The beautiful people in this truly terrible photo are Martin’s parents, celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary with some of their children, sisters, brothers, cousins, grandchildren and friends.
The celebration yesterday began with a moving ceremony at a church downtown, and was followed by a reception dinner and dance at a nearby hotel. It was an incredibly classy party.
The kids got up and gave toasts. Rio said:
“Granny and Grampa are always being a good Granny and a good Grampa, and this is a Good Anniversary.”
Serena said, “I am going to go upstairs to the bedroom to watch a movie, and if, if, if, if, if…I might fall asleep.”
Both performances were received with adoration. I feel so lucky to have married into a family where a three-year-old can get on stage at a fancy ball and prattle about her bedtime plans without upsetting anyone.
But what I really want to talk about is the toast their dad gave. He’s a child of this marriage we came together to celebrate yesterday, and he’s been married twice himself. He raised a glass to his mom and dad, and all the love they’ve poured into their family over the years. And then he made another toast, more surprising to me, to marriage.
We never had a wedding, because he didn’t want one. I’ve always had the impression that he saw marriage as a utility, something to be tolerated because of the legal advantages it gives you, like being allowed to put your spouse on your health insurance.
But last night he said something that almost had me sold on the idea of marriage as more than that, as something sacred to be loved.
Marriage is a vessel, he said, and of necessity an imperfect one. It becomes what we make it. It’s the container that holds the love and work and play of a family. A place to pour in our love, but also (though he didn’t say so on stage last night) our fears, our hopes, our small mean edges and our wild, generous hearts. A vessel for all the love and passion and struggle and Stuff we bring into our family, our home, our relationships.
And that vessel is cracked. It’s full of mistakes and misdirections, small hurts and some large ones. Empty spaces. Lost weekends. Lonely moments.
We’ll be perfect when we’re dead, Martin and I like to joke between ourselves. He closed his speech by singing this bit of verse from Leonard Cohen:
Forget your perfect offering
Ring the bell that still can ring
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in
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