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It’s been 27 years since my husband and I said our first “I do’s”. When we think about how fast the time has passed-it truly amazes us. When did we go from being a couple, to parents and now grandparents?

Frankly, I don’t think we’ve changed very much. My husband and I wear the same size clothing we did in 1981. Since we were the type who wore classically styled duds, we don’t dress very different. Okay, I refuse to wear the crop tops and the short shorts at age 50 and no matter how great my figure, NO ONE’S GOING TO SEE ME IN A TWO PIECE BATHING SUIT.

Yes, I dye the gray out of my hair. I’m not even sure how much is actually there, but I cover it nonetheless. Hubby uses hair coloring for men every now and then to cover his maturing shade of light brown.

I haven’t worn high heels in at least a decade and his dress shoes look more like dressy sneakers, but we do clean up quite well.

Most people can’t believe that we’ve been together for almost three decades, that we have kids in their mid-twenties and then there’s the real compliment “No way, you two can’t possibly be grandparents!”

We love our little dividends, but I have to say it feels good to have others gasp in disbelief that we are “that age”. By the way, what exactly is “that age”? One of my husband’s cousins became a grandma at 36-but let’s not even go there on how that was accomplished.

Many of our co-workers want to know how we can still look at each other the way we do, treat one another with not only respect but love and talk about the other the way newlyweds tend to. Our reply: we never thought there was another way to be!

Tonight, hubby works late-but even if it was not our special evening, I wouldn’t think about eating early or without him. It might not be until after 9 p.m., but we will enjoy our anniversary together.

This “happily married” thing may be genetic-my parents are almost at year 52. My parents were only children with sets of parents who really didn’t match up, but they stayed together (probably in that time frame there wasn’t much of a choice). My husband’s parents were together for a bit over 40 years when my father-in-law passed away. They had their own version of happily married, but it did work for them.

Our best man and his wife, who are also cousins, have been going strong for one more year than we have-this summer they’ll hit #28. My sister is getting close to her 20th.

Part of our success is our ability to communicate, laugh, discus, laugh, compromise and oh-LAUGH!

I think this little story says it best: When our daughter announced her engagement and we started planning the wedding-both she and our son-in-law-to-be lived with us. Everything in the house started to fall apart. Here we were-a wedding to pay for and everything from the garbage disposal to the bathroom fixtures were just disintegrating.
Fortunately, I worked in home improvement (day job) and we were able to buy the various doors, faucets, valves, tile, etc… We were trying to replace the kitchen faucet ourselves when we realized that due to the hard water, our faucet had become frozen in its spot and would have to literally be hack sawed off.

So there we were-holding, sawing, laughing away at the situation. Then came the piece de resistance-we got the faucet out alright, but we chipped the sink and broke a couple of the tiles on the countertop.

We stopped and laughed all the harder. My husband said-well we’ve always hated that sink and we never wanted those tiles-I guess we’re going to finally get what we want!

Our then son-in-law-to-be looked at the two of us wildly! Carine, Steve, what’s so funny???? You’re already trying to pay for our wedding, the house is falling apart and you two keep laughing and you’re acting like this is a good thing!

We looked at our darling Alex. “Alex, this is life. With every bit of good you get, the Supreme Being above wants you to appreciate it to its fullest degree. You two are getting married-this is a wonderful event, a “mitzvah” to us. Now, we could sit here and cry about the money we’re spending and the inconvenience of all the repairs. We could have ourselves a real pity party. Or, we can laugh Alex! We can turn it around and say-we’ve always wanted a different look in here and now we’re going to have it”

Yes, we’ve had our share of highs and lows, ups and downs and good and bad times, but what makes us endure-happily and romantically, is that we do it together.