Today is my parents' forty-sixth wedding anniversary.

The story of how they married sort of amuses me - knowing my parents as I do: I was not born until they were both in their thirties (ten years after they married) and were fairly well-established in their work.

You see, they essentially eloped. I am not sure why. I do not know if it is because my mother realized her family really didn't have the money for a big wedding, but would want to put one on anyway, or if it was that they just couldn't wait any longer (in 1959, it was not done to live together before marriage - and even if it were, I do not think my parents would have). I do know that it was about the time my mother would have been accepted to graduate school - my father was already doing his grad. work, and maybe it was a decision of convenience - of, "hey, we're both going to be graduate students at the same school; if we married now instead of later, we could save some money on housing."

Funny I've never asked them why. But it always felt like prying to me, and it's not something that really impacts on me.

My mother took the train - this was back in the times before Amtrak - from Ann Arbor or Chicago to Albuquerque. My father was in the New Mexico/Arizona area that summer, starting his graduate fieldwork in geology. They got married in Albuquerque.

(They went to the little Disciples of Christ church there - they had been attending a Disciples church in Ann Arbor; my mother had been raised in the old Congregational church and my father's family was nominally but non-practicing Catholics; Memorial Christian seemed to be a good compromise to them.) I've seen the church they were married in, when I was on a trip to Albuquerque back in 1997 to go to some meetings.

It really WAS an elopement, that's how I would describe it. Their witnesses were two members of the church who were there that evening for a square-dance club meeting. (Somewhere, my mother has a picture of them - he in his suit, she in her wedding dress, and the two witnesses in the fancy square-dance Western-style garb). My mother DID wear a "real" wedding dress. She still has it. (And can still fit into it.)

They ate their wedding dinner at one of the Old Town restaurants - one that is still there (or at least was, in 1997). I've eaten there twice - once, back in 1976, when we were on a family trip in the Southwest, and my father had the strolling mariachi band come over and play the "Anniversary Waltz" because it was close to their anniversary. And then again, in 1997.

It's fun, and sort of touching, to see the places where your parents spent their early married life. (I've also lived in Ann Arbor; I saw some of the buildings where they lived or where they hung out. Unfortunately chain-creep has led to the demise of some of the places - like the Pretzel Bell - that they knew).

And they are still together.

I cannot quite put my finger on what makes a marriage succeed; I think, in my parents' case it was, in part, a talent for compromise and a realization that sometimes, letting the other person have their way will ultimately make you happier than insisting on your own. Also, I think there is very much the sense of "we're in this together."

I remember when I was a kid, when my father was teaching evening classes as a junior faculty member and my mom was home with my brother and me, some nights my dad would stop at the grocery store to do shopping for her on the way home - and bring a bouquet of flowers for her from the florist's section, "just because." Or he'd do the after-dinner cleanup. And my mom got some of the German recipes my dad liked from his mother, and prepared them regularly.

There is also a tolerance for personality quirks. Several times when I've been around, my father has called my mother from his office at school, asking after some book or some file. She would go search for it, but not hard, and not worry about it excessively. She would tell me, with a certain amount of amusement, that most of the time the things turned up in his school office. And then he would call and tell her to call off the search, that what he needed was there on the shelf in his office. And she would just smile - not a triumphant, "I told you so" smile, but a "Yes, I know him that well" smile.

I do not know if I will ever marry. If I do, I hope I can be as caring to my spouse as my parents are to each other.

Happy anniversary, mom and dad, may you enjoy many more years together.