When my wife and I were married 33 years ago, I gave little or no thought to the difference in our ages. I was 34, she was 28. Six years. No big deal. I had beef bouillon cubes in my bachelor’s pantry that were older than that.
I wasn’t really 34 anyway—not unless you actually wanted to count the years forward from the day of my birth. In every other respect—my questionable career track, spotty sense of responsibility, lagging social maturity, failure to send thank-you notes—I was comfortably still in my callow mid-20s.
For years, this “slow to grow” tendency had been a conspicuous part of my make-up. My first serious girlfriend was gravely disappointed to find that her new beau, purportedly 19, was in many important respects more like a precocious, frightened 11-year-old, and one not nearly as cute as Tom Hanks in Big. I still recall the day when, at 25, I was seated with friends in a Boston restaurant and was struck with the realization that I was now old enough, mature enough, truly interested enough, to get the most out of a college education. Unfortunately, I’d graduated three years earlier with little distinction and many regrets. And it wasn’t until I was 28 or 29 that I began to enjoy the many pleasures of adult interaction, of conversation rather than banter, of dining with wine, and of relationships that no longer took a back seat to meaningless midseason baseball games.
By 1984, as a newly married man, I thought “slow to grow” would serve me remarkably well. It might even render the gap between my age and my wife’s irrelevant. For further encouragement, I needed only to look at the 14 years that had stretched out between my own mother and father—he a gentleman of late Victorian refinements, she a Sinatra-adoring bobbysoxer, who together had managed 57 years of high-road happiness. I’d no doubt that my bride and I could build a similar bridge of love and mutual understanding.
Of course, there were certain cultural gaps. My wife and I were demonstrably from different generations. Someone born in 1950, as I was, could not escape the feeling that someone born in 1956 had simply missed out on so much, good and bad, that had informed the mid-20th century. “You have no idea what a grim slap in the face Sputnik was for all of us,” I wanted to say to her. “And you were far too young to know the heartache, the actual pain in the chest, of seeing the NBC peacock unfurl its feathers in black and white.
She took a different view. “I picture you sitting in your college dorm room, hair down to here, listening to Grand Funk Railroad at top volume, hoisting a box of Screaming Yellow Zonkers, and I just want to rush in with a handful of wipes and intervene,” she said (more or less) many, many times.
So we made peace. I granted her the apparently very real pleasures of The Brady Bunch and “Love Grows Where My Rosemary Goes,” she gave me my Kukla, Fran & Ollie and disturbing CONELRAD flashbacks, and we crested the ensuing years together, through the upbringing of three children and the rise and fall of cats and dogs, college bills, car accidents, cash-flow crises and ill advised permanents. Smooth sailing all the way—or at least smooth enough.
And then 65 happened. It’s not like it was a surprise. The thing is, only a year earlier, 64 had been so warm and fuzzy, what with everyone calling up and singing, “Will you still need me, will you still feed me?” and making good-natured “One more year till Medicare” comments. But 65 was decidedly different. Sharper. Harsher. Less friendly. It was as if I’d stepped from a giddy, skylarking altitude up to one where the breathing was actually difficult and a little painful. There are no bouncy McCartney songs about turning 65. The Medicare card came in the mail. My wife remained in her 50s. The gap, like a long dormant movie creature, began to stir.
Its most evident manifestation came in the course of our daily routines. While my wife continued to commute to her job every day and work very hard (and supply medical benefits), I had left my day-to-day job for the endless vagaries of a freelance writer’s existence. At breakfast every morning, she was dressed for work while I was barely dressed, and her “What are you doing today?” felt as sharp as a poke in the eye with a piece of toast. I felt so insubstantial, so retired and out to pasture, or at least headed toward the pasture gate. But I was 65! I was entitled, wasn’t I? I wanted to say, “Just wait six years and see how you feel about things,” but I didn’t. Then one morning I tried what seemed to me a more persuasive approach. “Back in 1972, when I was already in the workforce full-time,” I said, pausing meaningfully, “you were still a sophomore in high school, making gum-wrapper chains.” The point I’d hoped to make there was visible only to me. My words hung briefly in a shaft of morning sunlight and then fell and shattered noisily on the kitchen floor as my wife, choosing not to comment, got up to leave for work.
The worrisome gap now arises in other ways as well. I’m increasingly conscious of “keeping up” when we go out hiking or dancing or even when we stay in and try to re-create the spontaneous mood of a Cialis commercial. I don’t say anything, of course, it’s not a big deal, but close observation might reveal the beginnings of a grim set to my jaw that hasn’t always been there. I’ve noticed minor but actively gapping differences, too, in sleep patterns, food preferences and restrictions, and health complaints. In a possibly related matter, our arguments don’t seem to have the ardor and conviction they once had.
These are all things to be chewed over in the course of what Kipling termed marriage’s “long conversation.” Where necessary, of course, any serious differences will be dealt with and overcome, while unserious ones will be chuckled away as in the end of a Honeymooners episode. Even so, I was very happy, delighted even, when my dear wife turned 60. It didn’t do anything to reduce the gap between us, but at least we were playing once again in the same ballpark decade-wise. We’re in our 60s together and all’s well once again—at least until I hit 70.