear the same cologne. We regularly finish each other’s sentences. I’ll go to do something around the house, and found he’s already done it. I’ll be thinking about him, and he’ll call me on the phone. He still holds my hand when we go to the movies.

I no longer know where he ends and I begin. And I can’t — no, I won’t — imagine my life without him.

Thanks, dear.

Update: Oh, I almost forgot the most important ingredient in our recipe for marital success:

Separate bathrooms. Really.