50 years of...something

Last weekend, I watched my grandmother make her way across the street, stumbling over exposed tree roots. Grandpa walked ahead of her, her purse tucked under his arm.

"Eh, your grandfather better help Grandma before she falls down again," Auntie said.

"They look so cute though," Kayrn said, moving closer to her boyfriend Kenny. "He's carrying her purse for her. Look."

I doubled back and looped my arm through Grandma's and we walked together through the dark parking lot. Grandpa was already at the truck, climbing in, ready to go.

We had just finished having a family dinner to celebrate Grandma and Grandpa's 50th wedding anniversary.

During the dinner I looked at Auntie and said, "It's a miracle anybody in this family managed to stay married to another person in this family for 50 years."

I've only known Grandma for 23 of those 50 years. Less than 20 if you only count the years I can remember.

She and Grandpa went through some rough times. There were moments when the marriage could have collapsed.

I remember her shaking sometimes, she was so angry at him, so frustrated. Last year she left him for about a week, went to live with Auntie. He begged her to come back and when she refused he bought her a new washing machine and dryer to woo her back.

Grandma was never the type to really leave.

If she left, she used to say, her kids would never know their father. The family is the most important thing.

This is a belief she passed on to my father.

When my parents would argue, Dad would always give in. He couldn't leave his family.

I remember when I was a kid I feared his temper and I wished he WOULD leave. Make my life easier. I thought I would never be like my dad. I would go to a mainland college and get a job and never come home.

But it hasn't been that way at all.

I can never really leave my family either. I always find myself thinking about them, about what they would think about what I'm doing, about what kind of advice they would give me in any given situation.

I guess what I am trying to get at is a question I posed to some of my friends awhile back: Whether they thought the stories of their lives began with their birth or years before, with the births of their grandparents or great-grandparents.

I think in America there's a tendency to see ourselves as the great Individual.

The 50 years of our grandparents' marriage don't matter that much.

I thought of that last weekend, when I found myself arm and arm with my grandmother walking through a dark parking lot. About all the things in her life that I don't even know about, that led to my being there with her, the two of us making fun of Grandpa and picking our way over tree roots.

I think I'll know my story when I know my family's.