40 years

This weekend The Fiancé and I are heading to my hometown to celebrate my parents' 40th wedding anniversary. I've always felt ridiculously lucky and blessed to have parents who have not only stayed together, but who also seem to really like each other, even after 40 years (or 47, as my mother would correct me, as how can I forget the years of dating through high school and college?!).

Mums (gold) were their flower. By all accounts, the weather that day was gorgeous. My uncle walked my mother down the aisle, because her father had passed away earlier that same year. Their reception was at the American Legion Hall. It was held in the afternoon, with a buffet, no dance. They had a fancy white wedding cake decorated with green and gold, and a chocolate groom's cake. The bridesmaids wore green. Afterwards, my grandmother re-opened my grandfather's bar for evening revelers. According to my mother, they refrained from telling anyone where they were living after the wedding, lest the bed in their new apartment be short-sheeted. They hid their car a town away to avoid it being decorated with beer cans and crepe paper. My father sported black-rimmed glasses and slicked back hair. My mother, a bouffant. He was 23. She, 21.

I love the fact that I will marry my husband 40 years and 6 months after my own parents were wed. I don't know what our flower will be yet, but in April, it won't be mums. The reception will be in a grand, old, gold ballroom in one of the oldest hotels in Indiana. I can't wait for everyone to dance. Even before I heard the details of my parents' wedding [my mothers always been stogy with the pictures], I'd chosen the color green. I want a white cake. And a chocolate (Guinness shaped...?) grooms cake. We're staying in a different, undisclosed, location the night of our wedding to avoid party crashers [who knew we'd be copying my parents in this decision as well!]. My father will probably wear contacts when he walks me down the aisle. And The Fiancé and I will be a ripe *young* age of 31 and 30, respectively.

There is a symbolism and awesomeness that warms my Irish superstitions in being married 40 years after my parents. I wonder when our own children will marry, and where we'll be 40 years from now? As tumultuous as the times we're in right now may seem, how will this year be viewed through the lens of hindsight? Consider the lens through which we can now view the year my parents were married:

On January 14, the Green Bay Packers won Super Bowl II. [Go Pack!]

The Vietnam War was in full force. In fact, on February 13, civil rights disturbances occurred at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, miles from where my parents lived.

On March 16, U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy (D-NY) entered the race for the Democratic Party presidential nomination. Three months later, on June 5, he was shot. He died from his injuries the next day.

On April 4, Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot dead. Riots erupted in major American cities for several days afterward.

On April 11, U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1968. [Look how far we've come!]

Amazingly, on July 17, Saddam Hussein became Vice Chairman of the Revolutionary Council in Iraq, after a coup d'état. [His star would rise and reign until December 13, 2003, when he is finally captured by U.S. forces.

On July 25 [my birthday, incidentally], Pope Paul VI published the encyclical entitled Humanae Vitae, condemning birth control. Many American Catholics defy it [then and now...].

On September 7, 150 women protested against the Miss America Pageant, as exploitative of women. It is one of the first large demonstrations of Second Wave Feminism. [Today, we have a former pageant queen running for Vice President.]

On October 12 (the very day my parents were married!), the Games of the XIX Olympiad begin in Mexico City, Mexico. [Forty years later, we celebrated the Olympics in China.]

On November 5, Republican challenger Richard M. Nixon defeats Vice President Hubert Humphrey and American Independent Party candidate George C. Wallace in the U.S. presidential election. [In less than one month, we again have an opportunity to elect our next President.]

In retrospect, it's amazing to me so many things happened in one year. I simply think of 1968 as the year my parents married each other and began what today is my family. So, this weekend we celebrate. Not just a wedding. But 40 years of life together. And for all the fun I poke at the wedding process, I wouldn't have it any other way. Because there are certain events from 1968 that I will gladly emulate. A marriage that spans over 40 years is one of them.