Reflections on a Wedding Anniversary

 My wife Vaune and I will celebrate our anniversary this week.  Anniversaries often get me thinking about how marriages succeed over the years.  My parents were within striking distance of their fiftieth when my Mom passed away.  My wife’s parents are now at fifty-six years.  If there’s a secret to marriage success, don’t ask me.  I don’t really know.

Once we reached the twenty-year mark, I began making it a point to seek out the so-called secrets of a successful marriage from others.  At first, I’d listen to famous people explain how their marriages lasted so long. 

Comedian, actor, and director Carl Reiner probably said it best when he answered Johnny Carson’s question about the secret to a successful marriage.  His response, “The key is, marry someone who can stand you.”

One morning, while getting ready for work during a business trip, I heard a recently married local television news anchor woman give her advice to a man who had announced his engagement, “All I can say is that when she cooks you dinner, if you think it’s good, tell her it’s great.”

Radio talk show host Sean Hannity told a listener once that if your focus is on making the other person happy, always, then you should never have to worry about whether you’ll have a successful marriage.

I don’t know where I heard this next piece of advice, but it makes a lot of sense to me: never go to bed angry…you won’t get any sleep anyway.

Recently at our church, the priest offered a special prayer to a couple celebrating their seventieth anniversary.  After the service, I went up to the couple to congratulate them.  I asked the husband what was the secret to a long marriage.  Without missing a beat, this ninety-year old plus man looked at me and said, “Learn how to say yes dear.”

I look around me and see the many blessings of long marriages among my family.  My grandparents on my dad’s side made it to their 72nd anniversary.  Grandma Newvine passed away a couple of months following that anniversary.  I’m not sure what either one of them would say was their secret to a long lasting union. 

But I remember as a child that my Grandpa used to help give his kids a bath every night.  I thought that was unusual given that Grandpa owned a dairy farm that required him to be doing hard farm work twelve hours a day, every day.

As a kid, I wondered why he’d help with what I previously considered to be “woman’s work”.  Thank goodness I wised up in time to help my wife with the household chores when our two daughters were being raised.

Maybe that’s the secret to a successful marriage.  Not necessarily the spoken word or the written pieces of advice.  Success is almost always the unspoken.  The knowing that the other person needs you to step up, roll up your sleeves, and tend to the business at hand.

A priest I knew once said he told couples preparing marriage that the key to success is not each person giving fifty-fifty to make a whole.  The real secret, he said, was each person giving one-hundred-percent.

I’ll go with that.  While I’m sure I haven’t always been able to give everything, one-hundred-percent seems like a good place to start.

Author’s note- a version of this essay will appear in Steve’s new book Microphones, Moon Rocks, and Memories  to be published later this year.

Steve Newvine lives in Merced

Book Reading Binge

My college English teacher Mrs. Samuels told us over thirty years ago about a habit she started several years prior to that time. The habit was saving books over several months for the express purpose of having something good to read while on summer vacation.

During our child raising years, I was lucky if I got through one or two books during a summer vacation. So I put that habit on hold, until the past two years. Since that time, I start stashing anywhere from four to ten books that I'd like to read while on a summer vacation.

Last year, we vacationed at a cottage in Bass Lake up in the Sierras. My stash of books included a holiday novel, an autobiography by Dr. Phil's wife, and a Robert B. Parker cowboy adventure.

None of the books I took with me on vacation ranked high on a "recommended" list, but they did entertain for the summer hours spent sitting outside in the cool air of the Sierras.

This year, I started my vacation book stash shortly after the beginning of the year. I took a book about outstanding women written by ABC News reporter Cokie Roberts, a book on fatherhood from Fox News morning anchor Steve Doocey, a mystery novel, and a personal story about a man's effort to overcome the effects of a stoke.

It was an eclectic mix of books. It did make the vacation pass by fast.

Nook-S.Newvine

Reading is a wonderful past time for me. I was read to by my Mom at a very early age. Teachers in those critical early elementary years helped nurture my love of books by reading to our classes all the time.

The teen and college years found my reading concentrated primarily on assignments for classes. Then came the family years when any spare time was quickly taken by demands of raising children, maintaining a house, and nurturing my professional career.

One of the many benefits I've enjoyed in these years since my children have left the roost is the time to settle down with a good book. I started keeping track of the books I've read in the past few years.

Over twenty books in 2009, sixty in 2010, and forty so far as we cross the halfway point of 2011.

I may not have liked each book, but I have certainly enjoyed the gift of having time to read.

Steve Newvine lives in Merced