The 50th

   Barring death or divorce, Anita and I will celebrate our Golden Wedding Anniversary this year.  December 17th, 2016. (Save the date.)  There are other commemorations on our calendar, public and familial, but this one hovers like a UFO on a full moon night.  50 years?  My Lord, how did that happen?  1966. We were graduating from college and beginning graduate work.  Neither of us had much of a dating history--in part because we attended single sex high schools and colleges.  Anita and I did not know of each other's existence until May of 1966. So our courtship occupied seven months before the December wedding.  Our bright and savvy daughters made note of that and quickly cited the short interval when their mother or father would advise a deliberative approach to date mates.  I also counseled the 30s as time enough for marriage but their arithmetic was too quick.  They knew how old we were when we tied the knot, even before I could think back and recall our ages.

   So how did we find each other in those antediluvian days?  We participated in the first successful computer dating service, designed by Ivy geeks and powered by IBM.  It was called Operation Match.  You filled out a questionnaire, marking it by hand, returned it with a $3 fee, and waited to receive (by snail mail) the contact information from other participants.

Here's a sample of the "match list."  For the whole story of adventurous dating in the 60s, click on the video link below the sample.

http://espn.go.com/video/clip?id=13415984

   You then called and usually talked about how and why the computer matched you up.  The ice was already broken.
   In our case, we were both connected to Catholic colleges, we were English majors, we had compatibility of weltanschauungs; and in terms of our personalities, we were total opposites, proving that yin and yang was where it was at.  Over the years, we asked the question, "Why did you marry me, all those years ago?"  And then the daughters asked, "Mom, why did you marry Dad,?"  And the same question of me in reverse.  In an early version of mansplaining, I answered for Anita, "She found the perfect husband.  Make sure you do the same."  My quip was too clever by half, and received an eye rolling response--as it deserved. 
   I don't know if this further item is known.  There are letters secreted in the cross timbers of the attic--the love letters of our courtship--that we plan to exhume this year. The letters are frank and passionate.  Too intimate for progeny or posterity.  So of an evening, when that hovering moon is full, we will repair to our patio deck and read these epistles to each other.  Next to us will be stoked embers in the belly of the Weber kettle.  The script directs: Read, laugh, cry--and immolate the yearnings of our young hearts, page by page.  I don't need the letters to remember why I married Anita.  I fell in love with her.  And she said "Yes."
   Friends can link you, computers can attest to your mutual suitability, or your souls can align with the music of the spheres, but marriage is a promise and a path.  Pray or send vibes that the rest of the road from now to year's end delivers us intact to the half century milestone.