It was Anne who took charge of planning Abe and Ruth’s fiftieth-anniversary celebration.
“Dad, I gotta warn you, this isn’t gonna be cheap,” she cautioned.
“Whatever it costs,” said Abe. “I mean, within reason.”
“You want it to be special, right?”
“Of course,” he said. “Within reason.”
With Abe’s blessing, Anne reserved the Seabold Community Hall only a quarter mile south of the church, a lovely old stand-alone hall constructed early in the previous century. The setting was lovely, a broad grassy acre nestled in the thick of old-growth cedar; there was plenty of parking in the gravel lot and only three steps to navigate. As with the Grange Hall on North Madison, or the Island Center Hall on Fletcher Bay, Abe must have driven by the Seabold Community Hall a thousand times without ever having been inside it. With its high ceilings and hardwood floors, its tall windows and broad sills, its antique light fixtures and electrical outlets, the old hall was the perfect venue in which to honor the fortitude of a marriage that had lasted longer than the Bulgarian Empire.
Anne saw that the hall was dressed up in bunting and strung with banners, each corner brimming with colorful balloons. Twelve fold-up tables were spaced evenly about the ballroom, clothed in white, each one adorned with a bouquet of fresh flowers, arrayed with plates and crystal glasses, cloth napkins, and silver all around. At the front of the hall, a small riser had been erected, with a PA and a microphone placed in a telescoping stand.
Out of seventy invites, sixty people attended the party, including the Duncans and the Jacobsons, Bess Delory, Judith and Alexandra from the Streamliner, the grandchildren, even Todd Hall’s ninety-two-year-old widow, Jean. At six p.m. sharp, the Golden Oldies took the stage. A Dixieland ensemble, who came as a referral to Anne by none other than the Kiwanis, who had for fourteen years running hired the band for their Fourth of July parade float. Each of the band’s five members was as old or older than Abe. To the delight of the white-haired in attendance, the Golden Oldies delivered rousing renditions of “Lazy River,” “Tiger Rag,” and “Sweet Georgia Brown” during the pre-dinner set.
The dinner was catered by a gay couple named Eric and James, the fare baked Mediterranean chicken kabobs, a pecan-berry salad, and a rosemary sea-salt batard. Though the cost was not what Abe had considered “within reason,” the food did not disappoint.
Once the tables were cleared, and the Golden Oldies had wrapped their second set (“Heebie Jeebies” being the consensus highlight), the event proceeded according to Anne’s itinerary, as each of the Winter children in descending order took the mic at center stage to offer a short tribute. The children were to be followed in turn by Abe and Ruth themselves.
After everything Abe had managed to screw up since 1954, every insensitive comment, every unreasonable request, every ham-fisted romantic gaffe, he wanted to get the speech right, and so he’d practiced it for two weeks in front of the mirror, Petey the fox terrier as his audience.
“Whaddaya think, Petey, should I lose the joke about the Clintons?”
The cheerful murmur of the hall died down the moment Anne took the stage, thanking in turn Eric and James for the wonderful food, the Golden Oldies for the wonderful music, and finally, all who attended the evening’s celebration.
That Anne, their first child, was just a year shy of fifty seemed impossible. Wasn’t it just a couple years ago that Abe was picking her up from Girl Scout camp? Why, Abe could’ve sworn it was just last week he was teaching her how to drive the old Ford station wagon, the aptly named Country Squire, in the empty IGA parking lot. It was a cliché that they grew up in a blink of an eye, but it was true nonetheless.
“When I think of Mom and Dad’s marriage,” began Anne, “I think of Sisyphus.”
Right off the bat, she got a laugh.
“Mom is Sisyphus,” she said. “And Dad is the rock.”
The room was in stitches now.
What a beautiful thing it was to be laughed at lovingly, to be looked back upon fondly, not for your strengths but for your weaknesses. Was there a truer sign of love?
“But you gotta hand it to them,” said Anne. “Fifty years, that’s quite an accomplishment. I don’t know how you did it, Dad. Eighteen years of Mom’s cooking was more than enough for me.”
Abe laughed along with everybody else, though in truth Ruth was an excellent cook and everyone knew it.
“But really, Mom, Dad, what you’ve done is impressive. Not only did you get it right the first time, unlike some of us, you made it last, you did the work. So, congratulations on fifty, and here’s to fifty more.”
Kyle was next to step up to the microphone, wrapping his big sister in a hug as she left the stage. To see them linger in a genuine embrace like that, to know that their affection had survived everything Abe and Ruth had survived and more, was to know a satisfaction as great as watching them take their first steps. For it meant that despite all the challenges and obstacles of their partnership, the petty pridefulness, the obfuscation, the self-sabotage, the calamity, and sorrow, and tragedy, he and Ruth had still managed to foster something vital and enduring.
“Fifty years,” said Kyle. “Yowza. How many eras is that? Seriously, though, I can’t say I’m surprised that we’re all here today.”
Looking at Kyle up there onstage, now a man in his midforties, with salt-and-pepper-flecked hair, a little paunch around the middle, a leather belt, adult shoes, Abe could still see him at sixteen years old in the kitchen in shoulder pads and jersey, drinking milk straight from the carton. He could see him at eight, arms folded, brow furrowed in protest, not eating his green beans.
“The thing about Mom and Dad is that no matter what happened, you knew they would always be together. Nothing could break them apart. Almost like they were, well, stuck with each other.”
The room chuckled in recognition, even as Abe’s eyes began to burn.
When Maddie took the stage, Abe thought she looked softer than he’d seen her in ages. Her hair for once was its natural light brown, free of green or blue or purple dye. He could count on two hands the number of times he’d seen her in a dress. Despite the years, he could still see his youngest daughter as the little girl she once was, and it seemed like only last week that he was helping her into her rain boots and cutting the crust off her sandwiches.
“By the time I came around,” she said, “Mom and Dad had already survived the sixties somehow. Can you even imagine? My dad, Mr. Bow Tie, and my mom, the hippie sympathizer. But they made it work, and they still make it work. God knows, I couldn’t have done it. I can hardly keep my houseplants alive.”
Another comedian. It was strange, listening to his grown children, at thirty-four, and forty-four, and nearly fifty, talking about him, reflecting on the life he’d helped provide for them. Strange, how he still felt as protective of them as he did when they were two, and twelve, and sixteen years old. God, he was proud of them.
Finally, Abe’s moment arrived. Despite his rehearsals, and the fact that everybody there was practically family, his hand was trembling when he took the mic from Maddie, pulling her in for a hug, and planted a kiss upon her forehead as the microphone squalled feedback.
“I love you, kiddo,” he said.
Looking out at the gathering, all those familiar faces, Abe wasn’t sure he could get through the speech, or even get it started. But he managed to, barely.
“A lot of you have asked me this week, ‘Abe, what is the trick to getting to fifty years?’ ” he said. “Well, let me tell you, if I’ve learned one thing over the past half century, it’s that the key to an enduring marriage, at least my enduring marriage, can be summed up in one word. A single word. One word that epitomizes the long haul, one word that exemplifies patience, and understanding, and loyalty. And that word,” said Abe, “is Ruth. Without Ruth, we never would have made it this far.”
Abe did not dare look down from the stage at Ruth for fear his composure would wilt in an instant.
“Not only is my wife more beautiful after fifty years than the day I met her, she is kinder, smarter, more empathetic, and more patient than ever before. I cannot say the same for myself, a grumpy old man complaining about gas prices and long lines, but I’m grateful as heck that Ruth stuck with me all these years. I remember the first day I met her.”
Over the next ten minutes, Abe delineated in broad strokes their lives together, from their courtship at the University of Washington, to the little green house on Roanoke, to those first days on the farm. From there, he proceeded through four children, an entire career, all the way to retirement, and finally returned to the here and now.
“Looking back on all of it,” said Abe, “it’s easy to forget the troubled parts, but the fact is they tested us again and again. And I wouldn’t trade those challenges for anything. Looking at my life, backward and forward, from the past to the future, I see so many possibilities, so many paths taken and not taken, but along every one of those paths, whatever I imagine, whatever might have happened, whatever will happen, one thing is always the same: You are by my side, Ruthie.”
Tearfully, Ruth watched Abe leave the stage and descend the steps, Al Duncan greeting him with a handshake and a pat on the back that morphed into a manly hug.
Only once Abe resumed his seat at the table did Ruth ascend the riser and take the mic from the stand, looking out upon a lifetime of friends and loved ones, all gazing up at her, eager with anticipation. She dared to peer straight at Abe, his bow tie crooked, his face flushed with emotion, his long legs crossed, as he looked courageously back at her.
“You know, Annie was right,” Ruth said. “Abe is a rock. My rock. And I’ve been crashing against that rock like a monsoon for fifty years.”
Could it really be fifty? Taking a broader view of the decades, it almost seemed possible once Ruth accounted for politics and hairstyles, births, deaths, graduations, and weddings. But when she zoomed in on any one moment, like her and Abe lying at Magnuson Park beach in July of 1954, or date night at the Martinique in 1969, or standing on the moonlit bluff of Fort Worden in 1985, or being accosted by a French restaurateur on a Paris sidewalk in 2000, fifty years seemed impossible. That Ruth had given all but her childhood and adolescence to this partnership, that she had not chased after her dreams in full measure, was no fault of Abe’s. While he might have encouraged her a little more, Abe always accepted her for who she was, or who she was becoming, invariably tolerated her mercurial forays and experimentations into impropriety, and even lesbianism. And never in fifty years, not once, not intentionally, had he asked her to be anyone but herself.
“A few minutes ago,” Ruth continued, “you heard Abe give me all the credit for our long-lasting marriage, but it’s not true. If Abe’s been guilty by way of his reliance on me, I’ve been equally guilty in my dependence on Abe. When was the last time I lit the gas barbecue, or unclogged a sink, or jump-started the car? It’s not news to anybody here that Abe and I haven’t always seen eye to eye. The Democrat and the Republican. The flaky liberal and the stodgy conservative. The poet and the pragmatist. The wave and the rock. So, how did we make it work in spite of all these differences? The answer is acceptance. And patience. And yes, sometimes compromise. What we call balance is not always symmetry. Sometimes we need a complement, a contradiction, a counterpoint, to be our best selves.”
Here, Ruth hazarded another look around the whole gathering until her eyes landed directly on Abe, where she managed to quell an emotional uprising, but just barely.
“Sweetie,” said Ruth, looking into his face, “I just want to thank you for being my counterpoint.”